Page 34 of Cold Sacrifice

And seconds after that, I saw them. The murdered necromancers. It was almost like they were underwater, staring up at me. The spirits watched me with something in their eyes I didn’t remember seeing before in anyone’s eyes. Not even the vampires had that degree of…hopelessness, maybe.

“I see them,” I told Sam and Remy.

“The ghosts?” Sam asked.

I nodded. “It’s like they’re surrounded by a wall of magic.” I took off the work gloves I’d had on while digging, then leaned forward and pressed my palms against the torn-up earth. Closing my eyes, I let myself feel what was there.

The vampires had hidden the spot, using magic to make sure the bodies remained concealed. The magic was fading but still, without the vengeful necromancer telling me the grave was in my woods, I might never have known it was there.

Without the ghoul sitting on top of it, I might never have found it.

And I felt the magic of Axton and Kaloni. It seeped into my palms like eager poison, happy to have something alive to attach to. I yanked my hands away and wiped them on my pants, glad Zach wasn’t there, as though the magic would recognize him and somehow go after him.

“We don’t need to uncover more,” I told them. “I see the spirits. I just need to figure out how to release them. I don’t know how to break the magic.”

The spirits were right there, but far away at the same time. The distance seemed extreme, but it was only the bad magic making it feel that way.

I couldn’t hear them, and when I spoke, they couldn’t hear me, either. But they saw me seeing them, and that was enough for now. I counted them while I knelt there trying to figure out what to do.

There were fifty-two murdered necromancers. Fifty-two murdered women. The one who’d somehow managed to escape made fifty-three. Their bones were crowded and piled, because the grave the vampires had dug hadn’t been that big. They’d been carted to the woods and upended into the hole, and then it had been covered, magicked, and left there for decades.

And I had absolutely no idea how to free them from that magic.

Finally, I did what I’d planned to do earlier. I called my friend Sixten. Over the years, he’d supplied me with everything from blood to weapons to—once—an ancient tooth. Sixten could get his hands on anything.

“Sugar,” he said, when he answered. “It’s been too long.”

Despite the heaviness of the situation, I smiled. “Hey, Six. How are you?”

“Middling,” he said. “Middling. Yourself?”

“I’m good.” I hesitated. “I’m dealing with a bunch of murdered necromancers. There’s magic holding them in the ground, and I’m not sure how to break it so I can help them cross over.”

His voice never changed. “You need a witch.”

“Yeah,” I said. I’d been planning to ask him for a witch anyway, one who could help me destroy a living necromancer, if possible. But now, I needed her to help me free the spirits who were bound into a grave of magic. “One you trust to keep her mouth shut.”

“I know one,” he said. “And she’d tell me she’d help if you know how to keep your mouth shut.”

“You know I do.”

“Yeah, sugar,” he agreed. “Do you need her in person?”

“However she can work,” I said. “In person, phone, video chat, whatever she needs.”

“When do you need her?”

“Now, Sixten. I need her now.”

“She’ll be pricy, sugar.”

“I figured,” I said.

“I’ll see what I can do.” He ended the call.

I sat on the ground beside the open grave. “You two go on back,” I told Remy and Sam. “I’ll wait with the ghosts.”

“Are you sure, Kait?” Sam asked. “I don’t mind waiting with you.”