One Grave at a Time

behind, leaving for Spade’s tomorrow afternoon via a more conventional mode of transportation: a taxicab. That way, in case my borrowed abilities had faded to where Kramer couldn’t locate me by concentrating alone, he could follow them to Spade’s house. They’d take plenty of sage with them in case the ghost did more than trail them, but my money was on Kramer’s trying to be sly and staying unseen. After all, they weren’t the targets he’d so carefully picked out. Francine, Lisa, and Sarah were the ones Kramer really wanted, and we wanted to be sure he found his way to them.

Once we had everything in place, anyway.

That was why we didn’t fly our large bundles right to Spade’s. We went to a defunct building that had formerly been a combined sewer overflow facility in Ottumwa instead. Underneath the building, a series of storm drains, tunnels, and sewers led to the Des Moines River. It wasn’t as perfect a setting as our cave with its underground river—and it smelled a damn sight worse even though it hadn’t been operational in years—but it would suffice. Bones had had his co-ruler, Mencheres, purchase the building and its surrounding riverside property over the past couple weeks using a dummy corporation. Couldn’t risk someone else tearing this down to put a new business up and disturbing what we hoped would be Heinrich Kramer’s final resting place. Now, we just had to carve a hole in the underground trunk sewer deep enough to reach the river’s water table so that we could ensure the flow of fresh water around where we intended to place the trap.

It had taken Bones and me plus Chris’s team a week to lay the previous trap in place. We had exactly five hours to set this one up, and we had carving up the trunk sewer to contend with, too. I didn’t want to calculate how long our odds were, trying to focus instead on how powerful Bones, Spade, and Ian were. I’d do my damnedest, too, and either we would finish or we wouldn’t. The only thing that was certain was there was no time for hand- wringing.

We landed outside the empty facility, and I set my heavy section of the trap down as soon as my feet hit the ground. Flying for an hour while toting that bulk made me appreciate how effortlessly Bones carried me when we flew together. Granted, I weighed less than this hunk of rock, but he’d also flown while carrying me and at least one other person, and he made it look easy even while going faster and farther.

“Brilliant landing,” Ian commented, giving a pointed look at the long furrow I’d carved in the earth when I touched down. “We’re trying to keep a low profile, and here you’ve gone and made it look like a meteorite hit.”

I’d been proud of myself for not blasting through the side of the building—staying in the air was far easier than landing!—so I snootily lifted my nose at him.

“I’m less than two years undead, and I’m already flying. How long did it take you to find your wings, pretty boy?”

Bones snorted at the indignation on Ian’s face. He was nothing if not competitive. “You had that coming, mate.”

“Power leech,” Ian replied sulkily.

He had me there, but Bones laughed. “You’d give both your stones to have that ability, not to mention she flew before turning into a vampire, so that’s hers alone.”

“If you’re through squabbling,” a smooth voice called out from the building, “perhaps we can set about securing this trap?”

Spade was already here, good. I looked at my large chunk of rock and the entrance to the building. Then I cracked my knuckles. First things first, and that would be making a new door large enough for all the pieces to fit through. I only hoped the tunnels leading to the trunk sewer were wide enough not to need their own form of remodeling.

The five-hour countdown had just begun.

Four hours and twenty-two minutes later, Ian stared at the reassembled trap secured in the bottom of the trunk sewer, water sloshing over it from the adjoining hole we’d torn through to reach the Des Moines River. A breath of laughter escaped him.

“You’ve made it look like a huge cauldron. That’s spectacularly twisted of you, Reaper.”

I wiped some of the brackish, cold water away from my face before replying. Everyone else waited in the tunnel above, but I wanted to check the bottom of the trap one more time to make sure it was steady. Yes, call me paranoid. If all went well tomorrow, once Kramer was in the trap, we could do a more thorough job of reinforcing the entrance we’d dug into the sewer wall and the base of the trap to make extra sure that time and erosion wouldn’t disturb Kramer’s jail cell; but for now, it looked like it would hold.

“Kramer’s obsessed with witchcraft, so I wanted him to be in familiar surroundings. Never let it be said that I’m not sentimental.”

Despite the flip words and feeling more exhausted than I could remember, I also wanted to whoop for joy. We’d done it! The trap was secured, river water washing over its bottom half, with time to spare. Not much time, true, but I wasn’t going to quibble. I could even give Ian a big sloppy kiss for how hard and fast he’d worked. Arrogant, obnoxious pervert he might be, but damn, could he accomplish an objective when he set his mind to it. I’d never doubted Bones’s or Spade’s power and dedication, but Ian had surprised me.

“Let’s leave before your spectre finds this place,” Spade said, disappearing out of sight into the tunnel. His voice floated behind him. “Denise will be so relieved to hear we’re finished.”

I climbed up the sewer wall, accepting the hand Bones gave me to lift me the last few feet of the way. “You brought a car, right?” I called after Spade, hoping the answer was yes.

“Of course,” his reply drifted back. “Knew none of us would fancy burning more energy to fly back, and tomorrow, we’ll need everything we can muster against Kramer.”

How true. Then I cast a glance at how muddied and wet we were and gave Bones a rueful look. “We’re going to trash Spade’s stuff again.”

He grinned. “No worries, I’m sure it’s a rental.”

Spade drove, Ian rode shotgun, and Bones and I took the backseat. I was so glad to lean against him and just shut my eyes that I didn’t even mind being wet, cold, and filthy. Spade turned the heater on, so it wasn’t long before I began to feel toasty warm, too. After spending a couple weeks in a house with no electricity and the frigid night air blowing in from countless slits in the boarded-up windows, the heat felt like heaven to me. In fact, I was so relaxed I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, the car jerked to a stop, and the landscape around us had completely changed.

We were on a narrow gravel road leading to what looked like a pretty, two-story white-and-blue house at the end of it. Hay fields stretched out for acres behind the property, and a horse barn stood empty off to the far right side of the house. It was wonderfully quiet, no neighbors visible in the immediate vicinity and thus no noisy intrusions from their thoughts to crowd my psyche.

“Christ, no,” Spade whispered at the same time I realized that a complete lack of other people’s thoughts was a very, very bad sign. I should be picking up on four minds in the house ahead. Instead, there was only ominous silence.

Spade didn’t open his car door—he pushed it aside so violently that it sailed away from the vehicle with a metallic ripping sound. Then he was nothing more than a blur headed toward the house. The rest of us got out, but not as fast, Ian shoving the car into park to keep it from rolling. Dread made me feel like the blood in my veins had just been replaced with ice water. I ran toward the house, a string of denials resounding in my mind. Not Denise. Please, no. She was my best friend. It would be horrible enough if something happened to Lisa, Sarah, and Francine, but I couldn’t stand it if Denise was . . . was . . .

Spade ripped the front door off as well, disappearing into the house. The three of us were close behind him. Sharp barks coming from upstairs made it impossible to detect any heartbeats, and the sound made Bones pause before entering, dragging me to a halt with him. Maybe Dexter was barking because of the crash the door made when Spade tore it from its hinges.

Or maybe it was because Kramer was still in the house. Had he managed to manifest flesh a day early? Bloody shoe prints showed that someone had come down the staircase and gone out the door, and I didn’t smell any sage burning. Denise was immune to most kinds of death, but Spade always kept some demon bone on hand in case any hellish buddies of the one who had branded her showed up looking for vengeance. Had the bone knife that was made of the only substance that could kill Denise been used against her? Oh God, what had Kramer done to them?

Ian didn’t wait, but went into the house with a brusque, “Get some sage lit before you follow.” Upstairs, Spade cried out, a harsh sound of grief that made my knees almost give out. Tears making my gaze blurry, I