No Humans Involved

stones and drew something to the side of my ritual setup.

'Remember those runes I mentioned? The ones I see?' he said as he drew. 'This is one of them. Not for protection, but for calming.'

He finished the simple design, then took my hand and laid it on the symbol.

'Now, maybe these are just part of some secret code I found on a cereal box when I was a boy but-' He met my gaze. 'I think-I feel-there's more to them than that.'

And as I knelt there, his hand light and warm on mine, the rough stone beneath, the edges of the rune running past my ringers, I could feel the anxiety and panic seeping from me, as if drawn into the stone.

I began the incantation, my hands on the rune, his on mine, and the words flowed with a confidence I rarely felt.

The sound came quickly. The same soft noise I'd heard earlier. Coming from the same direction. My gut twisted, half bitter disappointment, half frustration.

'The bird again,' I said as I pushed to my feet. 'It's that damned bird. I tried focusing on a child, but-'

'Wait,' Jeremy said. 'Let's be sure before you release it.'

We followed the sound to the same garden. I could see where Jeremy had reburied the bird, but the ground there was undisturbed. My gaze shot to a spot a few feet away.

'The cat?' I said.

But that patch of earth was still too. The whole garden was still. And quiet.

I glanced at Jeremy. 'The sound. Is it gone?'

He shook his head and leapt into the thirty-inch-high garden as easily as if it had been a mere step up. He cocked his head to listen, then picked his way deeper into the hexagonal rose garden, following the sound straight to the center.

As he bent, I heard it again, faint, coming from the ground. I climbed onto the retaining wall, stepped into the bed and almost fell back as my pointed heels sunk into the soil. My arms windmilled, but I caught my balance before Jeremy scrambled to my rescue.

'Two words,' Eve sighed behind me. 'Sensible shoes. Preferably sneakers. Not pretty, but I swear, someday they'll save your life.'

'I know. I know.'

I took off my shoes.

'Can you stand watch?' I asked Eve as I walked up beside Jeremy.

'Kris has it covered.'

In other words, she wasn't leaving. Probably expecting me to panic and screw up again. As I crouched, a high patch of earth shifted from a disturbance under the surface.

I raked back the dirt. Jeremy helped. Eve hovered. The garden seemed to go silent, no sound but the sifting and shifting of earth as we dug. The smell of damp earth soon came mingled with something danker, mustier-the stink of the grave.

I kept digging. Probably a dog or another cat, an older one, buried deeper, under more seasons of added soil, more layers of rotted vegetation. The family's designated pet cemetery, amid the roses, so their dearly departed wouldn't stink the place up.

I was scooping away a handful of dirt when a dark stone appeared at the bottom of the hole. Then it moved, jabbing upward. A long, dark claw. Another poked through. Then a third, the last only white bone. The long thin bone of a human finger.

'T-there,' I said, lifting my hand to stop Jeremy. 'Good enough. I'll send the soul back-'

'No,' Eve said. 'Dig a little more.'

I swung around to look at her. 'It's a hand. Even I can tell it's-'

'Yes, it is.' Her gaze met mine, eyes cold and unreadable. 'Keep going until you have the hand exposed-'

'It is exposed,' I said, voice going shrill as I watched the fingers- bone and rotted flesh-reaching for the air. 'That child is trying to dig his way out and I'm not standing back and letting it happen so we can have a whole body to show the police-'

'Then stop him.'

'Stop-?'

Her gaze bore into mine. 'Stop the child from digging and keep him calm. This will only take a minute, Jaime.'

When I hesitated, she said, 'Trust me.'

I yanked my gaze away, closed my eyes and commanded the child to stop digging. That impulse to claw his way out was so strong, so deeply rooted, that zombies had been known to batter themselves to pieces trying to get free of a casket. And yet, when I gave the order, the hand stopped moving.

Again, for one moment, there was silence, Eve and Jeremy both staring at that still hand.

Here was the other side of that darkest power. Not only could a necromancer raise corpses, we could control them. Enslave the dead.

Looking at Eve and Jeremy, seeing awe on the faces of two of the most powerful supernaturals I knew, I realized it was more than just the darkest power. It was the most fearsome. The greatest power a supernatural could wield. Jeremy could tear his victims limb from limb. Eve could torture them with magic. But with death came release-unless I stepped in. Then death was only the beginning of the horror.

As I held the child still, murmuring words of comfort-mental and aloud-Eve knelt beside the hole. Then she reached in and took hold of the child's hand, fingers wrapping around the small ones as if she could reach through the dimensional barrier and touch them.

Her eyes had barely closed when her body went rigid. Beneath her eyelids, her eyes moved, twitching like someone dreaming. At a movement to my left, I looked to see Kristof had joined us, standing back but watching Eve, his face taut with worry.

'Her name's Rachel,' Eve said, her voice tight, as if pushing words out. 'Rachel Skye. She's eleven. She lives… no, I can't get that. An apartment building. A city. A busy street.' A noise in her throat. 'Not important. She's coming home from school. Taking the bad way. The one she's not supposed to take. But it's shorter and there's a TV show she'll miss if she takes the other way. She cuts through the alley. She hears something behind her. Something flies down over her head. Everything goes dark.'

Eve pulled her hand back from the child's and crouched there, head bowed, hair falling forward to hide her face. Kristof moved up beside her, hunkered down and said something, too low for me to hear. A whispered exchange. Then he squeezed her hand and backed off.

Eve looked up at me. 'That's all I get. Darkness, then she passed over.'

I relayed everything to Jeremy, who'd been waiting patiently throughout, never asking for an explanation. As much as I longed to ask Eve what she'd done, I could tell I wouldn't get an answer. The what and how didn't matter. Only the results.

'So they probably drugged her or knocked her out,' Jeremy said. 'They kept her unconscious until they killed her. They're uncomfortable with what they're doing. They feel guilty.'

'Cowards.' Eve's face darkened, but she shook it off. 'Hold on. I want to get this done so we can let her go.'

She started again. Like Hope, she seemed to be experiencing a vision, getting her information that way rather than through questioning. Unlike Hope, though, this wasn't random flashes. She controlled the vision, as if guiding her way through the girl's memory.

The second foray added little to the first. Rachel had never regained consciousness after her attack. As she'd been losing consciousness, though, she'd heard a voice. A British-accented woman's voice telling someone else to make sure he grabbed Rachel's knapsack. In that command, she'd heard a name. Don. And that was all we had.

BLUFF AND BLUSTER

I RELEASE RACHEL'S SOUL. Then Jeremy covered our tracks as I hurried back to clean up my equipment. Eve