Kelley Armstrong: Blood Lite

"Ha-ha. No trouble. I just need ritual supplies from Paige. Do you have access to her stash now? Or does she still keep it under lock, key and security spell so you don't blow anything else up?"

"Ha-ha. The shed was an accident. So what's the ritual for? Summoning or banishing?"

"Banishing." I listed what I needed.

"Ooh, big-ass banishment. What did your spook do to deserve that?"

"The usual. Tormenting me. Insulting me. Blasting me with the Pledge of Allegiance."

"Allegiance assault? The bastard."

"It's probably the only thing he'd ever memorized. Anyway, if you could courier the stuff to Seattle—"

"Seattle? You're just around the corner."

"A hundred and fifty miles around the corner."

"I'll be there by seven."

"No! I appreciate that, but really—"

"Staying at the Olympic, as usual?"

"Er, yes, but—"

"Seven it is. Don't eat without me."

Savannah arrived at 7:20, bearing pizza and beer. I wasn't asking how she got the beer. With Savannah, I'm better off not knowing.

She kicked off her knee-high boots, peeled a slice from the box and folded her long limbs into a chair, feet pulled up under her. "So, what does he want?"

"Who?"

"Your spook. Does he have a name?"

"Probably. I call him Chuck."

"So Chuck presumably asked you for a favor. You couldn't do it. He's making your life hell. You need to banish him. Which is why you shouldn't let them ask in the first place."

"It was more of a demand, really. But I have been try­ing to listen more often, help with little things like passing on messages."

"Uh-huh. How's that working out for you? Or I guess that—" She jabbed her pizza slice at the burning vervain. "—answers my question. About Chuck, though. What does he want?"

I took a beer and sat on the sofa. "He and his cousin died in a car accident. They were interred in the family mausoleum. He wants me to open his cousin's casket."

"And..."

"There is no 'and.' Apparently, as a servant to the afterlife, it's not my place to question the will of the dead."

"Asshole." She chugged half her beer. "If he's got a mausoleum, that means he's got money—or his family does. I bet there's something valuable in that casket, and jerkwad is just too stupid to realize it won't do him any good, being dead. So, if we did find something, we'd need to keep it."

"No, I'd give it back to his family."

"Shit. Jeremy's finally rubbing off on you, huh?"

"There's no treasure in that casket."

"Then why does he want you to open it? Aren't you curious?"

I wasn't. Another necromancer lesson: Never stop to question. There are too many opportunities. Like the residual in Savannah's house—a woman forever watching out the window. I should wonder what she's looking for, why it was so emotionally powerful that the image of it is seared forever within those walls. But necromancers can't afford idle curiosity. They'll go mad chasing questions whose answers don't really matter. That doesn't keep me from feeling like I should be curious, though. "It is odd ..." I said finally.

"Good." Savannah smacked her bottle down. "Let's go take a look and get rid of this spook, so you can skip the nasty banishment ritual. You don't want to be wiped out when Jeremy's here, right?"

I hadn't thought of that. One problem, though . . . "If I do it, he wins. I'll have ghosts lining up to scream the Pledge of Allegiance at me."

"I'll handle that." She tamped out the burning vervain with her fingertips. "Yo, Chuck!"

After a moment, he appeared. "Who the hell is Chu—?" He saw the pizza and beer. "A party for me? How nice." His gaze moved to Savannah. "Whoa. You even brought party favors. Sweet."

Savannah's gaze followed mine and fixed on a spot near the ghost. "Sit down, Chuck. Grab a beer." She sucked back the rest of the bottle, eyes rolling in rapture. The pizza came next, which she dangled over her mouth, twisting the cheese strands around her tongue. "So good. Want some?" His eyes slitted. "Teasing little—"

"He appreciates the offer," I said, "but respectfully declines."

She set down the pizza. "Come here, Chuck. I have a proposition I think you'd like."

Hope glimmered in his eyes, then guttered out as he remembered his noncorporeal state.

"We're going to open your cousin's casket. No, you didn't wear Jaime down. I'm curious so I talked her into it. Give her any grief, though, and she has the shit now to do a full banishment. And, later, if you ever come around again? Or tell anyone we did this for you?" She recited a spell. A fireball appeared at her fingertips. "I'll replace your balls with these."

"Bitch."

"He agrees to your terms," I said, "and thanks you for your help."

She pulled on her boots. "Off to the graveyard we go then. My first mausoleum break-in." She paused at the door. "Actually, my second, but if Paige asks ..."

"It was your first."

It wasn't the first mausoleum break-in for me. Or the second. A practicing necromancer needs "artifacts of the grave" and the easiest way to get them is from bodies in crypts.

Between grave robbery and graveside summonings, I'd been in enough cemeteries to write a guidebook. I could also write a security manual for cemetery owners. I rarely encountered more than floodlights and an hourly rent-a-cop drive-by.

This cemetery had taken the extra step of locking the gates after dark... a gate attached to a fence with gaps you could ride a horse through. They'd splurged on lights too, and from a distance the place looked like a runway. But all the lighting in the world doesn't help when you're outside the city limits, a mile from the nearest house.

As we'd driven up in Savannah's car, I'd suspected Chuck had played us—this cemetery looked too small and new for family mausoleums. Apparently, though, it'd been designed by someone with a background in real estate, creating "mixed-dwelling" communities. Here, you had your apartments (columbaria), single-family dwellings (graves) and McMansions (mausoleums). The latter tar­geted families with too much money, too high an opinion of themselves and too little time to actually check out the product before plunking down cash. The buildings were little more than faux Greco-Roman sheds.

Savannah picked the lock and we stepped inside to what looked like a camp bunkhouse, stinking of damp wood, the walls lined with berths and a few coffins. "So which—?" I began.

Chuck motioned for silence and made me relay it to Savannah.

"Um, okay," she said. "But someone should tell him 'waking the dead' is only an expression."

And, it seemed, we were the only ones supposed to stay silent. Chuck kept up a running commentary as we cast our flashlight beams around. When Savannah approached his cousin's casket, he got louder.

"Do you hear that?" Savannah asked. "I can't hear anything with Chuck yapping." Which I began to suspect was the point.

"Something's in here." She bent to unlatch the coffin. "Are mice scavengers? If so, I think we have a nest of them chowing down at the body buffet."

My "wait!" came out like the squeak of a mouse, which must be what she mistook it for, because she threw open the lid. The corpse leapt up like a jack-in-the-box, shriek­ing and gobbling, fingers worn through from battering the casket, bone tips clawing the air, flesh tatters waving.

I'd seen this coming, but I still fell back. Even Savan­nah did, punctuating hers with a "holy fucking shit!"

At the sound of her voice, the zombie went still. His head swiveled toward her. Then, with the grace of a landlocked hippo, he lurched over the side of the casket. Savannah stepped back and the zombie—his internal bits and bones out of whack—hit the floor, limbs sprawled.

"Dude, chill." Savannah brushed a stray bit of flesh from her jeans. "Do we look like grave robbers? Your cousin brought this nice necromancer here, and I'm guess­ing he wanted her to help you out of your predicament."