in the dirt, and cut Feish out with a speed that caught us both by surprise. A wall of mist spilled up around us, mimicking the mist on the wraiths’ lower limbs. I could just see Feish on the other side of it.
Oh man, was I ducked.
Feish battered at the wall of mist with her webbed hands, and a moment later, Corb joined her. “Hang on, Bree, we’ll get you out!” he yelled. He was there then gone, the mist blocking my view of him.
I was inside the circle, and most of my friends were on the outside.
But not all of them.
“Robert!” I yelled for my skeleton friend, jammed one hand into the soft earth and dragged my bag up out of the ground at a frantic pace, jerking the bag hard in case it got stuck on a root or something. Almost crying with frustration, I yanked and tugged until it was free even as I continued to sink. “Robert! I could use some help here!”
I expected he’d show up, swaying and growling friend at me, and drive away the wraiths. That was what I’d hoped for anyway.
What I got was Robert as he had been in the demon home next door to Gran’s house, human-looking and totally giving me a WTF did you do now? look.
8
Robert was tall, and the hair that was dull and unkempt in his skeleton form was now long, dark, and glossy, pulled back in a leather binding so nothing hindered my view of his icy blue eyes. He held his hands palms up as he looked down at me, confusion written all over his features.
Yes, I was stuck in the ground and I had wraiths all around me. “I know!”
He arched a dark slash of an eyebrow at me. “Seriously, again? How are you doing this? And how do you get in so much trouble? Even I wasn’t this bad!”
“Gawd, if only I knew, I’d stop!” I yelped as one of the wraiths reached down and brushed long, spindly fingers across my arm. The touch burned like ice on fire, and I couldn’t help the scream that ripped out of my mouth. “Hot potato, man! Help me!”
Robert twisted around as I screamed, opened his mouth and was back to his skeletal self in a flash of light. Some kind of magic washed over me, warm and comforting like a blanket’s embrace, washing away the pain of the wraith’s touch and loosening the earth’s hold on me.
The wraiths were there, and then in a blink they were gone as if they had never been. But I’d done nothing, and as far as I could tell, no one else had done anything either.
I struggled upward, the barrier gone along with the wraiths, and then Corb was pulling me out of the ground and into his arms. I stood there with him, breathing hard, not quite sure what happened, my arm still throbbing.
“Why did they just disappear? Not that I’m complaining.” I twisted around, looking for the tall, stick-figure wraiths. Sarge and Robert stood to the side with Feish, all three shaking their heads.
Movement behind us caught my attention. I turned and saw an old woman working her way toward us between the headstones, following a path I couldn’t see. She was bent at the waist, leaning hard on a walking stick, and her hair was braided back in a thousand little braids that had different beads and bits of ribbons tied onto the ends. Some of them were bone white, a striking contrast to her deeply darkened skin. I wasn’t sure if she was someone to be worried about or not. I’d met some mean old ladies who I wouldn’t want to cross again, no matter that they were twice my age.
Then it hit me that we stood on top of graves, surrounded by headstones. Shit, we were in a cemetery? I looked at Feish. “Why did you bring us here? We had dead things coming for us, and you brought us to a boneyard?”
She shrugged. “You have an affinity for the dead. Boss said get you to graveyard if you get in trouble. And look, here we are. In trouble again. But now safe.”
The tapping of the lady’s walking stick on stone turned my eyes to our . . . what to call her? Hostess? Savior? Enemy?
“Hello?” I said. “Did you do this? Did you bring the wraiths down on us?”
She answered my question with one of her own. “What you doing here in