I looked down at the book. “There’s no mention of anyone else being able to call them forward.”
The old woman turned in her seat. “That’s because no one else can do it, not even a witch as powerful as your gran could have called up and held onto that many wraiths. Maybe one, if she was working with another witch, but not four. That’s power in a nutshell.” Penny tapped her walking stick on the floor of the car with a steady thump. Her tapping seemed to coincide with her thought process. “Don’t know many necromancers who could have done it. At least none that are alive. He could have help though, I suppose.”
“But I’m guessing a necromancer could have taken Gran’s ghost?”
Penny gave me a grim nod. “Yes, that’s a distinct possibility.”
I reached forward and touched Corb on the shoulder. “Could you call Louis? Would he know some of the necromancers?” Being the resident necromancer for the Hollows, Louis should have some connections. While he was a bit of a snob and, from what I could tell, not much of a necromancer himself, he still might be able to help us. And he’d been worried about Eammon, which made me think he knew something was up.
Corb’s shoulder was tense under my hand and his tone was sharp. “No. He wouldn’t help us if he could, and you and I both know he’s useless when it comes to the dead. He can’t even see your skeletal friend. His own coven. . .they booted him out of their inner circle.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Necromancers have an ‘in crowd’?”
Corb’s eyes never wavered from the road as he spoke. “Every species does. The council is supposed to look out for everyone, but we’ve all seen how that works.”
I leaned back in my seat, thoughts running rampant in my head, trying to form connections. I panned through the book until I found the section on necromancers.
There was not a lot of new information. I let my finger trail along the words, following the flashlight’s illumination. Necromancers could raise the dead, call up wraiths, and bring someone back from the brink of death by driving the specter of death away—not indefinitely, but long enough for the person to be healed. I flipped the page over, but the entry didn’t continue on the other side.
I tried looking up angels, but there wasn’t anything in the book about them. Tried devils on the off chance there might be a connection. Nothing there either.
My stomach gave a roll, and I grimaced as the motion sickness set in. But I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t found anything yet about angel wings, certainly not in conjunction with necromancers.
I frowned as another memory tried to jerk its way out of that murky spot in the back of my head. It gave another wriggle before falling still.
I flipped through the book, doing what I could to memorize the order of things so I’d have an easier time finding information on the fly. My guts twisted up and I swallowed hard. A few more pages, and I’d have to give it up.
Another jerk of memory. Something to do with angel wings. Damn it, I’d almost had it that time.
I shook my head again and tried to force the memory to reveal itself. . . .something about Robert and the oak tree. I touched my head. “But not this book. Another one? Another book?”
Sarge glanced at me, and I waved him off and tried to read another page.
A bigger swell of nausea rolled through me, putting an end to reading time. I closed my eyes, flipped Gran’s spell book shut and slid it back into my hip bag.
With my eyes closed, I tried to think about anything that would distract me from the growing need to lose my lunch. It would not win me any points with Corb if I puked in his very nice car. I swallowed hard as the saliva rushed through my mouth, only making the need to vomit worse. But the smell of dog bombarded me from one side, and saltwater from the other, and it was pushing me over the edge.
Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped down my spine.
“Windows down, please,” I said. “Now!”
A moment later, the fresh night air swept in around me.
Eyes closed, I focused on the issues at hand. We needed to find the necromancers who’d done this. The ones who’d taken Gran and set the wraiths on me. Were they the