into proving myself, and if something in there wasn’t interested in having me, I was leaving. I was too tired for another fight, run, or even verbal sparring with anyone.
A quick glance at the cemetery, and I headed off in the other direction, ready to check out one of the other cemeteries. Because again, this was NOLA and cemeteries abounded.
“What if that’s where Homer Underwood was?” Kinkly flew around my face. “And it was our first stop and you blew it? I think you should go back.”
My feet grew heavy, and I stopped about a block away from the place, close enough that I still felt like I was crawling with ants.
“Kinkly, I don’t want to go in there.” I leaned against the building. “It’s . . . there is something bad in there. And it doesn’t like me.”
“Which is probably what we’re after. Aren’t we looking for bad guys?” Her wings brushed against my cheek, gossamer thin and soft as a feather.
I put my back to the wall and looked toward the cemetery. I could just make out the tops of a few larger mausoleums from where I stood. She wasn’t wrong. And the quicker we figured out where the bad guys were holed up, the quicker we could get Charlotte and Gran home and safe.
Gah, the logic galled me because I really, really didn’t want to go in there. I swallowed hard. “We’ll take a quick look. If anything goes sideways, we’re heading right back out. Okay?”
“Fair enough,” Kinkly said. “I mean, sideways is rarely as fun as it sounds.”
I pushed off the wall and strode back the way we’d come.
With my vision narrowed on my goal, I kept my feet moving even as the buzzing and drums escalated and the disembodied voice harassed me.
The closer I got, the more I struggled to breathe normally. One foot after the other, and then I was through the open gate and a sudden wash of darkness took me out at the knees.
The voices were all over me.
Vile.
Mutt.
Cursed one.
Get thee gone!
Kinkly’s voice called to me as I went to my hands and knees, clinging to a tombstone, the cold of the granite seeping into my fingers and spreading up my arm to my elbow.
Well, this was going about as badly as I’d thought it would.
“Robert,” I whispered his name, and the skeleton sprung to life beside me, just kind of appearing in the way that he did.
Long dark hair covered his face he swayed in front of me and held out a hand. “Friend.”
I grabbed hold of his bony fingers, and the sensations backed off enough that I could at least get my feet under me.
“Help,” I whispered, my voice stolen.
“Friend, help, whiskey,” he grumbled as he dragged me out of the cemetery and tourists gawked at me. Of course, they couldn’t see Robert, so it likely looked like I was being pulled about by a ghost. A flash went off from at least one camera.
Outside the gate and once more across the street, I didn’t dare let go of Robert even though the darkness and voices had receded and I’d regained the ability to stand on my own.
He swayed next to me as I stood breathing hard and staring at the cemetery. “Kinkly, that was a terrible idea. I’m not going back there . . .”
A snort from around the corner of my building turned my head. I had to blink a few times because I couldn’t be sure of what I was seeing. A man who shared a name with that damn cemetery. A man who was supposedly on vacation.
“Louis?” I stared a little harder to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
The sub-par necromancer who worked with Eammon at the Hollows stepped around so he stood next to me, looking toward the cemetery. He wore a lovely bright red shirt that was open at the throat and a pair of skinny jeans that were far too tight. They made him look like he could be a skeleton under them. “That place is not dark, you twit. It just has very many dead people that you cannot handle, because you are a woman, and you are weak and old,” he said, his French accent thicker than I’d ever heard it.
Ah, here we were, back to him being rude. Lovely.
I let go of Robert, knowing that Louis couldn’t see him anyway. “Really, Louis the piss-poor necromancer who can’t even see my skeleton friend?”