My jaw dropped. I’m not sure which part was more disturbing—Robert creeping on my Facebook status and photos, or the idea that this cemetery had seen basically a lot of ritual murder.
I pulled myself together and focused once more. Robert seemed to have a lot of knowledge, and I didn’t want to be swept away before I got some of it. I reached out and took his hand, holding him tightly. He squeezed my hand back as if he didn’t want to let me go either.
“Robert, what’s keeping me out of this place?”
He looked back at the cemetery. “Guessing here, but I’d say our necromancer friend is to blame.”
“Yeah, that was what I was worried about,” I muttered. “So how do I—we—get in there?” I asked. “If Charlotte is being held at the abandoned amusement park with the coven, Gran could be here.”
A scuffle of leaves across the ground at our feet and an arctic breeze pushing in from my right side turned me in that direction before Robert could answer me.
A black-robed figure stood across from us, staring out at the cemetery.
I squeaked, pretty sure I peed a little, and tried to back up. Robert caught me around the waist, holding me to his chest so he could whisper in my ear. “I don’t think he can see us.”
The robed figure took a step forward and touched the wrought iron fence. A sizzle and a snap lit up the air as voices rolled out around him, screaming that he wasn’t welcome. I recognized those voices.
He pulled back with a snarl and a grimace.
Well, well, well. He couldn’t get in either. That was interesting. Maybe he wasn’t as strong as he looked.
And then it hit me.
Gran had been looking for angel wings. This necro guy was looking for something, and a coven of dark witches was waiting in the wings . . . witches who could do a spell for him if he found the ingredients?
“Shit,” I whispered. “What do you want to bet the Coven of Darkness is working with him? That they went for Gran, saw or sensed Charlotte, and took her as a bonus? They could work a spell for him.”
Robert tightened his arms around me, and I clung to him. “That makes sense. But what are we doing at this graveyard?”
He had a valid question. “Maybe there’s a clue to where the angel wings are hidden?” I nodded, already seeing the pieces of the story come together. “It wouldn’t shock me in the least if the ghosts know. Maybe they aren’t bad, but protective?”
Robert’s arms tensed around me. “So you need to talk to them.”
Ugh, I did not want to ask the ghosts from that cemetery anything, but he was right. Eyes on the black-robed necromancer, I took a step back, dragging Robert with me. “Just in case he sees us.”
As if I’d been shouting with a ducking megaphone, the robed figure turned slowly and looked in our direction.
He tipped his head and raised a finger and spoke to me, but pointed at Robert. “I see, so you have found a way to make your mentor teach you. Interesting. Perhaps I should have buried Evangeline deeper. Lovely, then I can kill you both. Properly.”
Mentor? I glanced at Robert to see his face was closed off, giving away no emotion. Evangeline’s grave was where the faux cross had been buried. Robert had said she was a friend, but maybe she’d been more than that?
“You got her killed, too, didn’t you? Always trying to help the pretty girls, always getting them killed,” the hooded figure said softly, his voice annoyingly mild.
I kept backing up, not sure what exactly he was saying, but I was guessing that maybe Robert had been teaching Evangeline? And she’d died.
Well, shit, everyone died.
“Back off.” I reached for my knives, but this was a dream and I wasn’t sure that they were even there. Or that they’d do anything if I found them.
The robed and hooded figure swirled his hands up faster than I could track with my eyes, and a blast of something slammed into me. There was no color to the magical thump, no sparkles, no scent, nothing. I was hit in the chest and thrown backward so hard, I struggled to breathe once I hit the ground.
Jerking my limbs this way and that, fighting my way out of the dream, I sat up in the dark room, panic clawing at me.