My adrenaline spiked as I peered over the edge, but it was a waste. No one in there.
“They’re gone,” I said, a sigh of relief escaping me. Charlotte had been found, I was pretty sure I knew exactly where Gran was hiding out, and Jacob had promised to clear my name.
The day was turning out better than I could have hoped. Sure, Missy had my gran’s spell book, sure I was beat to hell and back, but . . . I paused in my musings. Something tugged at my ears, a sound I couldn’t identify.
“Jinx,” I said. “What is that noise?”
“I told you to run!” she yelped and then she scuttled away.
I turned slowly, the noise sinking into my head. Feet, lots and lots of feet on the pavement?
Only it wasn’t just feet.
It was the tonton macoutes’ dragging, shuffling feet.
“Duck me.” And no, I didn’t say duck, most definitely not.
All around me bodies shuffled my way, and maybe on a good day I could have dodged them. I could have used those muscles I’d been slowly building back and beat a fast retreat.
But not with my ankle mauled by a damn alligator. Not with both of my knives gone.
I hobbled deeper into the cemetery, using the above ground tombstones and mini-mausoleums as hand holds to keep moving. “Jinx, find Crash, at least! I thought you said he was here!”
“I said we were going through here to get to him!”
If there ever was a time I needed rescuing, this was it.
I took a sharp left and my ankle gave out, sending me to my hands and knees. “Seriously?” I yelled at no one in particular. The smell of the voodoo shitheads was all around me, that dirty socks and smoke scent jamming its way up my nose.
I pushed to my feet as a series of hands clamped onto me, lifting me overhead. “Let me go!” I yelped as I struggled against their hold. I was going to die. Just like Gran, just like my mom and dad.
The hand on my busted up ankle twisted, and I screamed as a bolt of pain tore through me.
Suzy had said she’d follow me. Where was she?
For the first time, I was truly afraid. I was alone in this. No one was coming to save me. I would have to get myself out of this on my own, or I was going to die.
The hands were pulling me in four directions, as if testing the limits of my joints. I pulled back, knowing they’d straight up tear my limbs off if I didn’t put up any resistance.
Tears trickled down my cheeks. This was not how I wanted to go out.
Holding myself together as best as I could, I tried to find that spark of magic in me. These things were dead . . . could I maybe control them?
“Let me go! Go and do no harm!” I snapped, pouring my last energy into the words. A laugh answered me.
“Oh, girl, it don’t work like that. Sentinel you might be, but I’m a voodoo queen, and even I couldn’t stop him from taking my pets,” Marge’s voice floated out of the mouth of the undead person next to me. She might not have been there in physical form, but she was watching.
“Marge, let me go!” I yelled.
“Oh, this isn’t my doing. The necro took over my army—paid me to borrow them. Looks like he did the same to my gran too, all those years ago. I can’t stop them now, not until the time limit is up,” she said, and I thought perhaps I detected sorrow in her voice. “Best bet is that they’ll take you to him, and kill you later. But I’d bet you pissed him off enough that he’s just going to kill you. Sorry, kid. This is how the cookie crumbles sometimes. It was nice knowing you.”
Another pull on my limbs, and I was sure there were tendons and ligaments popping.
I pulled hard against the hands with what little strength I had left, yanking all the critters toward me. “GAH! Damn you!”
A sudden howl cut through the air as if in response to my scream.
It couldn’t be. He’d left with Corb.
“SARGE! I’m over here!” I screamed for the werewolf, praying I wasn’t hearing things.
“We’re coming!” Suzy yelled. “Hang on!”
A buzzing filled the air, and suddenly Kinkly swooped in, a tiny sword in her hand that she plunged into the eye of the voodoo critter that held my left arm in