Unit Eighteen drove toward Carollette Myer Ames’ house in Crossville. A couple blocks off of Lantana Road, we turned off all car lights and eased into the drive of a vacant house, a weathered For Sale sign in the overgrown front yard. We were a hundred feet from Carollette Myer Ames’ small single-family home where she had lived with her husband. Occam handed me a pair of binoculars from his gobag and I adjusted them. He had cat eyes, and didn’t need them.
The red brick house was surrounded by dead oak trees and a dead flower garden. The death of the land was leaching out from the front porch where Ethel Myer sprawled in a rotting rocking chair, illuminated by the porch light. She was recognizable only by the holey, rotting green plaid housedress and the pile of rotting cigarette butts in a dish on the concrete beside her. Ethel was leaking green goo, her body falling apart as death and decay took her. Dust filtered over her as the front porch ceiling gave way and a board clattered down.
Carollette was sitting across from Ethel in a rusted metal rocker. She was pretty in a hard sort of way, her face seeming composed of angles made by frowning, her form stiff and projecting caged fury, even while just sitting, staring at her dead aunt. She was dressed in frayed jeans and ragged layered T-shirts. Leather shoes were curled and disintegrating on the floor beside her bare feet. She was the burnished platinum of some brunettes who go white-headed early, the same shade of white I had seen in the pasture where Adrian’s Hell died.
“She don’t look like much,” Occam said of the necromancer, “until you realize how many people she’s killed.” I didn’t reply and he added, “They want her alive.”
“Who?”
“FireWind didn’t say, but he was ticked off.”
Etain and Catriona pulled up beside us in an old dented Subaru. They got out and headed for Unit Eighteen, who were talking quietly nearby. Etain tossed us—or maybe just Occam—a wave as she moved around my car.
“T. Laine called for backup?” I asked.
Occam said, “FireWind took the warnings to heart about bombing the necromancer. We’re taking her down the old-fashioned way, magic-against-magic and low-tech human weapons.”
Margot parked on the other side and joined the unit, not noticing us in the darkened car.
“I got all the energy of a dead possum,” I said, so tired that church-speak came out. “I got no way to help here, not to capture a necromancer.” I held up my raw fingers. They looked worse in the dim light—white dead skin. Exhausted tears dribbled down my face, heated and stinging. Embarrassing. I turned my head away.
“Nell, sugar. Why you crying, darlin’?”
“This is jist me feeling useless.” I dragged my sleeve across my cheeks, pulling on my tear-rough skin. I faced him, and his eyes were glowing the golden of his cat, his nearly white hair pushed back from his healed, beautiful face. Had he been this pretty before he was burned? I didn’t rightly think so. “Go on. Take her down. But if you’un get hurt, I’ll skin your cat hide offa you’un in punishment,” I threatened.
He grinned, his teeth flashing, reflecting distant lights. “Duly noted, plant-woman. But don’t worry. Lainie gave us obfuscation charms if we need ’em.” He kissed me quick and slipped from my car.
I sat and watched as Unit Eighteen and the two Irish witches talked, came to an agreement, and separated, approaching Carollette’s home from oblique angles, moving tree to tree, house to house, using what they had for cover.
Occam raced cat-fast to the far side of the porch, into the dark. Out of my sight.
Rick was in front, carrying a gun with a huge barrel, big enough to be a small cannon.
Margot carried a target pistol with a long barrel and moved into range, half-hidden behind a car.
FireWind was carrying an old hunting rifle. He positioned himself at a different angle from Margot’s. His job was to take Carollette down permanently if the other means didn’t.
The three witches spread out in a triangle, Etain moving to the far side of the porch, T. Laine on the near side, and closer to their target. There wouldn’t be time or opportunity to create a circle around the house. They would be using a triangle to cast their working, and with T. Laine the only powerful witch, the working could be limited in scope and power.
I wasn’t wearing an earbud, but I understood. Because she