to help in the field and Warren headed over to grab the last body on the patio. He bent down to pick up Wulfe—and Wulfe wrapped both of his arms around Warren’s shoulders and gave him a hug and a big fat smooch on the cheek.
“Darling boy,” said Wulfe. “Where are we going?”
I hadn’t killed Wulfe—just made him more dead? Deader? Whatever. Wulfe was okay. I was tired enough to feel happy about that.
“If you don’t let go of me,” said Warren, still bent over Wulfe. He’d pulled his hands away, but Wulfe dangled from him anyway, held by the vampire’s grip on Warren’s shoulders. “I will break both of your arms.”
Wulfe let him go and dropped back onto the concrete with a thump. He stretched out both arms and legs and made snow angels. Or he would have made snow angels if there had been any snow.
Maybe he wasn’t okay.
“Wulfe?” I asked, sliding my chair around so I could see him without giving myself a crick in my neck.
He smiled, a wide, joyful expression—and oddly the fangs didn’t rob the smile of its charm. “I am at peace, Mercy,” he told me. He closed his eyes and quit moving his body. “Just like you told me. I will never be okay again.” He didn’t sound unhappy about it.
We watched him for a minute. But he just looked dead again. After a few seconds of that, Warren backed away warily and looked at me.
I shrugged and turned my chair back to its original position. Everyone took their cue from me and ignored the vampire as they gathered the dead.
The senator began to ask questions and I let Adam answer them, closing my eyes until someone put a hand on my knee. I could hear the murmur of Adam’s voice, so he wasn’t far away, presumably still conversing with the senator. But I was alone on the porch with Sherwood.
He sat on the ground next to my chair—one leg, his prosthetic, up and the other down. As soon as I looked at him, he let his hand fall away from me. My cutlass was on the ground next to him. It was dirty.
Sherwood saw my look and said, “The blade is fine. You just need to clean it.”
I’d stabbed a baby dragon with that blade. It had been the right thing to do and I’d do it again. But I didn’t know if I could wash that sin off the blade as easily as Sherwood thought I could.
“You got rid of me before you set out to rescue Adam,” he said after a minute.
I couldn’t tell what he felt about that.
“Of all the things the witches came here looking to do, retaking you would have been their top prize,” I told him.
“How do you know that?” he asked. Then he frowned. “And why did your brother’s phone call mean that you sent me away?”
“I know some things,” I told him. “Not who you were, or how the witches got you. But I learned a little of your story. Do you want me to tell you?”
He drew in a breath and looked away from me, but he nodded.
“I learned a little of this from Wulfe,” I told him. I looked over my shoulder, but Wulfe still looked dead.
Sherwood looked at the vampire and called upon pack magic to seal us in our own little soundproof space. I could feel that it was pack magic, but I’d never seen anyone pull that effect off with so little effort. I wasn’t surprised that Sherwood had managed.
“Okay, then,” I said. “A few centuries back there was a witch. She was, probably, like these two—older than she should be. Her name was Lieza and she was a very good black witch. She was a Love Talker.” I could see that Sherwood knew what that was by the way his shoulders tightened. “And she made zombies.” I waved my hand out to the night. “Some of those out there are hers—the old ones. The ones who look as though they are alive.”
He looked down at his knee.
“Do you want me to stop?”
He shook his head.
“She is somehow connected to the Hardesty witches,” I told him. “They revere her, anyway. Our zombie witch”—I tilted my head toward Elizaveta’s house, where Magda was waiting—“was hailed as the new Lieza because her powers mirrored the other witch’s. Lieza herself grew more daring as she became more powerful. She took a baby dragon and an ogre.” I kept my eyes on