anyway,” I reminded him.
Uma nodded. “Yeah, but traditionally, witches don’t fight with them. That would bring in the gargoyles.”
“And Jadis doesn’t want that,” I muttered. Heaven forbid Jadis does anything to help our side.
Brody nodded and turned to Miles. “Let’s start training right away.”
Brody and Miles started towards the guys with the staff, with me moving to follow them only for Uma to stop me. “We have our own training to do.”
My heart sank. Great. I started back out of the room and up the stairs, barely resisting the urge to stomp my feet like a toddler. Fucking training.
Chapter 3
Spring Mountain Cemetery was the same as any other cemetery I’d ever seen. The only real differences between here and a city park were the rows of tombstones and stillness of the area.
Uma led me to the far back corner of the cemetery where the stones and mausoleums were overgrown from neglect. Weeds had overrun the graves years ago, while blackberry bushes crowded between the tombstones.
“Here,” Uma said as she set the electric lamp down on a tombstone.
“Why are we in the oldest part of the cemetery?” I asked as I knelt in the dead grass and dried leaves at the foot of the grave.
“No visitors. Their family is all dead by now,” she said as she moved down by me. “These are the kinds of things you need to be thinking about as a necromancer.”
I sighed. She was right, which reminded me. “I read something new in that book last night.”
“Oh?” She continued to clear the grave of leaves and dead twigs. It was something I’d noticed since we began doing this. She always cleaned the graves of those we raised. Was it like when I sketched the souls that came to me over the years? All those names and faces eventually became a blur. Was this her way of thanking the person for the use of their body?
“I found instructions on how to look through a zombie’s eyes. How to speak through one.”
She turned to me, curiosity sparkling in her chocolate eyes. “Really? Perhaps it’s time I take a look at these books.”
I nodded. “It seemed pretty easy, just … putting more of me in there. My consciousness, really.”
Her brow furrowed as she sat. While she thought it over, I continued cleaning the grave. By the time I was done clearing it, I did feel better about what I was about to do to this person’s body.
No. Not a person. They were gone. It’s just their shell.
“Let’s give it a try. You never know, it might be true.” Uma sat in the grass beside me. “Let’s begin.”
True or not, it was a creepy idea.
I settled into a comfortable position and looked at the grass in front of me. I took several deep breaths, letting them out slowly as I focused on slowing my heart rate and clearing my mind before I dropped my barriers.
My energy spilled from me as if leaving a container that was too small, soaking into the dead grass around me. I focused on the ground in front of me. Normally, I’d hold back a little. Hesitate. But not this time. I followed the tendril of energy going down into the earth, feeling the brush of white roots under the grass. The worms in the dirt. Then the hard surface of the coffin. That was another reason to always go to this part of the cemetery. No cement vaults. My energy found an opening in the wood. I crept through the crevice, hitting the surface of the body. Hard, dry, cracked.
Bones grated together as it started to move.
“More will, Lexie,” Uma reminded me.
“Rise,” I ordered. The sensation of wood ghosted under my fingertips as the casket gave way under my searching hands, cold dirt slipping through my fingers as I climbed.
A skeletal hand burst through the grass and clawed at the air. The zombie slowly pulled free of its grave. First the head, then the shoulders, then the ribs. Eventually, a full skeleton on all fours in the grass.
“Now, try to see through it,” Uma instructed.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, a tendril of consciousness moving through the grass. The grass became my skin. The bugs crawling through it made me shiver as that coil of energy finally reached the bony hand. My energy saturated the bones. They absorbed me like a sponge, hungry and empty.
My bones ached as if the skeleton’s body were mine. The more energy that seeped from me