This was not how I was going out.
I forced myself an inch closer, darkness eating at the edges of my vision and the song reaching a crescendo.
I reached out, my skin and hand dissolving even as I inched closer and closer to Miriam. Almost. Almost. Just another few inches.
I touched the skin of her face right as her eyes popped open and the song stopped. Silence waited for an eternal minute and then darkness raced in on me. I saw no more.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MY HEAD FELT like an Army drill team was performing on it. I lifted it and winced as the matter between my ears throbbed in protest. I hadn’t felt this hung over since that one time in college when Caroline decided she wanted to conduct an experiment on which liquor could get us drunk fastest. Tequila won.
How much had I drunk last night? I was too old to party like I used to. My body didn’t recover the same.
I sat up, brushing away the paper plastered to my face. Even the crinkle of it as I set it aside hurt my ears.
I looked around. I was in a cemetery and not one I recognized. Tombstones surrounded me, so faded with time that the names were illegible.
Where was I?
This went beyond having a few too many drinks the previous night. I stood on shaky legs and glanced around. The cemetery was deserted this late at night, not a soul to be seen. I walked carefully over several graves, nearly tripping on the uneven ground, until I reached the gravel path.
My memories began to come back to me. Miriam, Angela, the spell. Something had gone wrong.
It was hard to think. My brain felt like it was encased in cotton.
I clutched at the map in my hand. It was a reassuring totem in a world gone topsy turvy. I didn’t even know it was possible to teleport people using magic. It violated pretty much every law of physics I’d ever learned in high school.
Unless the spell had simply knocked me unconscious, and Miriam and Angela had dumped me in the cemetery. Or this could be an illusion. Like the one that had covered Miriam’s back parking lot.
I thought the spell was supposed to summon the items to me. Not send me to the items. Maybe Angela wearing the locket made the spell go wonky.
I looked around again, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place slower than I’d like. I was in a cemetery. From the looks of it, an old cemetery. Possibly a cemetery circa the civil war time period.
Now, what monster did we know derived from that time period and rose from its own grave? Ding, ding, ding. A draugr.
One or both of the crazy bitches had sent me to the same cemetery containing the draugr’s grave. Fuck. If the night wasn’t already bad enough with my discovery that Angela was at least partially responsible for the murders, I’d also been delivered to the monster’s doorstep. This was just hunky dory.
I felt for my pocket. If there was ever time to call in back up, it was now. I had no desire to run into the draugr alone.
I dialed Liam, skulking from headstone to headstone as the phone rang.
Come on, pick up. Pick up. You blew my phone up all night, but you can’t pick up the one time I need you?
It went to voicemail. Shit. I dialed again.
I might be a vampire, but walking through a graveyard late at night by myself was still creepy. My skin crawled with the expectation that at any moment something was going to jump out at me.
It went to voicemail again. Liam’s terse voice barked at me to leave a message.
“You give me shit about checking in with you and then when I do, you don’t answer?” I hissed. “As soon as you get this, get to the civil war cemetery in Westgate. Oh, and I figured out that one of the people responsible for all the recent deaths is a witch named Angela. She’s on your recordings in the club meeting with a nerdy guy.”
The phone beeped, signaling my time was over. I hung up with a mental curse.
I thought a moment and then dialed another number. Brax had been interested in finding the culprits, and I’d certainly done that. Their possession of the items would just have to be proof enough.
The phone rang and rang before going to voicemail.
Again? This was ridiculous.
