I didn’t realize Ava had stopped moving, and I took a few more steps into the room. My foot caught on something, and I went tumbling to the ground, but the hard smack of the floor I expected never came. Instead, my arms sank into a pile of… something I couldn’t place. I felt around to figure out what it was, and that’s when I felt a pair of fingers on mine. A body landed on top of me, and my heart leapt.
“Help!” I yelled to my friends. The Warden had found us. His guards were tackling me!
Hands landed on my ankle, and my friends dragged me backward. I broke free of the body that had dragged me down.
“Go to hell!” I screamed as I leapt to my feet. I lifted my hands to fight back, but Ava grabbed my wrists.
“Stop, Charlie,” she said gently. “They’re not alive.”
“They’re not—” I cut off when I realized what she’d said.
Ancestors, the smell. It wasn’t mushrooms. It wascorpses.Honest to god, rotting corpses. A whole pile of them. And I’d fallen right into them. All the nausea I thought had passed came slamming into my gut again. I doubled over and gagged as bile shot up my throat.
Victim’s screams continued to fill the room, but they were quieter now— like someone had turned down the volume on a radio. A shiver traveled down my spine.
I wiped my mouth. “What is this?”
Marcus’ footsteps sounded as he paced around the room. “It’s a residual haunting. Their cries are echoing through time. These voices are trapped because of the trauma that happened here.”
“So no one’s really here?” I asked.
“No living soul, at least,” Kallie stated. She stepped closer to the pile of bodies, and I heard something squish as she began moving corpses aside.
“What are you doing?” Ava asked her.
“I’m trying to determine the cause of death,” she replied.
Something smacked, like a corpse’s hand landing on another's face. I winced.
“Oh, gods,” Kallie gasped. “She died of bloodletting. And he was drowned. Where are her intestines—?”
“Kallie,” I snapped. She was going to make me hurl again. “Can you not?”
“Dear Goddess!” Marcus screamed. The terror in his tone made my blood turn to ice. He raced across the room. I didn’t realize how big the room was, until I heard him cross it. The pile of bodies had to be much bigger than I was imagining.
“What did you find?” Kallie asked.
“It’s… it’s Alice. Dear Goddess.” Marcus’ voice trembled. I heard bones clatter to the floor, like he’d been trying to lift her skeleton but it crumbled to pieces under his touch. “I’m so sorry, cousin.”
So that was it, then. We were too late. If Alice was dead, Wesley and Despona were, too. We’d condemned them to their deaths.
Ava took my hand and led me across the room. She spoke curiously. “How do you know?”
Marcus hesitated. “I can just… feel it. I think it’s my necromancy magic.”
Kallie gasped, like she had an idea. “Marcus, your coven has psychometry, right? You can see the past of objects if you touch them, correct?”
“Some witches do,” he admitted. “I’m not sure that I have it.”
Kallie signed. “Damn. I was hoping we could get some answers from her bones.”
Marcus sniffled, and I heard his sleeve rustle as he wiped his face. “I can’t do that… but I have another idea. Help me rearrange these bones.”
Bones clinked against the ground as Kallie and Marcus arranged the skeleton. When they finished, Marcus stepped back, but he stumbled over my foot. I caught him to keep him upright.
“Sorry,” Marcus mumbled. “Everyone, get into a circle around Alice’s bones. We’re going to use my magic to summon her spirit.”
“Is this safe?” Ava asked.
