Page 51 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Eve stood beside me, eyes scanning the building. She looked calm on the surface, but her hellfire always changed the air around her. Even banked, it made the night feel thinner.

Tegan shoved a loose strand of hair behind her ear and kept her relic in her palm like a worry stone. “I hope nobody is here.”

“I’m not leaving anyone behind,” Nishi said, voice flat.

I adjusted my grip on the cold metal disk tucked in my coat pocket. It felt heavier than it should, like it was trying to pull my arm down by sheer attitude.

“Let’s keep it quick,” I said. “I’m not in the mood to die in a place that sells pine packages.”

Faith shot me a look. “You can’t be sarcastic and scared at the same time.”

“Sure I can,” I said. “Watch me.”

We moved fast.

The front doors were locked, but that didn’t stop a supernatural team. Nishi didn’t kick them in. She didn’t need to. She simply tested the handle, listened, then nodded toward the side.

“Service entrance,” she said.

The side door was cracked, hanging slightly open like someone had fled in a hurry and forgot about basic security. Inside, the hallway lights flickered, and the air carried that sterile chemical bite that made my eyes water.

We stepped in.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

I could hear our breaths, our boots, the hum of a fridge somewhere deeper in the building. A funeral home had its own kind of hush. It was designed to make you whisper without being told.

A scream erupted from the back.

Faith sprinted first. She moved down the hallway like she’d been personally insulted.

We rounded a corner into a viewing room, and I almost stopped short.

There were brochures arranged neatly on a table. Tissues in a silver holder. A vase of fake lilies. Two couches in a soft gray fabric, staged like a photo in a catalog.

Then I saw the corpse.

It had toppled a chair and was crawling toward a woman who’d backed into the wall, hands up, shaking hard enough her teeth chattered.

The undead looked less like the downtown sprinters and more like the original wave. Stiff, jerky, driven. Still horrifying, but not moving like it was training for a marathon.

“Back,” Faith barked at the woman.

The woman didn’t move. She stared at us like we were hallucinations.

Eve stepped forward, palm lifting, hellfire blooming just enough to light her fingers.

The corpse hissed, then tried to push up.

I reached without thinking.

Necromancy slid cold through my veins, familiar and unpleasant. I grabbed for the dead thread in its spine and pulled.

The corpse froze.

For one glorious second, it held still like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Then the resistance hit.