Page 59 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

No sense of command. No leash. No hand steering the dead.

Tegan’s mother exhaled slowly. “They’re saying the relic calls the dead.”

Tegan’s voice was tight. “And it controls them.”

Her mother shook her head once. “No.”

The whisper shifted again, and the message settled like a cold stone in my stomach.

Calls. Doesn’t command.

Tegan’s mother spoke it clearly, as if stating it plainly would make it less horrifying. “It doesn’t control them.”

Eve’s mouth tightened. “So something else is controlling them.”

Faith’s jaw set. “Someone else.”

I couldn’t stop the thought that rose, bitter and persistent. “Or the relic is just the dinner bell and someone is holding the leash.”

Tegan’s mother’s gaze flicked to me, not hostile, just assessing. “That is possible.”

The air eased slightly, the presence withdrawing like a tide pulling back from the shore. The vault felt warmer again, though only by a fraction. Enough that I could breathe without feeling like my lungs were coated in frost.

Tegan stared at her mother for a moment, then looked at us. Her eyes were steady, but her voice wavered just a little.

“We have to find it,” she said.

Eve nodded, expression grim. “Yes.”

Nishi’s voice was clipped. “It was housed here, so you should be able to track it.”

Faith crossed her arms, gaze hard. “We find the relic before it calls up every corpse in town.”

“Because once the dead are awake, putting them down is never the hard part,” I said.

Her eyes lifted, meeting mine.

“The hard part is stopping whoever thinks they can use them.”

CHAPTER 8

The vault settled after Tegan’s mother withdrew, like the room had been holding its breath and finally let it out.

The air warmed by a fraction. The candleless-dim eased. The shelves stopped feeling like they were leaning in to listen. Tegan’s mother gathered the ritual items with steady hands, her movements quiet and practiced.

Tegan stayed near the stone slab, staring at the Chronicle of the Guardians like the words might rearrange themselves into something more useful if she looked long enough.

“The relic calls the dead,” she said again, voice low, like repeating it might make it easier to swallow. “It doesn’t control them.”

Eve’s gaze drifted toward the vault door, then back. “Which means we still have two problems.”

Faith leaned against a shelf, arms crossed, posture rigid. “The caller and the leash.”

Nishi nodded once. “We find the caller first. That gives us leverage.”

“And how,” I asked, “do we track something that’s been missing for so long?”

Tegan exhaled through her nose, then moved to the back corner of the vault where a narrow cabinet sat behind a warded mesh screen. She pressed her palm to the latch, whispered something under her breath, and the mesh shimmered before dissolving.