Page 60 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

“Like this,” she said.

She pulled out a shallow wooden box and placed it on the slab. When she opened it, I saw a compact brass instrument that looked like a compass.

The face was etched with symbols instead of numbers. A needle rested at center, but it wasn’t metal. It looked like bone, thin and pale.

Faith leaned in. “That’s cheerful.”

Tegan glanced at her. “You want cheerful, go find a greeting card. I can use it to hone my power. Anything tied to death magic is harder for me to track.”

I had to bite down on a laugh. The tension didn’t leave the room, but it shifted.

Tegan picked up the instrument, then opened a second compartment in the box and removed a small, flat disk of slate. Its surface was scored with a spiral, the kind of mark you could miss until you looked twice.

“This is a ward tracker,” Tegan said. “It may help us infiltrate the masking wards.”

Nishi’s eyes narrowed. “If the ward thread was cut, how does it follow it?”

Tegan’s expression turned grim. “Because it doesn’t follow the cut. It follows the absence.”

My stomach turned, not from nausea this time, but from the uneasy respect that came with hearing someone describe magic like forensic science.

Tegan set the slate disk on the slab, then held the brass instrument above it. The bone needle twitched once, then stilled.

Tegan stepped closer. “We have to be careful. If the thief is clever enough, the tracker may lead you into a trap.”

Faith’s mouth tightened. “They already led corpses into downtown. I think we can expect resistance.”

Tegan didn’t argue. She placed two fingers against the instrument’s edge, murmured a phrase that felt older than the house itself, and the bone needle started to move.

It rotated slowly, then stopped, pointing toward the vault door.

Eve’s face shifted into something like relief. “It’s giving a direction.”

“It’s giving the easiest direction,” Tegan corrected. “That’s not always the true one.”

I swallowed. “You’re saying it might take us to a decoy.”

“I’m saying whoever has the resurrection relic from my vault is not a beginner,” Tegan said. “If they built a cloak, the tracker may wobble when we get close.”

Faith pushed off of the shelf. “Then we follow it until it wobbles.”

“That is not how tracking works,” Tegan said.

Faith’s eyes stayed flat. “It is when I’m involved.”

Nishi turned toward the vault door. “We move now. We have a limited window before the next outbreak.”

We left the vault, moved through Tegan’s cozy living room, and stepped out onto the porch. The night air was cold and damp, carrying the scent of wet cedar and the sweetness of the rosebushes lining her walkway. Even in winter, those rosebushes looked stubborn.

Tegan held the tracker close to her chest. The needle pointed east, then adjusted toward southeast, then steadied.

Nishi guided us to the SUV, and within seconds we were back on the road.

I watched the streets slide past, trying to match Tegan’s direction with the map in my head. Ravenholde at night usually felt like a town that wanted to keep its secrets. Tonight it felt like a town that had lost control of them.

Eve sat beside me, quiet, eyes fixed on the window. Faith rode up front with Nishi, posture tense. She kept glancing at the tracker as if she expected it to betray us.

Tegan leaned forward. “It’s moving.”