Page 9 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

It was not.

When someone like Lucinda dismissed you, it usually meant she had already filed you into a box labeled “assault later.”

Alex’s gaze slid from Lucinda back to me, and his expression softened the tiniest bit. Not sympathy, exactly. More like recognition.

“All right,” he said, tone shifting into problem solving. “We can theorize later. We need facts now. What do we actually know?”

Hunter made a low sound, the verbal equivalent of cracking his knuckles. “We know the dead are moving.”

“Undead,” Carnell corrected lightly, as if word choice mattered more than the bodies roaming around town. “Dead implies they have the decency to stay down.”

Faith’s eyes narrowed at him. “Do you speak just to hear your own voice?”

Carnell’s smile did not move. “It is a lovely voice.”

Nishi’s fingers worried the ring on her right hand, the small repetitive motion at odds with how calm she looked. “Reports are coming in too quickly to be isolated. Multiple locations. No clear starting point yet.”

“Which suggests either more than one caster,” Eve said, “or one caster with reach.”

Caton’s facial twitch flicked. “Or we have an infection vector.”

The word infection made my stomach tighten. I had not seen enough to confirm bites or transmission. I had seen hunger. I had smelled rot. I had felt that wrong, hollow pull.

I lifted a hand slightly. “Before we go there, I did not see it bite anyone. I saw it lunge. That is not proof. It could be attacking without spreading anything.”

Hunter’s gaze cut to me. “You touched it.”

“I shoved it,” I corrected. “I am not making a habit of caressing corpses in the street.”

Faith’s mouth twitched at that. It might have been the beginning of a smile. It died quickly.

Eve’s eyes flicked to the board again. “If it is an infection, containment gets uglier.”

Alex exhaled slowly and rubbed the back of his neck. “We are not deciding worst-case until we have evidence. Focus on what could have caused this. Necromancy is the obvious answer, but the why matters.”

Caton’s attention snapped to him. “Why does the why matter if we can stop it.”

Alex gave him a look that made the torches feel dimmer. “Because if we stop the symptom and miss the cause, we will be doing this again tomorrow night, and the next.”

Carnell nodded in exaggerated agreement. “And I have plans tomorrow night.”

Faith muttered, “Do they involve mirrors?”

Carnell’s eyes gleamed. “Always.”

Nishi made a small sound, half sigh, half warning. “This is not helping.”

Lucinda’s gaze focused, annoyed that the room had slipped even a fraction toward humor. “What are our options?”

I hated the way she said our, as if I was suddenly part of the club. I hated it even more because it meant she wanted something from me.

Eve spoke first, voice clipped. “Ley lines.”

That landed hard. You could feel it in the way everyone’s posture changed. The council chambers were built where they were for a reason. Ravenholde had seats of power, intersections that made magic run hotter and cleaner. It was one of the reasons the town attracted creatures and covens like moths to a porch light.

Caton nodded once. “If someone tapped a line and warped it, they could feed enough power into a spell to raise multiple bodies.”

“But that would be loud,” I said, and everyone looked at me again. Great. “The magic would scream. The air would change. People like me would feel it.”