I unfastened the blade catch and drew the machete out. It was as long as my forearm, dull silver gleaming in the light of the moon. The moment it was bare there was a pulse of power from it, as if it had its own heartbeat. It didn’t keep beating, though, just that one pulse. It had never done that when it was loose in my bag. Something about sheathing it and unsheathing it made it happen. I’d talked to my spiritual mentor, Marianne, who among other things was a practicing witch, as well as Wiccan. You can be a witch and not be Wiccan, but you can’t be Wiccan and not be a witch, sort of like all poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles, or something like that. Marianne wasn’t sure why the machete was reacting to being sheathed. She’d asked me to bring it with me next time I visited her in Tennessee, so she could look at it in person.

I found that thick pulse again with my free hand. I didn’t need to test the point or edge of the machete; I sharpened it myself and knew it was razor ready. I picked up the bowl and balanced it in the flat of my hand, holding it where the blood would pour into it. I said a brief prayer, thanking the animal for giving food all its life and for this moment, for being a sacrifice and helping us raise the long dead. With the prayer came a sense of calmness for me, and I drew back the machete, eyed the point that was my target on the thick neck, and plunged the blade in fast, hard, and deep. Hesitation was disastrous for the sacrifice’s sake. The magic didn’t care how the animal died; slow death raised the dead just as easily as quick.

I drew the blade up and out, so the cut was wide. Blood poured out of the wound, splashing and dripping into and around the bowl, and over my hand and arm. It was very warm, hot even, because a cow’s temperature is hotter than a human’s. It makes most fresh animal blood hot to the touch at least for those few seconds before it hits the air and begins to cool, but there was so much blood that it just stayed hot.

The cow went down without a sound, its knees buckling. The front of it sank to the ground first. Dino kept the halter rope tight and Nicky continued to shield its eye, so it wouldn’t see the blood. Dino was a huge shape on the other side of the animal, waiting to see if he was needed for more. I knelt with the wound, catching as much blood as I could in the bowl. We didn’t need this much to draw the circle, but blood is always precious and if you take something’s life you should treat the blood with respect. The cow’s back end just seemed to collapse all at once, and I had to move backward on the balls of my feet as the big animal slid to one side toward me. Blood splashed over the edge of the already bloody bowl, soaking the front of my coveralls. That was why I wore them.

I got to my feet, bloody machete in one hand and the blood-drenched bowl in the other. The front of me was black with blood, and there had been enough of it that it felt like it was trying to seep through the coveralls and onto my clothes. I hoped it didn’t soak through, but there was nothing I could do about it until the ceremony was complete.

“Well done,” Dino said.

“I do my best,” I said, but my voice was already growing distant. I was only half paying attention, because I was about to lower my metaphysical shields so I could raise the dead, and I wanted to do it. My necromancy was like a horse that had been in its stall too long. It needed to run. It needed to use all that muscle and sinew and run! I was one of only three animators in the country who could have raised something this old without a human sacrifice, which was illegal in almost every country in the world. It was a seller’s market and I was the seller.

13

NOW THAT THE cow was safely dead and not going to trample anyone, I had Dino get MacDougal and stand him behind the tombstone, so he’d be in the circle but out of the way while we cast it. The tombstone wasn’t much to look at, just a weathered white chunk of marble, softened by the centuries until it looked like a piece of candy spit out of a giant’s mouth with the lettering worn away. I’d seen all the paperwork assuring me this was the right grave, but if I’d had to rely on the stone for name and information I’d have been out of luck; all the readable info had been sucked away by time and weather. Normally I just take the much smaller bowl of blood, or even the whole beheaded chicken, and walk the circle by myself, but I was going to need help to carry this big a bowl. I could have brought the much smaller bowl that I used when I killed a goat, and that would have been plenty to sprinkle for casting the circle, but it had seemed wrong to waste that much of the cow’s lifeblood on the ground. If I needed a bigger death to raise the older dead, then wasn’t part of that using more blood? I wasn’t sure of the metaphysical logic, but I was stuck with the huge bowl now and I couldn’t carry it in one hand with the machete in the other, so I had needed a lovely assistant, or in this case a handsome assistant.

We’d lost another two history lovers, apparently overcome by the sight of more blood than they’d ever seen before, or maybe it was seeing something slaughtered in front of them. People will eat meat, like Mrs. Willis said, but that’s nice, safe meat in plastic wrap at the grocery store, or behind the butcher’s window. It’s not real, not a dead thing, just meat, just food. One of them had run off into the gravestones and was throwing up rather noisily. At least they’d moved far enough away and downwind so the rest of us couldn’t smell it. I really appreciated that. The rest of the huddled group had exclaimed everything from “Cool” to “Oh, my God,” but they didn’t argue when I had Dino and Nathaniel move them back to the gravel road. I didn’t want anyone drawn into the circle by accident. I’d given the orders distractedly, already staring down at the grave. My necromancy pushed at the boundaries I’d set around it like it wanted to expand to fill all available space. Usually it was like opening a tightly closed fist, a relief to let go, but it didn’t push at me like this. I hadn’t been raising as many zombies as in years past, because Bert, our business manager, could get more money for my time than anyone else at the firm, which meant I didn’t always raise the dead every night. I spent a lot of time doing police work now, so that worked out, but it meant that my necromancy wasn’t getting as much use as normal. Like Manny and I had discussed, if you don’t use it on purpose it finds other ways to leak out. Raising the dead wasn’t a choice for me. The only choice was how and when I’d do it.