“Maybe we should just go.” Suzy tugged on my arm. “I don’t want to go in there. I feel funny.”

I swung a look at her. “This was your idea, but I gotta say I doubt you had this in mind.”

“I brought us down here? No, I wouldn’t have. It’s scary,” she whispered.

That did not sound like Suzy at all.

What in the hell had old Pink Eye done to her? Because without a doubt he’d put a spell on her.

Damn it, like I needed one more thing to fix.

11

I made myself go back into the tunnel that had once served as a prison for the enslaved. It felt even more ominous this time, but I had to know if Sean O’Sean was still in there. That, and I had to gather up what was left of poor Robert.

With a flashlight in hand (I never left home without at least one in my handy cross-body bag), I ventured inside. Robert was first. There were no rags or scattered bones to be found, just the single finger digit bone he’d given me before. I’d take that as a good sign. I scooped it up and slid it into my bag. “Hope you are okay, friend,” I said quietly. Not that I was afraid or anything.

Who was I kidding? I was freaking terrified. I had to stop twice to clamp my legs together to keep from peeing myself, and even then I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t because I was already dripping so much water, what was one more trickle?

What if Sean O’Sean wasn’t dead?

What if he was?

Flashlight in one hand, knife in the other, I made it to the green felted table before something touched me on the back. I screeched and leapt forward as Suzy screamed behind me. We did a weird dance that had the flashlight bobbing and my hand trying to fight the impulse to throw the knife at her. My reflexes were decent, but spotty. Kind of like Wi-Fi out in the country. Sometimes the signal was strong, but more often than not it was a spinning ball of death while I waited for something to jog my training memories.

“Jaysus!” I yelled. “What the hell are you trying to do? Stop my heart?”

“Sorry, I just didn’t want you to go in by yourself.” She was shaking hard in the light, but she was there. See, that was more like the Suzy I knew. Bold. Well, sort of bold right then.

I took a quarter turn so my light flashed over the table again. The moon card was still there, flipped up. I tucked it into my bag. I didn’t know why I needed to have it, but I did. One of those gut feelings. “Stay close,” I said.

Suzy took me at my word and all but hugged me as we crept further into the tunnel. The water was coming in now and each step we took splashed. The first body we found was not Sean O’Sean.

“That’s Dracus,” Suzy whispered. We stared down at the old man with no hair, a big gut, and his tongue sticking out of his mouth in a forever raspberry. There was no rope around his neck, but there were plenty of spells that could have strangled him. I made myself bend and touch his neck, just in case.

“Still warm, but no heartbeat,” I whispered. He’d barely been dead when we’d walked in the tunnel. Nothing we could do now.

I stood and shuffled in a little further, sweeping the flashlight back and forth.

“What is that?” she whispered as we neared the back of the tunnel. There were no candles back here, but there was a large dark shape on the ground.

Face down.

In a puddle.

“I think you killed him,” Suzy whispered. “Did you kill him?”

I made myself walk forward and bent to touch his neck too. The problem was his neck was crumpled at a weird angle. No need to touch that. “His neck is broken. I think he hit the wall when the explosion sent us flying apart.”

“What do we do?” she whispered.

The water sloshed in around our ankles now, and we’d be in trouble ourselves if we stayed that deep in the tunnel. “We leave them both. The tide will pull them out.”

“We’ll get caught,” she whispered.

“We didn’t touch Dracus, and O’Sean’s own magic threw his ass back here. Let the river of the dead have them,” I said.

My words added a weighted chill to the air and the river sloshed in harder.

I backed up, grabbed Suzy’s hand, and hauled ass as if I hadn’t been shot earlier that day. We ran all the way back to her car, where I took the keys from her shaking hands, put them in the ignition, and peeled the tires to get out of there.

I’d just killed someone. A bad someone, but still someone. Sure, I hadn’t really killed him. I mean, it was his own magic that had sent him flying. But still.

Second person in one week. This could not be good.

“Oh my God, you killed him! What are we going to do?” Suzy repeated her question.

“What do you mean what are we going to do? You didn’t do anything. He spelled you,” I said as I turned the wheel hard at the top of the incline in order to get us further away from the riverfront.

“He . . . are you sure he spelled me?”

“You don’t feel different? Because you seem different. Like, before we went in there you were all full of confidence despite having just lost a job, but he put some kind of spell on you and now you’re terrified with like zero confidence,” I said, checking mirrors as I drove. Mostly to see if anyone was following us.

I had us back to Perry Street and Corb’s loft in no time. There were no lights on inside, and I doubted that he was back yet. “You can stay here with me tonight. You aren’t yourself. Maybe it’s a good thing we both got canned.” Because I wasn’t sure how we could have kept this from the mentors. This was . . . this was bad.

Then again, there was a good chance Douche Canoe could track all of the mentors and trainees, and that he could also control them like Pink Eye had messed with Suzy. I should at least warn the mentors that I had an inkling of what the spell would do. I’d tell Corb, I decided, and he could do with the knowledge what was best for him and the others.

I parked the car and she let herself out, but she was not steady on her feet by any means. “Wait,” I said, thinking of Robert. “I just have to do something quick.”

I hurried across the street and over to the wrought iron fence that wrapped around Centennial Park Cemetery. A quick dig in my bag produced Robert’s finger bone, and I put it through the fence so that he was in the cemetery. That felt right, like he would be able to recharge. “There you go. Hope that helps.”

Backing away, I didn’t bother to answer Suzy’s pointed questions. “What was that about? What did you put in there? I thought I saw a skeleton, is that right?”

Interesting. I hadn’t thought she’d seen him. “You had your eyes closed,” I said as I let us into Corb’s loft, “so you tell me how you saw a skeleton.”

She walked next to me as we climbed the long flight of stairs to the main floor of the loft. “I don’t know, I just did. It was when you were shoving me out of the cave, like seeing a ghost. He was there and then not.”

“He’s a friend. And he got hurt, so I had to put him back there for now,” I said, not wanting to say much more than that. Not that I had much more to say. As far as I could tell, there was no real pattern to who could or couldn’t see Robert. Louis, the Hollows’s resident necromancer, couldn’t see him, but Sarge could. But maybe that’s because Robert had bitten off Sarge’s ear?

I shook off the questions and headed straight for the liquor cupboard that Corb thought he was hiding because it was above my eye level. Time for some Jameson.

I snorted and pulled down a bottle of whiskey before turning to Suzy. “Pick your poison.”

She startled and then eased onto one of the barstools at the kitchen island. “Rum and Coke.”

I made her a drink with a double shot of rum, and an extra splash for good measure, and poured the same amount of whiskey for myself—straight up. I snapped mine back and the burn raced all the way to my belly, chasing away a coldness that I hadn’t even realized was still there. Of course, I was dripping water all over Corb’s original hardwood floors, which could explain the cold. I sighed and stripped right there in the kitchen, shoving my leather pants and loose tank top into the sink. Suzy arched a brow at me.

“You aren’t my type.”

“Not giving you a show,” I said and blew out a breath. “Corb will not be happy if I wreck his floors.”

She tapped her glass and I obliged, then did the same again for myself. I like my whiskey, but mostly I was prepping myself for the phone call I knew I was going to have to make.

“I need to tell Eammon what happened,” I said. And maybe I could talk to him about being canned by that idiot Sarge.

“Gods, no!” Suzy spluttered rum and Coke across the counter and all over my bare skin. I looked down at the brown flecks, grabbed a dishrag and wiped them off.

“Okay, why wouldn’t we tell him? There may be five people who lead the Hollows, but he’s in charge in charge. And he needs to know what happened with Sarge too. And that the spell the O’Seans put on everyone is doing weird things to you. Making you less confident. Making you susceptible to them. Maybe it’ll wear off, maybe it won’t. We just don’t know.” Over the last few days, Eammon had taken the lead in cleaning up the mess that was Hattie’s blood ceremony gone awry. I’d seen just how competent he was at managing not only the Hollows, but the shadow world at large.

“Because it’s a bad idea. I don’t want anyone to know.” She frowned and rubbed at her head. “I don’t feel so well.”

I poured her another rum and Coke. “Drink up, then shower, then bed.”

She did as she was told, which in and of itself was strange. Suzy had a stronger personality than this. I’d seen it that first day we were brought into the Hollows. Not to mention every training day since. I was almost positive the spell was making her this way. But no one else had seemed more fearful than usual. I mean, look at Sarge losing his marbles.

Huh. That thought tried to take root, but it was extinguished by the drink in my hand.