“We got ’em!” Bria shooed the large, wire-tailed rat in front of her, grinning from ear to ear. “I told you these guys were good.”

My heart pounded and blood rhythmically thrushed in my ears. I hurried behind Bria across a well-appointed hall and through swinging doors with scrapes on the sides. The lavish furnishings fell away, replaced by off-white walls lined with metal racks. We darted to the right down a service hall, able to move faster now that well to-do people weren’t paying attention.

Bria took another turn, following her rat. Squeaking rose up from a crack I hadn’t noticed, and a different rat darted out.

I jumped to the side as it dashed between my feet and up to its friend. “Gross!”

“It’s just a ghost-powered furry creature, Alexis, honestly.” Bria slowed with the rats, reaching another swinging door, this one a little off-kilter and in need of repair. She stopped beside it and pushed the door a little, peeking out. “Looks like they’re heading for the side exit, closest to the East parking lot. Good. They aren’t checking in with Valens.”

“If they’ve been doing this for a while, there would be no reason to.” I pushed up against her to peer out, then flinched back when a furry body ran over my foot. “These things better not have diseases.”

“Nah. The diseases die with the rodent.” She stiffened. “Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. I should probably look into that. Sometimes they get ornery and bite.”

“You could’ve just called them back and let them stay as spirits. Then we could’ve actually spoken to them.”

“You could’ve spoken to them. I would’ve just stood around with my thumb up my butt, hoping you’d fill me in. Okay.” She pushed through the door. “Come on.”

My phone vibrated in my pocket, but Bria put on the jets just then, her legs churning as she weaved in and out of people meandering through the hall, so I couldn’t do much more than brush my hand against the fabric containing it. The smell of food and clank of dishes became more pronounced as we reached a large opening. A cafeteria. People idled outside, chatting or holding their snacks or lunches, no one glancing at us as we passed. Vending machines with drinks and sugary sweets hugged the wall opposite us, and a large area covered in circular tables spanned out on the other side.

Bria took a right, away from the cafeteria, as someone screamed behind us. Another person yelled. The third rat joined us, catching up with the other two leading the way.

My phone vibrated again, shaking against my thigh. Bria slowed, approaching another corner, before resuming an unassuming stroll. I followed her lead, immediately recognizing the men from earlier, side-by-side with their nice suits, as we turned. If they had any friends in the building, they clearly hadn’t stopped to talk.

“Okay. We’re just going to chat like girlfriends and follow their lead,” Bria murmured, smiling for show. A double door waited at the end of the corridor. “This entrance has a camera that covers the doorway, but nothing beyond that for about twenty feet. After that, a camera looks out at the first couple rows of cars, where the important people have their spaces reserved. Hopefully you’re right and these guys aren’t important. After that, no cameras.”

“We can’t very well hog-tie them in the middle of the parking lot,” I said, looking at the ground because I didn’t know where else to look.

“I have a roomy trunk. It’ll be great.”

The black-haired guy pushed the door open, the metal bar clinking as it compressed. Light sliced through the doorway. The red-haired guy waited for his friend to exit, turning to glance back at us as he did. His gaze slid by Bria, touched me, and then stuck.

“Damn you and that face,” Bria murmured before turning my way and chuckling a little. She raised her voice. “I actually hate roast duck. It’s super greasy.”

“I’ve never had it,” I said honestly, directing my gaze at the wall.

But why would I look at the wall? Surely that would seem odd.

I shifted my gaze to my feet as the light at the end of the corridor dimmed. The door thunked closed.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry.” Bria jogged to the end before stalling for a moment, glancing down at the rats waiting by her side. “Stall them, if you can,” she said to them. Then she looked up at me and said, “Another reason for bodies. Other people can see them.”

“Like the people in a cafeteria, yeah,” I muttered.

She pushed the door wide and let me go first before following, shielding her hand against the light. Well-tended bushes, budding with yellow flowers, lined the paved sidewalk leading up a gentle slope to the corner of the parking lot. The guys angled to the side, passing the first row of expensive vehicles.

“Keep going, you rat bastards,” she said, watching them. She wasn’t talking about the ghost-powered furry creatures. “Go to the back. Be less important than you look.”

I glanced back at the windows, climbing high and sparkling in the sun. Many of the blinds were open, anyone at all able to look down at us.

“This is a bad idea,” I murmured. “Too many potential witnesses.” The parking lot stretched out to the side and then wrapped around the building to the front. We’d parked on the way other side. That would be much too far to drag a couple of tied-up bodies, and hanging out between cars with them while waiting for the (probably stolen) SUV to be brought around was too risky.

“No.” I took out my phone and glanced at the screen. Two missed calls from Kieran, and a text. I ignored it for the moment, my mind working. “Let’s not do this here. Let’s follow them. We can get more info. They only spent half a day here, and we’ve already discovered a few of Valens’s spirit traps. Let’s hope they head to another of those. Or hell, a place to get a bite to eat. Anywhere but here.”

Bria huffed as the red-headed guy glanced back again, spying us for the second time—or the third, if he remembered us from upstairs. He slowed, narrowly missing the rat darting out from the car right behind him.

“You’re right,” she said, grabbing my arm and stopping me. She put up her hand to block the sun as she looked around in confusion. “This is the wrong spot,” she said loudly, turning in a circle.

Another rat practically ran over the feet of the black-haired man. He jumped back with a start, drawing the attention of the red-headed guy.

“Go, go,” Bria said, whipping me around and back toward the building. “Wait, shit.” She stiffened as she stared at the black keypad next to the door. “They’d catch me breaking in. Bugger.” She yanked me toward the wall and started walking. “Hurry up. Don’t look.”

I ripped my gaze away from the two guys dancing around, the rats running at their feet, but not before the guy with the black hair looked directly at us, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. I did a double-take as the rat at his feet slowed, then stopped, before convulsing. Another went into convulsions right behind it.

“Can a Necromancer rip the soul out of another Necromancer’s cadaver?” I asked, my voice tight.

“Sure, if they’re set up for it.”

“Like with incense and stuff?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“What if they don’t have that stuff?” I asked, desperately trying not to look back. I could see their shapes out of the corner of my eye. Whatever they suspected, they weren’t following us. Not yet.

“If it’s a human cadaver, and if they were class—”

“What if it’s a fucking rat, Bria? Would that guy know those rats aren’t really rats?”

Her head jerked left and I stupidly followed, my lips tight and my hand gripping her arm. I looked like anything but a carefree woman headed to lunch with her friend, and I knew it.

“Shit.” She swung her head back to face front. “That’s unfortunate.”

“Why? What?”

She picked up the pace. “Something like a rat is much easier, yes. But you have to be accustomed to a critter to know where to find its soul. Most people only focus on humans and large animals. The caverns for their souls are bigger, thus easier to find and work with. Very few know how to use rats and the like.”

“He knows about rats?”

“Yeah. It means he’s savvy. Like me. Let’s hope he’s also not unpredictable like me.”

I grimaced as we reached the corner of the building and cut through the landscaping back to the parking lot. The guys stood at a cross-over type SUV, the vehicle not matching their suits.

“They dress up for their job,” I murmured, cutting right down the center of the row of cars. “Or maybe they just dress up to come here.”

“Hurry. Jog.”

My worn-in dress flats held me back, but my long legs gave me an edge. I kept up with her easily, rushing around the large building and to our SUV way in the corner, which still had not been found by the cops. She quickly sat into the driver’s seat and used the push-start ignition. That should’ve meant she had a key, but I still didn’t ask about the nature of the situation.

“Let’s hope those bastards aren’t already— Got ’em.” She pulled out of the space as the blue crossover pulled out of the parking lot.

She wasn’t far behind, rolling through the lot way too fast and skidding her tires against the street.

“Don’t worry, Lexi. I’ve tailed a couple bad guys in my day.”

She did everything like I’d seen in the movies: stayed a few cars back, didn’t change lanes hastily, and didn’t follow their movements exactly. If they knew we were tailing them, they didn’t show it.

I yanked the phone out of my pocket, reading Kieran’s text. Where are you?

I debated not answering as I caught sight of the crossover turning three cars up. But soon he’d know what I was doing, anyway. Bria wasn’t about to let this go. We’d catch these guys, and we’d subdue them until Kieran showed up. He’d eventually figure out I’d lied about dropping the case.

What could he do to me?

Scenes of torture rolled through my head.

What would he do to me, I amended.

The memory of his hands on my body and his lips between my legs boiled my blood.

I took a deep breath and unlocked my screen. I could handle that.

“I’ll be damned,” Bria whispered before I could type the first word.

The cars thinned out until it was just them and us driving down a lonely road, headed to a neighborhood forgotten by everyone except the ghost hunters and thrill seekers. We were headed to the ghost neighborhood and John.

“They use the air to carry the spirit magic,” Bria said, turning off the road. “Air can drape over things. Somehow, it can hold the spirit magic in place.”

“And a combination of them must be able to slice through the air, because it’s cutting into the spirits in that house.”

“Yes. It’s genius, when you think about it. I’ve never heard of pairing an Air Elemental up with spirit magic. Someone was thinking outside the box. It’s almost like they found a way to duplicate your magic.”

“It’s more effective than my magic,” I said as the SUV crawled toward the neighborhood, entering it from the opposite direction this time. The two guys were likely to take the more direct route.

She pulled in and parked, out of sight from the main house with the trapped spirits at the other end of the street. “No, it’s not,” she said. “Which you’d know if you knew anything.”

“Totally,” I said dryly, climbing from the car. I absently rubbed at my chest. The ache had returned, and it momentarily pulled my focus.

The brittle weeds crunched as Bria trekked across the forgotten yard of an empty house. She flattened against the buzzing wood.

“I can’t feel any souls. Can you?” she asked as she peered around the side of the house.

I shook my head, my phone still clutched in my hand. “No.”

“Their car is parked at the other end, right outside the house of horrors.”

“Can you see them?”

She ducked and slipped around the side of the house, scooting along behind the pillars of the porch before jogging across the front of the yard and ducking behind the next house over. I followed her lead, now able to see for myself.

From this distance, I couldn’t tell if anyone was in the car, but no one lingered outside. The door to the haunted house looked like it was open, but I couldn’t be sure.

“They wouldn’t need to go inside, would they?” I asked quietly.

“They went inside of the government building, so I don’t know. Let’s get as close as we can and see how they do it. We’ll grab them on the way out.”

My adrenaline started pumping again as I followed her from house to house. Each dash left us completely visible, but no movement caught my eye from the house at the end. Three-quarters of the way down we slowed. I could clearly see the door of the last house now, wide open. John, the man I’d spoken to before, waited in the doorway, looking out at the car parked in front.

“Wait,” I said, grabbing Bria’s arm. “Something isn’t right.”

John seemed like a guy who needed to be in the action. For him to be staring out at the car meant there was no one inside with him.

I squinted at the car’s windows. Sun shimmered, the light waxy against the pane of glass. Still nothing moved within, and I couldn’t make out any shapes.

My phone vibrated in my hand as a presence niggled at my awareness. Subtle but building, the soft strength of a soul moved somewhere on the other side of the street, one house down. A moment later, another joined it.

“They’re there,” I whispered, pointing.

Bria’s brow furrowed and she shook her head. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Trust me. They’re there. They must know we’re here—” I cut off at the creakkkk of the wooden gate in the fence of the house where I’d sensed the souls. It drifted open and two stiff shapes stepped out, their movements jerky.

I sucked in a breath, my eyes widening at what I was seeing.

The first was a lanky man with stained and hole-ridden clothes. A flap of scalp hung down the side of his head and only one patch of hair adorned the otherwise bare head. His stringy arms hung limp at his sides with one of his fingers missing, and his knees knocked whenever he moved, their ligaments or whatever held them straight clearly lacking.

The woman behind was just as messed up, with half her jaw depressed, an eye missing, and tattered and ripped clothes hanging from her skeletal body. If they were alive, they were on their death bed.

“Clearly they don’t like being followed,” Bria said, unslinging her backpack. “They’re raising an army of the dead to take us out.”