One Grave at a Time

Ian came into the house right after Bones stormed out. Kramer must not have been the only one outside listening. He looked at me, raised a brow, then picked up one of the pages with my hastily scribbled words and read it.

"Since you and Crispin are now finished and I have a few hours to kill, how about that shag?" he asked with heavy irony.

"Bite me," I sighed, gathering up the pages.

He winked. "Of course. My second-favorite thing to do in bed."

I didn't reply to that because I knew Ian wasn't serious. He'd read enough to realize our breakup was staged, but trust Ian not to miss a chance to be a jackass. Spade came down the staircase next. His wary expression as he looked at me said he wasn't aware that what he'd overheard was faked. He'd witnessed a real breakup between me and Bones before and had to talk sense into both of us later, so he was probably thinking, Bugger, not this again.

I handed him the pages and gave him a thumbs-up sign. After a few brief moments, his frown cleared, replaced by lethal intentness as he looked up at me. Then he took the pen and wrote three words in the space left on the page.

I'm going, too.

I didn't say anything. After what Sarah had done to Denise, not a single argument I made, verbally or otherwise, would talk him out of that.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The cab driver stopped along the street, and I glanced in the distance at the white outdoor theater shaped like a huge half shell.

"Here we are," he said cheerfully.

I checked the meter and pulled the appropriate amount of money out of my pocket. "Thanks, and keep the change."

"All right. Happy Halloween."

That was what I was hoping for, too. I got out, watching his taillights fade away as he drove off. Then I tightened my leather jacket around me and leaned against the welcome sign, waiting.

Fifteen minutes later, when the sky had changed from indigo to obsidian and stars replaced the last dying rays of the sun, a sleek Mercedes E class sedan pulled up, the make and model car Spade had left for Denise. Sure enough, the tinted window rolled down to reveal Sarah at the wheel, her black hair pulled back into the same sort of severe bun Elisabeth normally wore. On Elisabeth, that style highlighted features that were lovely without the slightest hint of makeup. On Sarah, it only served to make her look harsher, drawing attention to thick eyebrows that could really use a good tweezing and a mouth that was compressed into a thin, tight line.

"If you kill me, you will never find the other women," were her first words when I opened the passenger door.

Her thoughts were that same blend of fear and hatred against a larger white noise backdrop that I now recognized as a mark of the insane. When we met, I'd thought Kramer had been the one to drive her nuts. Now I realized it was probably Sarah's unstableness that had drawn the Inquisitor to her in the first place.

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you now," I told her, sliding into the seat. "You'll die tonight, make no mistake, but you'd better hope it's by someone else's hand rather than from Kramer's."

Her topaz gaze flitted to mine before she quickly glanced away. "He told me you would lie to me, but I already knew that witches were incapable of telling the truth."

My snort was grim. "I don't know what warped you, Sarah. Maybe it was a shitty upbringing, maybe it was a guy you loved ditching you for another woman, but remember, 'For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you'? You're going to find out what that means, and wow, will you wish you hadn't."

"I won't listen to any more of your lies, unclean thing," she hissed. Then she drove about a hundred yards before pulling off and parking in a darker section off the shoulder. My brows lifted. Kramer couldn't be so dumb as to meet us here, could he?

"Is this the place, or did you forget where we're supposed to go?"

Sarah took the keys and got out, tapping them on the roof of the car in a nervous staccato rhythm. "Kramer says you will fly me to where he is."

Uh-oh. I didn't look around for the ghost I knew Bones had sent here, but that was my first instinct. If I flew, Elisabeth wouldn't be able to follow me, and that would mess up the rest of our plans.

Had Sarah seen me fly? No, Bones had snatched me off that street and flown both of us to War Eagle Park. Kramer shouldn't have seen me fly, either, because Bones had flown me when we picked up Francine, too. Maybe he was just sending Sarah on a fishing expedition.

"Not all vampires can fly. I'm too new to have that power yet," I told her, not moving from my seat.

Those keys banged harder on the roof. "You're lying again. Kramer told me he saw you fly near a cave in Ohio. You will fly me to him, witch, or he will know you betrayed him, and those other witches will pay your penalty."

My teeth ground together. That was right; I'd flown with Bones when we evacuated my mother, Tyler, and our pets from the cave in Ohio. We'd thought Kramer had left because the slaughter of Madigan's soldiers had stopped, but the sneaky little shit must've been hanging around watching us. And he obviously suspected me of having ghost allies tailing me tonight to insist that I fly to him instead of letting Sarah drive me. Maybe I was wrong, and he didn't think I was blinded by a vain desire to defeat him all by myself. That, or he was too careful to risk it.

Once I arrived, it would take several hours for Elisabeth and Fabian to locate me by concentrating on my fading power. Kramer had to know how long it took him to reach me that way, so he'd know he had a good chunk of time to work within. Goddamn ghost was covering all his bases.

I thought about how much my borrowed abilities had faded. Then I thought about all the valid dangers I'd listed if we didn't manage to defeat Kramer sooner rather than later. There had to be a way to take Kramer on without turning my back on Bones and the others.

Sarah banged again on the roof. "I'm not waiting any longer. If you don't do as he says, I'm leaving."

Oh, I wanted to take her high in the sky, all right. And then drop her so I could enjoy listening to her screams before she splatted on the ground. But if I kept Kramer waiting much longer, I was sure he'd put his new flesh to repulsive use. Frustration made me clench my fists. If only I had more of that borrowed power left in me, but no, I was stuck at the final "sparks but no fire" stage of my abilities.

Although . . . maybe my faded powers from Marie would still work if I gave them the proper accelerant.

"You're out of time," Sarah said coldly, leaning down to stare at me through the driver's side window.

I got out of the car and shrugged. "All right, I can fly." Then I flashed a toothy grin at her. "But I can't land that well, and that's the God's honest truth. So you'd better brace yourself on the way down, because it'll probably hurt."