Devils and the Dead

  Accidental Witches Series, Book 7

  Debra Dunbar

  Copyright © 2021 by Debra Dunbar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Also by Debra Dunbar

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Hades

  “Sir, I present to you my full report on the recent incident regarding the six missing souls.”

  Steve extended the spiral-bound document with great flair, as if he were gifting me his firstborn. The guy had even gone to the trouble of laminating a cover for his report. I took it, noting that his Photoshop skills had greatly improved, although he really needed to stop using Comic Sans.

  I wasn’t worried about the six souls—partly because they’d only been missing for less than an hour and partly because I knew why they’d vanished, what sort of event caused them to vanish, and that there was nothing anyone could do about it. I wasn’t in charge of souls, their punishment, or anything to do with the operations side of the business. I was in charge of the firmament, the physical structure of hell, the rivers, and the veil that separated us from everything else. If I had to give myself a title, it would probably be Facilities Director. No, that didn’t sound quite right. Facilities Engineer. Grand Designer in charge of Facilities. The Architect of the Afterlife.

  Something like that.

  Hell was supposed to be a one-way ticket kinda thing, but throughout the ages, some souls had managed to escape. Usually that was due to crappy wording on a crossroad demon’s contract, or a special bargain, or a little internal corruption.

  Sometimes it was due to necromancy. But no one really wanted to admit that. It was easier for the demons to point fingers at each other and send some poor scapegoat off to a pot of boiling oil for a century than admit a human could snatch a soul out from under our noses and we could do pretty much nothing about it.

  At times, the finger pointing turned my way. They’d claim there must be a crack in the firmament, a tear in the veil, a narrow spot in the river that allowed souls to leave hell. When that happened, I’d shrug and tell them to show me the weakness. No one wanted to spend eons going over every inch of hell for an escape route, so they’d immediately go back to blaming each other and leave me blissfully alone.

  Then Steve had come along. Fifty years ago Satan had decided I needed an assistant. One of his human worshipers had died, and personnel hadn’t been sure what to do with him. There weren’t any openings in the fifth or eighth circles. None of the executives wanted to bring him on as a member of their staff. We couldn’t toss him in with the rest of the sinners after a lifetime of exemplary work honoring the Dark Lord. So I got stuck with him.

  Clearly I was being punished for something.

  “If you’ll note here, sir.” Steve leaned over my desk to flip the report open. “The souls vanished from their stations at exactly the same time. They don’t reside in the same circles. They don’t have sins in common with each other. But, through some diligent research, I discovered that they are all related. The Hoffman family.”

  “I see.” Satan save me from overzealous underlings.

  “But!” He turned a few pages and jabbed a bony finger at the page. “Not all members of this Hoffman family left hell. Just this subset. How very curious, I thought to myself.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you did.” I glanced up at the clock, wondering if I was going to make my ten-thirty tee time.

  “I took the liberty of asking Purgatory if anything similar had happened to them. My source confirmed that two souls also vanished the exact same hour as ours, and that they too were related to the same Hoffman family.”

  “You what?” Steve was going to be the death of me. We shouldn’t be exchanging confidential information with anyone outside of hell—especially purgatory and heaven. Yes, it was interesting that purgatory had the same problem, but that information wasn’t worth revealing that six of hell’s souls had momentarily poofed out of their circles.

  Steve held up a hand. “My source is very discreet. They also told me it was rumored that several souls vanished from heaven at the exact same time—also from the Hoffman family.”

  I sat back in my chair, intrigued. Purgatory and heaven had the same missing-soul issue as hell. That would definitely help if the finger of blame was pointed my way again. The problem couldn’t be with our structure and facilities. Although this sort of thing indicated a flaw at the top of the food chain. A design flaw. And since neither Satan nor his father were disposed to accepting blame for anything, it would probably end up in my lap at the end of the day. I picked up the report, wondering if I needed to cancel my golf outing or if I could still manage to squeeze in a quick nine after lunch.

  Steve snatched the report out of my hands, turning it to the back page and pointing once more. “See? All of them were Hoffmans. Not all Hoffmans were taken. But every one of the souls who vanished was buried in this family cemetery on this farm. That’s the big link.” Steve plopped the report on my desk and stood back, his posture radiating smug satisfaction.

  Steve was definitely crossing some insubordination lines here. Normally such behavior would have warranted disciplinary action, but for once I agreed with Steve. This was big. Really big.

  A family cemetery. Over eight souls from all realms of the afterlife, all of whom were buried in one location. This wasn’t random or an escape assisted by a demon on the take. No, this was the work of magic.

  It was the work of a necromancer.

  I’d suspected as much, and it was gratifying to have those suspicions bolstered a bit, but at the end of the day, this really had nothing to do with me. These souls who’d temporarily left their afterlife hadn’t done so because of any design flaw in hell or purgatory. They hadn’t left because of a weakening in the veil, or a crumbling of the infrastructure. They’d been summoned by a necromancer.

  It wasn’t my problem. Which meant I was absolutely going to make my tee time this morning.

  Chapter 2

  Babylon

  I loved working nights. I loved watching the drunk humans stagger through the parking lot at closing time, embracing someone they’d probably be sneaking away from at dawn.

  Standing at the door I watched the couple in the parking lot. “Have fun! Make good choices. Use a condom,” I shouted to them.

  It had been a long time since I’d done that. Gone home with a hot guy, that is. I’d thought I’d found the man of my dreams and had put aside all those one-night-stands to focus on our relationship. But the man of my dreams turned out to be a nightmare, and although it had been six months since he’d ghosted me, I just couldn’t go back to the carefree, casual sex I’d once enjoyed.

  With a sigh, I finished locking the door, still watching Patty and her man-of-the-evening as they climbed into their Lyft ride. I needed time for my bruised heart to heal. And I knew deep down that for me, healing wouldn’t come by jumping into the sack with some random guy.

  Patty and her own random guy drove off. I turned to survey the mess I needed to clean up before I went home.

  “At least tips were good.” Kristin swept a dozen empty bottles into a trash can and began to scrub down the table top.

  We’d run our asses off tonight, understaffed and coping with an unexpected crowd. I didn’t mind the hard work if I rolled in the kind of dough I’d made tonight. Kristin and I would set the place to rights, and I’d be home by three, blackout curtains firmly in place so I could sleep in past noon. The schedule showed me working tomorrow night, then off for Sunday and Monday, and I was already dreaming of spending them without pants, sprawled in front of the television, eating whatever my chosen delivery brought to my door. Maybe I’d freshen up my hair color a bit. Turning my natural auburn hair into glossy locks of fire-engine red meant regular maintenance. Touch up the do, binge old sitcoms, and not see the light of day, or night, for forty-eight hours. That was the plan, and I was sticking to it.

  “Hey, there’s a guy at the door,” Kristin announced. “Should I let him in? He’s kinda beefy, and we already let Ricky go home for the night.”

  Ricky was our bouncer. I made my way back to the door, because while Kristin might hesitate to let in a guy that outweighed her by eighty pounds, I wouldn’t. Not that I was any use at all in a physical fight, but if beefy-dude tried anything, I’d sic the ten undead rats from the storer
oom on him. I don’t care how tough a man is, a swarm of decomposing rodents is gonna make him scream in soprano and run for the hills.

  Undead stuff was my jam. I was the youngest of the Perkins witches, and I’d been gifted with the freakiest magic. Necromancers were rare. Technically it wasn’t even a witch skill, but it was my skill and I’d never really bothered to question the why or the how of it. Ever since I’d been in the cradle, I’d been animating the dead. The bar where I worked had a bit of a pest problem, and the poison traps set out all over the storeroom meant there were lots of dead for me to animate. There was a guy who came in every few days supposedly to dispose of the bodies, but he never found any of them.

  I made sure he never found any of them.

  My little undead army. Normally I stuck to insects and animals, because animating humans took a real toll on me, but a few weeks ago I’d needed to raise a bunch of dead to defend my sister, my friends, and me against some nasty demons. There’d been too much going on to keep track of all the dead, so I’d crossed a line I didn’t usually cross. I’d zombified them.

  Animated dead are like puppets that I control. Zombies I can give instruction to and turn loose. They manage completely on their own. It’s easier for me, but it involves calling a portion of their soul back into the body. According to my sisters, it was a morally gray area, but according to them everything I did was a morally gray area. In the past, nothing horrible had ever happened when I’d created zombies, but I’d always tried to save that activity for emergencies only.

  Unlocking the heavy door, I swung it open to see that Kristin was right. There was a beefy dude on the other side. He was about six foot three and a solid wall of muscle clad in jeans and a flannel shirt. Curls of chest fur poked out of the open neck of his shirt. His hair was slicked back either from gel or the cold rain that had started to come down. Dark stubble was the only thing darkening his chin and jaw, meaning he’d probably shaved at least three times today. His hands twisted a ball cap between them.

  “Hi Babylon. Can I come in?”

  “Clinton!” I stood aside and let the werewolf into the bar, catching his damp, earthy scent as he passed me. “We’re closed for the night.”

  Not that the werewolf was probably here for a beer and the music. I lived outside the limits of Accident—the town where supernatural creatures felt free to openly live their lives, protected and guarded by the wards and magic of generations of Perkins witches. A few supes occasionally hung out in the human world, but not werewolves. They were like some incredibly paranoid cult, living mostly secluded lives in their packs and avoiding humans. There were some werewolves in Accident who’d never seen a human in their entire lives. There were some who’d not only never journeyed outside Accident, they’d never left their pack territory.

  Clinton was the Alpha of a splinter pack that had broken off from his father’s main one. The whole thing had nearly caused a war and a ton of bloodshed, but somehow all that had been avoided. The two packs now lived on different mountains, socializing and hunting on common lands during full moons and shifter holidays. So having Clinton show up in a human bar outside of Accident was a bit of a shock.

  “Is this a friend of yours?” Kristin sashayed up to us holding a broom. She liked muscle-bound guys, and she knew I didn’t. That made Clinton fair game in her book.

  Clinton’s eyes grew huge. The poor guy was terrified. Centuries of isolation after being once hunted down and targeted for extermination meant the werewolves weren’t just suspicious of humans, they were afraid of them. The big alpha looked as if he were about to bolt right back out the front door. I put a hand on his arm, trying to calm him down a bit.

  “This is my co-worker, Kristin. Kristin, this is Clinton. He’s gay.”

  Clinton wasn’t gay that I was aware of, but my labeling him as such had the desired effect. Kristin’s mouth turned into a pout and she headed back to her cleaning, muttering something about how it just figured.

  I waited a few seconds for the werewolf to turn his attention away from the potential threat and to me. “What’s up?”

  He went back to twisting his hat. “I’m hoping you can help my pack and me up on Savior Mountain.”

  “With construction?” With the assistance of everyone in Accident, Clinton’s pack had managed to get buildings up and under roof, wells dug, solar power online, and some basic roadways done before the weather had turned. There was still a lot of work for them to do, but I wasn’t the one to help them with that. Hammering nails and hanging drywall were at the bottom of my skills list.

  “No.” The hat tore in two, and Clinton looked down at the pieces as if he were baffled about how it had happened. “We’ve got a ghost problem.”

  “Ghosts?” Werewolves were very superstitious, but I’ve never heard any of them claim to have seen the spirits of the dead.

  “At night we see them down by the road, over by the river, and even in our own homes. Sometimes they knock things over. Flick claims one spoke. It said something about Christmas decorations being missing.”

  I shook my head. “I can speak with the dead and sometimes convince them to return to rest, but I’m not a skilled medium, Clinton. Ghosts aren’t really my thing.”

  “Dead is your thing, though.” Clinton put the torn pieces of hat on a nearby table. “You’re a necromancer. A witch and a necromancer. You make the dead rise up. Ghosts are dead.”

  “Yeah, but ghosts are spirits, not dead bodies.” I held my hands up. “My magic animates the dead. That doesn’t involve helping them find their lost Christmas decorations.”

  “But you return the dead to the grave when you’re done with them. Can’t you do the same to ghosts?”

  I opened my mouth to say no, then snapped it shut. In all honesty, I could. It just wasn’t something I did on the regular. I’d seen plenty of ghosts in my lifetime. It was what had given me the idea of trying to do more than just animate a corpse. Some spirits were clearly souls that had refused to move on, preferring to hang around here without a body, but those were rare. Most ghosts were just echoes of their former selves, performing a certain action over and over again, always at the same time and same place. Others could occasionally be communicated with and had the ability to somewhat vary their patterns.

  When I was a kid, I’d realized that if a soul could journey to the afterlife, but leave a spirit-sized portion behind to knock over pictures and vases, then I could use that spirit to power its own dead body. Then I’d gone from using existing ghosts to summoning them. It had been ridiculously easy to pull a portion of a soul from the afterlife, create a ghost, then use the ghost to animate the body.

  Of course, returning the ghost could prove to be a problem, as I’d discovered two weeks ago. That was what made me reluctant to promise Clinton help with his issue. If I failed to send my own self-summoned spirit across the veil, I might fail to do the same to ghosts I hadn’t brought into being myself. Banishing…well, it was hit or miss with me. And given my recent track record, I was probably more likely to miss than to hit.

  “I’m not promising anything, Clinton,” I warned him. “I’ll give it a shot, but I don’t know if I can help you.”

  His face split with a relieved grin. “That’s all I’m asking, Babylon.”

  “Am I gonna clean this place all by myself?” Kristin shouted over.

  I pushed Clinton into a chair, where he sat as I started wiping down tables. To the werewolf’s credit, he got right back up again, picked up a washrag of his own, and pitched in. It was weird how much Clinton had changed in the last year. He used to be that big redneck asshole who only came into town to get drunk, fight, and cause trouble, but ever since he’d become the alpha of his own pack, Clinton had developed manners along with a sense of responsibility.