“There are a few bolt holes, but you don’t need to go to any of those. You’re welcome here as long as you want, Katia.”

  “It won’t get you in any trouble with your bosses?”

  Simon puzzled on that. “My house, my rules. I do have a clause in my contract about indecent behavior, but having a fellow demon trapper stay here doesn’t count, at least as I see it.”

  “A female trapper would be okay? I don’t want you to get in trouble with those guys.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “And if it were a problem, my parents would happily take you in. They have a few extra bedrooms nowadays.” He paused, then asked, “Would you like to tell me how you got the cut on your forehead, or am I supposed to act like it’s not there?”

  Katia almost laughed, but he was being so serious she didn’t dare. Simon would find out eventually because someone would tell him, or he’d see a news report.

  “I was grave sitting the last two nights,” she began, and then the whole story poured out before she could stop herself. The further she got into it, the more his eyes widened.

  “The necro blew apart a Holy Water circle with Riley inside?” he said. “That’s . . . unreal.”

  “Yeah, it was. Major magic got slung around last night. Seriously bad stuff. Knocked both of us on our asses.”

  “So that’s why . . . ” he murmured.

  “What?”

  Simon shook his head. “What are the summoners doing about this?”

  “I’m not sure. I got home late and crashed. I haven’t heard from Riley yet. I’m guessing the necros are pitching a fit because it’s looking bad for them. One thing for sure, Alex does not have that kind of power.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Simon leaned forward in the recliner, rubbing his face.

  “Look, I don’t want you to get involved in this,” she said. “You’re on vacation. You know how it is; this weirdness will just take over. It’s not part of your job description.”

  He looked over at her, puzzled. “You don’t want my help?”

  Oh God yes, she did, but not when he needed to rest. Needed to get his head in the right place.

  “You were exhausted when you left town. You were running at about half speed of what’s your norm. It was getting harder and harder for you to do the exorcisms, and the demons could tell. So no, it’s best you do not get involved in this mess no matter how much I’d love the help. Riley, the grand masters, the summoners, they’ll work this out.”

  He blinked, then leaned back in the recliner. “You’re right. I’ll stay out of the way unless you ask me to help, or something goes really wrong. Then I’m in one way or another. I won’t let you get hurt just so I can have some R&R.”

  The steel in his voice said this was his line in the sand.

  “Okay, we got a deal.” Time to switch topics. “Have you had breakfast?” A quick nod returned. “Well, I haven’t so let me go find something to eat.”

  He picked up the magazine and returned to his reading. Or at least appeared to. Now that she knew him better, she bet Atlanta’s lay exorcist was quietly working out how to help her without her knowing.

  You should have stayed in North Georgia with the squirrels.

  † ~ ‡ ~ †

  “I hate this part of the job,” Riley muttered as they waited for the council meeting to begin.

  A glance at Beck said she’d be getting no sympathy from him. With Grand Master Stewart out of the country, it had fallen to her husband to be the dude in charge of all the stuff that grand masters do in Atlanta. At least it wasn’t the entire East Coast. Not yet.

  Besides Mr. Means’ body waltzing off in the arms of the rogue necromancer, six more corpses had risen from their graves and been carted off. All the other grave sitters had been experienced, not a newbie in the bunch, and yet every one of them had failed in their task.

  And just like Means’ grave two of the others had blown up, knocking out the protective circle that should have kept the deceased safe. Now Atlanta’s Powers That Be were demanding answers and it was up to Mort to supply them. Since he’d taken on the denizens of Hell for her, Riley was returning the favor. Though to be honest the mayor and others in charge of the city weren’t nearly as bad as Hellspawn. Just annoyingly persistent.

  “Is this going to be the new thing, summoners stealing peoples’ bodies?” one of the city council folks demanded. “What’s next? Raiding funeral homes?”

  The man’s tone was disrespectful, especially when it was aimed at a member of the magical community. No wonder Beck came home bitching under his breath after one of these meetings.

  “No, this is not the newest thing,” Mort replied evenly. He wore a suit and tie, not his usual black robe, and sat behind a table facing those same city authorities. “We are investigating why this is happening, who is performing these illegal reanimations, and then we’ll deal with the offender.”

  “What precisely do you do with these people?” another council member asked.

  “The punishment requires that the offender’s magic is stripped from them entirely.”

  “You make them like the rest of us, then?”

  It was a loaded question, one that implied that the rest of us were somehow lower on the evolutionary scale.

  “For a summoner, having their magic ripped away is traumatic. It damages the person for life. At that point, we turn them over to local authorities and they can be charged according to the Georgia code. Without their magic, they are not a threat to anyone.” He hesitated, then added, “Some do not survive the removal of their magic. For those who do, insanity is often the result.”

  “So, we’d be given someone who is crazy and expected to deal with them?” This was the first questioner who was getting under Riley’s skin. She could only imagine what Mort thought of him.

  “Often the former summoner is found to be too mentally damaged to stand trial and they are sent to an asylum for the remainder of their lives. To be honest, they don’t tend to live that long after their magical essence is erased.”

  He’d kept his cool, so far. But then that was Mort’s thing—cool—until someone repeatedly got in his face. Hopefully, none of these people went that far.

  “The guy in the gray shirt is talkin’ about runnin’ for governor,” Beck whispered in her ear. It was the same guy who’d been jabbing at Mort. Someone eyeing public office usually craved publicity and wouldn’t care if that publicity damaged anyone else along the way.

  “Is it true that your nephew is involved in these grave robberies?” Mr. Gray Shirt asked.

  “No, it’s not true. Initial reports indicated that the thief resembled my nephew, but it appears the summoner was using glamour magic.” There were a few blank looks at that. “A glamour can be used to imitate the appearance of someone else.”

  “You mean someone could look like me?” a different councilperson asked.

  “Yes. That’s what happened with Alex. He is just starting his training and has none of the skills needed to reanimate a deceased individual. That requires significant ability.”

  “You have that ability?” Mort nodded. “How many of you in Atlanta can do that?”

  Their friend shifted uneasily. The necromancers were keen to keep certain information private, like the number of summoners in the city for instance. Though that was a matter of public record if someone went digging for the information. How many of them were proficient at reanimation wasn’t something the Summoners Society wanted public.

  “In the major metropolitan area, twenty-eight of us are actively seeking reanimation contracts at the moment.”

  Clever. He’d not said exactly how many could perform that magic, only the ones that were currently doing the job. Twenty-eight summoners in a region that encompassed over six million citizens? No threat at all.

  Except one summoner was not playing by the rules and that meant all of them would suffer the consequences.

  “We intend to find this person and stop them,” Mort continued, his voice harder now. “This is an abomination, and it will not be tolerated.”

  “It might be said that reanimating a dead person is an abomination.”

  “They are certainly circumstances when reanimations are uncalled for. There are circumstances where the funds received assist the deceased’s family after death. Every situation is different.”

  “Maybe it’s time someone introduced legislation to make this illegal.” No surprise, it was the guy eyeing the governor’s office.

  “Respectfully, that is a debate for another time,” Mort said. “Right now, it is the Summoners Society’s primary goal to find this person and stop them. We can argue about the rest later.”

  “You make it sound like what I propose is a waste of time.”

  “What I know, sir, is that over the last two days I’ve spent many hours with family members as they mourn yet another loss. They demanded to know why their loved one was no longer laid to rest. I had no answers for them, but soon I will. By God, I will.”

  The force behind his vow crackled in the air.

  Mort tidied up the papers in front of him, and to his credit his hands did not shake. “Are there any more questions?”

  The mayor looked around, then shook his head. “Keep me in the loop on the investigation. Don’t hesitate to call the police, if needed. Do what you must to stop this, you hear?”

  Mort nodded and left the room. Riley gave her husband’s hand a squeeze and then followed the summoner. As she reached the door she heard Beck being called forward to talk about how the National Guild was handling illegal demon trapping in the city.

  Since Master Harper would be a wrecking ball in these hallowed halls, the problem fell into Den’s lap. They knew him from before he became a grand master, so in some ways they trusted what he told him. Most of the time, that is.

  She found Mort further down the hallway, leaning against a wall reading something on his phone. He glanced up as she joined him.

  “How do we catch this monster?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  “I have no idea.”

  Which wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping to hear. “What will Ozymandias do?”

  “He’s trying to trace the summoner. If we’re lucky that’ll work.”

  “So, we have to babysit the new graves until this looney shows up again?”

  Mort’s terse nod told her that was exactly the plan.

  † ~ ‡ ~ †

  For some reason Katia felt compelled to visit the cemetery one more time. As Riley had predicted the magic-induced headache had returned and banged away inside her skull like a jackhammer. The usual over-the-counter pain meds had been useless. Breakfast hadn’t helped, either.

  A quick stop at a grocery store scored her a bouquet of flowers, two candy bars, a liter bottle of water and a smaller one of Pepsi. To some that might seem blasphemous since this was Coca Cola’s hometown, but Katia didn’t care. She liked the stuff and so that’s what she drank.

  The cemetery hadn’t changed much since earlier that morning, only hotter. Katia replaced the flowers in the vase on Anna Lanier’s grave, added fresh water from her bottle, then tidied up the now dehydrated roses another mourner had left behind. It felt right, even though she’d never met the woman. If not for a winged miracle named Ori, she would be doing the same for her brother’s grave.

  To her surprise, Mr. Means’ casket was still there. Wouldn’t someone from the cemetery have picked it up by now? When it had exited the grave, the dirt around it blasted outward in a geyser, the clods falling as much as thirty feet away. The lid had speared itself into the earth, like a surfboard wedged in grass and clay. It would have been funny if she and Riley hadn’t been in the middle of that destruction.

  The casket itself was lying on its side near another gravestone, the once highly polished walnut scored and muddy. No doubt Mrs. Means would be livid about that.

  Katia stepped up to the grave and peered inside. The vault itself was still there, though the lid had disintegrated. Literally. Squatting down she touched the dirt, then quickly yanked her hand back with a yelp. The ground was still tainted with magical residue, both from the protective circle and the thieving necro.

  Since the cops had already investigated the site, she gave the casket a shove, flipping it over. Filthy white satin now covered the interior. A small, open drawer on the side of it caught her notice. Her grandmother’s casket had one of those and Katia had placed a special treasure inside that drawer.

  This one was empty with no family mementos. Or if there had been, they were lost in the destruction. She shoved it back in with a click. Disappointed, Katia wandered around the site, unsure of what she’d hope to find. The grass was beaten down now, more than just when the cops had been here.

  There were marks in the dirt, equidistant, like a three-legged stool. Or a tripod. The man who’d been with Mrs. Means hadn’t had one, so someone had come back after everyone had cleared out. Maybe a news crew?

  Voices came from the parking lot and they belonged to a couple of guys climbing out of a truck sporting the cemetery’s name and logo. Probably here to collect the casket and close the grave.

  Katia met them on the way to her car, their hands full of shovels and rakes.

  “Lots of weirdos hang around this place,” one said.

  She rolled her eyes and kept walking. Then halted and spun around.

  “Ah, hi. You said a lot of weirdos hang around here. Can you tell if there were any in the last few days?”

  The guy who’d made the comment gestured at her in lieu of an answer.

  “Besides me.”

  “Well, the day we opened the grave for that dead dude,” the other man said, gesturing at where Means had once rested, “there was a guy who looked like he spent most of his time inside, if you know what I mean. Real pale.”

  Pale? “Young or old?”

  “Young. He just hung around for a while and asked questions about our job. I figured he was just an oddball. We get them now and then.”

  The first guy chimed in. “You one of them necromancers?”

  “No. I was watching the grave last night when the summoner showed up. I’d like to know how he stole Means from inside a Holy Water circle.”

  “Voodoo,” the man replied, nodding his head knowingly. “Gotta be Voodoo.”

  “Yeah, that’s it for sure,” the other guy replied.

  She debated about warning them about the residual magic, but then decided not to. She suspected they wouldn’t even feel it, not like she had.

  Katia thanked them and headed for the car, thinking through what she’d just learned. Someone had shown an interest in Means’ burial site before the funeral. Could it have been a relative or someone who wanted to claim the man’s body a couple nights later? Their description, a “pale” guy, wasn’t much help. Lots of people had inside jobs or were serious about using sunscreen in the Deep South.

  While chomping on one of the candy bars and washing it down with swigs of Pepsi, Katia sat in the cemetery parking lot with the car windows rolled down. It didn’t help that much.

  Surfing on her phone gave her the information she needed: According to Means’ obituary, Beesh Funeral Home had overseen his final arrangements. Their office was in one of the suburbs north of the city which meant there’d be a lot of traffic.

  She knew what big cities were like because Kansas City was less than an hour away from her hometown. When she was in high school, she and her friends would head there to get away from their parents and the endless scrutiny of their nosy neighbors. And yet, the KC metro area was about two million people while Atlanta’s population was over three times that. Those extra bodies made a difference.

  A glance at her phone said she had enough time to get there and then back to the trapper’s meeting. With a sigh, she snapped her seatbelt in place and headed out. Behind her the two cemetery workers hauled the coffin toward their truck.

  “Sorry guy,” she said, as if Means could hear her. And who knew, maybe he could.

  SIX

  Eventually she found the right street and the funeral home was easy to spot. Stately and dull, it was a tan brick building with two white columns at the entrance. There was the usual Stars and Stripes on a pole, and a big parking lot. What was not usual were the two police cars in that lot.

  Katia parked her car further along the road, then hiked up to join a knot of onlookers clustered on the sidewalk in front of the building. Didn’t matter if it was a small town or a metropolis, people were naturally curious.

  Even before she could ask what was going on, one of the ladies said, “Yeah, old man Beesh doesn’t look happy.” She angled her head toward an older man talking to the cops. He waved his hands around, then pointed to the open door on the side of the building, probably the one used for their “customers.”

  “You know him?” she asked.

  The lady gave her a quick glance, then nodded. She looked to be in her fifties and wore a sundress covered with bouncing purple rabbits. It actually looked nice.

  “I’m a neighbor,” she said. “Beesh and his family have had a funeral home here since the sixties. This is the first time the cops came, though.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone stole one of the bodies. Made off with it sometime last night.”

  What?

  “They didn’t steal it,” one of the other bystanders said, an older guy with an Atlanta Braves cap. “I heard one of the cops say there wasn’t a break-in. It’s The Walking Dead, I swear it,” the man insisted. “You know, like that TV show. The bodies are just gettin’ up and takin’ off.”