One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress #6)(35)

“Ready, luv?” he asked.

“Almost, sugar,” Tyler replied with a cheeky wink.

I rolled my eyes. Between Bones’s self-assurance and Tyler’s irrepressible flirting, my lingering nervousness changed into optimism. We could do this. No, scratch that—we would do this.

I grabbed some sage that we’d stacked by the edge of the stream and stuffed it into my backpack, Tyler following suit. I already had lighters in each pants pockets and so did he. All that was left was to break out the Ouija board, and Tyler was already pulling it out of his backpack.

Bring it on, Inquisitor. We’ve got a surprise waiting for you.

“Ready.”

Tyler and I stood on either side of the stone-and-quartz pedestal, the Ouija board lying flat between us. This time, the planchette didn’t jump when I placed my fingers on it, as if I needed reminding that my borrowed powers from Marie had faded.

Tyler’s brows went up, noticing that as well. “Something you want to tell me, Cat?”

“Nope,” I said, and it was the unvarnished truth. Tyler didn’t know that one of the fragile cogs in the peace wheel between vampires and ghouls loosely rested on certain people still believing that I had special connections to the dead. Luckily, no one but Bones knew the average shelf life of my borrowed powers, so I should be able to stretch out the illusion that I could raise Remnants quite a while longer.

What would happen after that jig was up, I’d worry about later. One perilous problem at a time, thank you.

“All right,” Tyler said, after it became clear that was all I’d ante up on the subject. He cleared his throat, darkly musing that he’d probably get something sharp lodged in it again with what he was about to do, then placed his fingers on the planchette.

“Heinrich Kramer, we summon you into our presence.”

Tyler’s voice echoed throughout the cave as he spoke, his voice strong and commanding even though he inwardly cursed himself for not taking a piss before starting this.

“Heed our call, Heinrich Kramer, and come to us. We summon your spirit through the veil into our presence . . .”

The planchette began to jerk around the board in crazy, ragged circles. Tyler sucked in his breath. I strained my senses, but I’d felt chilly, tingling vibrations along my skin this whole time due to Fabian and Elisabeth’s close proximity, so that wasn’t any help.

Suddenly, Bones plummeted down from his hiding place in one of the ceilings many crevasses. He’d been up there so he could slam the lid down on the trap if Kramer appeared, but nothing hazy or swirly interrupted the Ouija board’s smooth surface. Did he see something I didn’t? Couldn’t be; he set the huge, multimineral cylinder next to the trap instead of over it.

“What?” I asked, gaze darting around.

“Stop the summoning,” Bones ordered Tyler. His eyes were sizzling green as he looked at me.

“People are coming, I can hear them. A lot of people.”

“Shit,” I sighed.

We’d left every one of our silver weapons in the RV, not wanting Kramer to have any means to permanently harm us if the trap didn’t work, and he started hurling nearby objects at us. Now, with potential enemies between us and the only weapons we could utilize aside from sticks and stones, what we’d done as a safety measure had turned out to be a huge liability.

Bones cracked his knuckles, that lethal aura increasing until it prickled my skin with its energy. I strained my senses but couldn’t pick up on anything aside from Tyler’s concern and the sounds in the cave. Bones was older and stronger, so I didn’t doubt that he was right. This couldn’t be a hiking expedition stumbling across the cave by accident, either—we were in the middle of nowhere. It had to be an ambush, but how the hell had anyone found us?

Then I heard it. The murmur of voices in my head, too low for me to make out specific words, too many to be Chris’s thoughts.

“Fabian, Elisabeth,” Bones said low. “Find out what’s out there.”

They disappeared in a flash. Tyler glanced around before mumbling some words, then shutting the Ouija board with a bang.

“I turned it off. No one can come through now.”

“See that shadow off to the right?” Bones asked him without turning in that direction. “It leads to a small enclosure. Wait there, and try to stay quiet.”

Knew this day would end badly, Tyler thought in resignation as he did what Bones said.

The seconds ticked by as we waited for the ghosts. My hands felt horribly empty without weapons, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that I’d been in fights before against undead baddies without any silver. If we were lucky, and most of the hostiles approaching were human, bare hands would be more than sufficient.

But if someone had gone to all this trouble of finding us, I bet he or she wouldn’t be dumb enough to show up with an army of only humans. There might be a lot of them, from the increased volume in my head that indicated the entrance to the cave was being surrounded, but these had to be the pawns. The question was, who was the chess player?

A hazy outline zoomed up so fast; it took me a second to determine whether it was Fabian or Elisabeth.

“Soldiers!” Fabian exclaimed. “But they are all human. Could these be members of your old team, perhaps here because they need your help?”

My instant surge of relief at hearing they were human changed to suspicion. Bones and I exchanged a look, the tension in his aura saying loud and clear that he thought something was still off.