This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5)(85)

One of the hazy forms zoomed up yard and onto the porch. “Cat!”

It took a second, but then those indistinct features solidified into someone I recognized.

“Hey, Fabian,” I said, trying to lighten his concern with a joke. “I see you got my page.”

He reached out, his fingers passing through my cheek. “Your tears were like a rope that pulled me to you,” he said.

Wasn’t that ironic? It was blood that raised and controlled the Remnants, but maybe tears did the same for ghosts. That had to be the wild card. I’d bled in the cemetery with Vlad, plus been angry, frustrated, and sad, but I hadn’t cried. Yet ten minutes of tapping into that stillness inside combined with tears and now I had a veritable army of spectres on my lawn.

“I’m all right,” I said to Bones and Fabian since both of them were watching me with concerned expressions. “Really,” I added. “Now that we’ve got a good crowd, let’s do this.”

I stood up, going to the end of the patio that overlooked the area where the ghosts were the thickest, though more were coming, from the rustling back by the tree line.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, trying to sound confident. “My name is Cat. There’s something very important I need to ask you to do.”

“ ’Ello, mistress,” a vaguely familiar voice boomed out. “Not thought to see you again.”

I cocked my head at the ghost who flitted between the others to the front of the group. He had graying brown hair, a barrel belly, and he obviously hadn’t shaved any time soon before he’d died. Something about him nagged at my memory, however. Where had I seen him before . . . ?

“Winston Gallagher!” I said, recognizing the first ghost I’d met.

He cast a disappointed look at my empty hands. “No moonshine? Ah, yer a cruel one, to summon me here without a drop of nourishment.”

Never let it be said that something as simple as death could cure alcoholism, I thought irreverently, remembering all the moonshine the ghost had coerced me into drinking the night we met. Then my eyes narrowed and I covered my hand in front of my crotch as I saw Winston’s gaze fasten there next.

“Don’t you even think of poltergeisting my panties again,” I warned him, adding in a louder voice. “That goes for everyone else here, too.”

“This is the sod?” Bones started down the porch stairs even as Winston began to edge away. “Come back here, you scurvy little—”

“Bones, don’t!” I interrupted, not wanting him to start using slurs that might offend the other living-impaireds gathered here.

He stopped, giving a last glare to Winston while mouthing, You. Me. Exorcist, before returning to my side.

I shook my head. Vampire territorialism. It had no sense of appropriate timing.

“As I said, there’s something very important I need you to do. I’m looking for a ghoul who’s trying to start a war among the undead, and he’ll have a lot of other pissed-off, vampire-hating ghouls with him.”

It would be a huge task, but if Marie found Gregor through ghosts with no clue where he was in the world, then I should be able to find Apollyon a lot easier with what I knew.

“Ride the ley lines,” I said, feeling like a warped version of General Patton rallying my troops. “Tell your friends and get them hunting, too. Search all the larger funeral homes that are bordered by cemeteries. Find the short ghoul with the black comb-around that goes by the name of Apollyon, and then come right back and tell me where he is.”

“Not you, luv,” Bones said at once. “Fabian. Have them report to Fabian, who will then relay it to you.”

Good point. I trusted Marie’s power enough to believe that every ghost I personally spoke to wouldn’t betray me, but I was enlisting others who’d never met me. No need to have this plan backfire by leading Apollyon right to me instead of vice versa.

I gestured to the ghost at my side. “Wait. Report back to Fabian, my right-hand man. He’ll stay here so you’ll be able to find him.”

Fabian’s chest puffed out at my declaration, a beaming smile spreading across his face. I rested my hand over where his shoulder would be, meeting the gaze of every ghost who stared at me.

“Now go,” I urged them. “Hurry.”





Chapter Thirty--five

A silvery blur flitted over the other cars in the parking lot before diving into our black van. We were only a couple miles away from the Lasting Peace cemetery and funeral home in Garland, Texas. It had taken Marie Laveau twelve years of sending out ghosts to find Gregor, but Fabian received information of Apollyon’s whereabouts in six days.

In fairness, the world was a big damn place, and Mencheres had had Gregor in an old, reinforced mine tunnel in Madagascar—hell and gone from Marie’s home base of New Orleans. I, however, had narrowed Apollyon’s location down to only one country and a type of business. Still, they had done an amazing job. No one would disparage ghosts while I was around, that was for sure.

Fabian’s features solidified from the random hazy swirls, but his mouth was turned down in a frown.

“I think you should get more people.”

“How many are there?” Bones asked him.

“At least four score,” Fabian replied. “They’re having a rally in about an hour.”