What had he said before he started the ritual?

I’m testing out a particularly tricky new spell.

“There,” he said to Eve. “I’ve let Savannah go. I just wanted to bring you here, Eve. We have very special plans—”

My mother lifted her sword. Ready to send him to hell, as she’d done with Leah.

She swung the blade. One clean, effortless cut through the torso. The sorcerer’s eyes bugged. His mouth worked. Then his upper half slid to the floor, blood spurting, the shriek dying in a keening gurgle as his legs fell over and he lay there, blinking, mouth still open, any noise he made drowned out by Jaime’s screams.

“What the hell?” Mom whispered.

She backed up, sword held out, gaze fixed on it as if it had come to life in her hand. She slid on the blood and looked down at the floor.

“What the hell?”

She stared at her jeans and blouse, soaked with the sorcerer’s blood.

“What the hell!”

I stood there, watching her and trying hard, very hard, not to look at that horrible, bisected body.

My mother blinked. Then she leaped forward, sword raised, and stabbed the still-blinking sorcerer through the heart, releasing him to death.

Jaime stopped screaming. At least, stopped audibly screaming, fist jammed into her mouth, eyes closed. Then she went rigid. Her eyes flew open and fixed on something I couldn’t see.

“You—you called her,” she whispered. “I don’t know what you did but—”

She flinched and I knew she was talking to the sorcerer’s ghost. My mother jumped forward, but Jaime lifted her hands.

“I-it’s okay. He’s gone.” Jaime looked around. “I don’t understand.”

“I do.” My voice came out soft, barely audible. Then I turned to my mother. “You’re real. I mean, you’re here.”

I stepped forward and reached out. My fingers touched her sleeve. The fabric dimpled under them and then I was touching her. Her. My mother. “Oh, God.”

My eyes filled and she reached for me. I swallowed. Fresh blood trickled down my neck. She stopped short, yanked at her shirt, and wheeled on Jaime.

“First aid. Find a kit. Now!”

Mom ripped her shirt off, buttons popping, and pressed it to my throat. Then she led me over to a chair and made me sit. All I could think was It’s Mom. My mother is here. I can see her. I can hear her. I can reach out and touch her.

I sat there, feeling no pain while she and Jaime tended to my throat. In shock, I guess. I dimly heard my mother say the cut was shallower than it looked—the sorcerer knew what he was doing, inflicting minimal damage while making it look serious.

I didn’t care. My mother was here. Right here. I kept trying to process it, but my brain refused.

They taped me up. No one said much. I think we were all in shock, even Mom, who kept looking over at the bisected corpse as if she expected it to magically mend.

“How … how did he do it?” I whispered. “That’s not possible.” I looked at Jaime. “Is it?”

She shook her head. “Zombies, yes. A ghost inhabiting a living body, yes. Bringing back a ghost in corporeal form? It doesn’t happen. Can’t.”

“Just like you can’t manifest a hell-beast,” I said. “But he did.” No one answered me.

“We need to go,” Jaime said finally. “We can … figure all this out later. For now, we have to call—” She glanced at the phone, then at the bodies.

“No calls,” I said, snapping out of it. “Or the first person the cops will track down is whoever received a phone call post carnage.”

“Careful, baby,” Mom said. “You probably shouldn’t talk.”

Baby. How long had it been since I’d heard that? Fresh tears made the room swim. I swiped them away as she leaned over, ignoring the blood as she hugged me tentatively, then tighter, when I didn’t evaporate at her touch.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Everything’s okay.”

Only it wasn’t. We were in a room with dead people. Dead people who’d been carved up and ripped up and chewed on, and at any moment someone was going to come through the station door and find blood and entrails decorating the chief’s office.

Jaime was right. We had to get out of here. And, yes, that meant that after nine years, I couldn’t stop to hug my mother, even though she might disappear back to the afterlife at any moment. But that’s how it was. Life isn’t fair. Not when there are bodies to dispose of.

It took about thirty seconds to realize that we couldn’t do it. Hiding the bodies was useless, given the sheer amount of blood. All we could do was take the first-aid kit—which we’d touched—look around and determine that we hadn’t touched anything else except the baton in the door. Take that, too. Smear our footprints in the blood. Hope that my blood would go undetected. Pray we hadn’t shed hairs—rather, pray they weren’t found. Really, in general, we just prayed that the Cortezes could cover this up.

Could even a Cabal cover it up? I wasn’t so sure. Didn’t want to think about that.

Next we went into the locker room to find clean shirts for Mom and me. We grabbed a blouse and a gym top from Medina’s locker. Jaime changed into Medina’s sneakers. They weren’t a great fit, but they’d do, though she insisted on taking her heels, too—they were her favorites. My jacket was back in the cell, remarkably clean. My wallet and Jaime’s purse were in the front room. Mom found our processing papers hidden inside Medina’s desk. We took those, too.

Last and maybe most important was video surveillance. But we got lucky there. The camera was an old tape one that only monitored the reception room. We’d never been in there. I grabbed the tape anyway.

Before we left, I borrowed Jaime’s phone—which had been in her purse—and texted Adam. A simple we’re fine, don’t come after us. Last thing we needed was to have Adam and Jeremy show up right as the authorities discovered the bloodbath within.

I didn’t even have time to put the phone away before he texted back. Can u call?

Mom leaned over to read the screen and shook her head.

“Later.”

I texted back soon.

SEVEN