Page 83 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

“More difficult to say. The journey should provide you with a degree of protection, since—” As he did every so often, Maxwell tried to bring out the demon’s name, testing his remaining bonds. As they did every so often, the damned things held. “—my master would have to use some energy to find you. It won’t do as much as the wards.”

She nodded again, sipped her coffee, and sat with the steam curling up over her face. “Plan A is still to come home before I sleep, then, but getting a hotel room comes before buying amphetamines from a trucker.”

“Yes,” said Maxwell, “allowing for my lack of familiarity with both truckers and amphetamines.”

Hazel clicked her tongue. “And here I thought all the bright young things were constantly on drugs in your day.”

“That was largely cocaine. And morphine. Occasionally mescaline. I’d imagine they’re very different.” Maxwell attempted to give her a reproving look over his coffee.

Thoroughly unreproved, she giggled. “Expert, were you?”

“Hardly. Translation work barely supported my ventures into the occult—it wouldn’t have stretched to a drug habit. Mescaline made for an interesting evening or two, but the only times I had morphine were when I had my tonsils out and when I broke my wrist in university.”

“Very vigorous note-taking, I assume.”

Maxwell laughed, swallowed another bite of the suspect pastry, and let Hazel draw out the story of a drunken evening ice-skating. He knew she’d lied. He suspectedsheknew that.

Knowing that she had a plan to lie about brought him closer to hope than he liked.

* * *

Clarence Chapman had, one might say, had an active retirement. He’d grown a little more cautious without the badge and the flashing lights to give him cover, his hunting grounds had shrunk once he no longer felt confident driving after dark, but he’d killed his last victim two years before his death. Reduced range, age, and maybe simple overconfidence had taken some toll, though: Four of his last six victims had turned up while he was still alive, giving the police and grieving relatives a start on putting names to parts.

Grass had grown on Pam Gallagher’s grave since her family had buried her five years earlier, but a fresh wreath lay by the low granite tombstone. Her handless, tongueless corpse had washed up on a riverbank about three miles from Chapman’s house. After the discoveries in Chapman’s basement, Pam’s sister had offered her DNA to the police. While matching it to any of the trophies would take time, Cindy Valenzuela’s terse statement in the article Hazel had read suggested that it was only a technicality, and Hazel thought so too.

She wouldn’t have come to the graveyard otherwise.

A quick glance around showed her that there were no witnesses. While Eternal Light Memorial Park was closer to civilization than Hazel lived, it was still on the rural side of the suburbs, and nearly deserted on a weekday afternoon.

She kneeled in front of Pamela’s grave, placed candles and water in front of her, picked up her knife, and let the ritual rise up around her again.

The world shimmered. Shadows elongated. The air turned faintly blue, and the temperature dropped a few degrees. The landscape didn’t lose much detail, though, or become particularly strange. A few headstones grew, a few others shrank or took on different shapes, but that was all. When many people and their emotions constantly passed through a place, no one mind could particularly shape the ethereal. Contrary to popular belief, cemeteries were among the places where the worlds matched most closely.

Hazel saw a few ghostly forms as she surveyed the graveyardagain, but none close to her. She hadn’t really expected much; five years was a while, even for murder. Pamela was simply the most obvious victim—and just because she didn’t greet Hazel instantly didn’t mean she was completely gone.

She scooped out a small trench in front of the candles, the earth cool and moist against her skin, then took three kids’ thermoses out of her backpack. Milk went in first, then honey, and finally the small amount of cow blood she’d bought at the butcher’s that morning, making sure she was far enough from her house not to be recognized.

Odysseus had gotten the basics right, but Hazel didn’t need a prophet or a host of fallen comrades. She could cut down on the scale.

“Pamela Claire Gallagher,” she intoned quietly. “I invite your company. I ask for your counsel. If you can hear, I beg that you pay heed to my request. If you can come, I beg you to meet me here.”

The small sounds of life, even in the ethereal, faded into the background. Hazel’s vision blurred. Chills ran from her fingertips to her elbows, and she ignored them as much as she could.

“I offer white milk. I offer red blood. I offer sweet honey.” She inhaled deeply, then spoke again, as loud as she dared in a public place. “Pamela Claire Gallagher, I wish to speak with you.”

The light reflecting from the tombstone’s polished surface shifted and began to take a human shape. As Hazel refocused, it defined itself further: a short, rounded body in a knee-length dress. Curly bobbed hair surrounded a heart-shaped face with wrinkles at the eyes and a wide, generous mouth.

Pamela kneeled by the trench and cupped her hands to drink.

* * *

The summons yanked Maxwell forward like a fish on a line, barely giving him time to answer before slamming him out of the material world and into Perthrux’s court. Shapes spun by him, then blurred into patches of darkness and searing light, and momentum sent himstumbling half-blind across the stone floor. He didn’t see the servants come up on each side of him, not until heavy hands grasped each of his arms.

It was too late to fight then, but it wouldn’t have done any good anyhow.

Perthrux spoke as its minions dragged Maxwell forward, its voice reverberating through the chamber. “I thought you were too smart for treachery.”

Ice lanced through his veins. The servants kept pulling him toward Perthrux, their maggot bodies squashing against the stone floor, but Maxwell barely noticed. “I—my lord—”