Chapter 7
Nishi pulled the SUV into the lot with a turn that made the tires hiss on the wet pavement. A glowing sign out front read Cedar and Ninth Funeral Services in soft, comforting letters, which felt optimistic considering there were bodies inside doing their best to become mobile again.
Faith checked her weapon before her boots even hit the ground. Her posture had that familiar coiled readiness, like she was a spring that didn’t believe in rest.
Eve stood beside me, eyes scanning the building. She looked calm on the surface, but her hellfire always changed the air around her. Even banked, it made the night feel thinner.
Tegan shoved a loose strand of hair behind her ear and kept her relic in her palm like a worry stone. “I hope nobody is here.”
“I’m not leaving anyone behind,” Nishi said, voice flat.
I adjusted my grip on the cold metal disk tucked in my coat pocket. It felt heavier than it should, like it was trying to pull my arm down by sheer attitude.
“Let’s keep it quick,” I said. “I’m not in the mood to die in a place that sells pine packages.”
Faith shot me a look. “You can’t be sarcastic and scared at the same time.”
“Sure I can,” I said. “Watch me.”
We moved fast.
The front doors were locked, but that didn’t stop a supernatural team. Nishi didn’t kick them in. She didn’t need to. She simply tested the handle, listened, then nodded toward the side.
“Service entrance,” she said.
The side door was cracked, hanging slightly open like someone had fled in a hurry and forgot about basic security. Inside, the hallway lights flickered, and the air carried that sterile chemical bite that made my eyes water.
We stepped in.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
I could hear our breaths, our boots, the hum of a fridge somewhere deeper in the building. A funeral home had its own kind of hush. It was designed to make you whisper without being told.
A scream erupted from the back.
Faith sprinted first. She moved down the hallway like she’d been personally insulted.
We rounded a corner into a viewing room, and I almost stopped short.
There were brochures arranged neatly on a table. Tissues in a silver holder. A vase of fake lilies. Two couches in a soft gray fabric, staged like a photo in a catalog.
Then I saw the corpse.
It had toppled a chair and was crawling toward a woman who’d backed into the wall, hands up, shaking hard enough her teeth chattered.
The undead looked less like the downtown sprinters and more like the original wave. Stiff, jerky, driven. Still horrifying, but not moving like it was training for a marathon.
“Back,” Faith barked at the woman.
The woman didn’t move. She stared at us like we were hallucinations.
Eve stepped forward, palm lifting, hellfire blooming just enough to light her fingers.
The corpse hissed, then tried to push up.
I reached without thinking.
Necromancy slid cold through my veins, familiar and unpleasant. I grabbed for the dead thread in its spine and pulled.
The corpse froze.
For one glorious second, it held still like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Then the resistance hit.
Not as hard as downtown. Not like a punch to the skull. More like a stubborn shove.
My grip slipped. The corpse twitched.
Faith moved in and drove a binding nail through its pant leg. Then another.
The undead dropped, pinned, clawing at the wood.
Eve’s hellfire took it a heartbeat later.
The smell of burning fabric and old flesh filled the viewing room, and the fake lilies looked like they were judging us.
The woman slid down the wall, crying, hands pressed to her mouth.
Tegan crouched in front of her, voice gentle. “You’re safe. Can you tell us how many?”
The woman shook her head frantically. “I don’t know. They were in the back. They just… they just moved. I thought it was a prank.”
My stomach twisted. Everyone thought it was a prank now. Mina’s story was already spreading.
That was the point.
Still, hearing it out loud in this place made my skin crawl.
Nishi moved toward the back hallway, flashlight cutting through the dim light. “We clear the prep rooms. Fast.”
We followed.
The embalming room looked like a nightmare dressed up as a workplace. Stainless-steel tables. Cabinets. Drainage grates in the floor. A rolling cart with tools I didn’t want to identify.
Two undead were in here.
One stumbled near the far wall, head twitching, mouth smeared dark. The other was slumped against a table, arms hanging, as if it had woken up mid-nap and decided violence sounded fun.
Faith fired clean shots, and the first one dropped.
The second one lurched up.
Eve burned it.
It went down with less fight than I expected, like it wasn’t being pushed as hard. Like the hand on the tether had loosened, even if only slightly.
Tegan stared at the remains, breathing hard. “That’s it?”
Nishi swept the room with her light, then checked the doorway to the cold storage area. “For now.”
Faith glanced at me. “How’s your control?”
I swallowed. “Better than downtown. Still contested.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed. “Because the anchor is gone.”
My hand drifted toward my pocket, toward the disk. Cold pressed through the fabric as if it wanted attention.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I think removing it helped.”
Nishi pushed into the cold storage room, and the temperature dropped instantly. Metal drawers lined the walls. A hum vibrated through the air.
Two drawers were open.
That alone felt wrong.
Inside one, a body lay half shifted, fingers twitching against the metal edge like it couldn’t decide whether to stay dead.
Nishi slammed the drawer shut with force.
“Not today,” she muttered.
Faith and I pinned the drawer with two binding nails into the frame, quick and brutal.
The other open drawer held nothing.
Empty.
That was worse.
Tegan’s relic shimmered in her hand, and her eyes widened. “This body has been animated.”
Eve swore softly. “Where?”
As if the building wanted to answer, a crash sounded from the hallway. A thud. A scrape.
We ran.
The undead from the empty drawer staggered into the corridor, one arm hanging at a wrong angle, feet sliding on the tile. It wasn’t sprinting. It wasn’t leaping. It was slow enough that for a heartbeat I felt relief.
Then it lifted its head and looked at us.
Its eyes weren’t cloudy.
They were clear.
Focused.
My stomach dropped. “That one’s different.”
Faith didn’t waste time wondering what that meant. She fired. The shot hit its chest. It didn’t stop.
Eve’s hellfire arced and caught it, flame wrapping around ribs and skin. The undead shrieked and dropped, thrashing for a few seconds before going still.
Silence returned, heavy and damp.
Nishi exhaled slowly. “It’s contained. For now.”
“For now,” I echoed, because everything tonight came with a threat attached.
We made a final sweep. No more movement. No more bodies walking. No hidden cluster waiting to burst out.
It wasn’t as bad as we’d expected.
That fact made me more uneasy, not less.
Outside, the night air felt almost clean compared to the chemical stench inside. I took a breath and tried to convince my lungs they weren’t still full of smoke from downtown.
Eve’s phone buzzed.
She glanced down, and the muscles in her face shifted.
“Lucinda,” she said.
Faith made a disgusted sound that could have been a full sentence.
Eve’s eyes tracked across the screen. “We have to return to the council chambers. Now.”
Nishi’s gaze sharpened. “Did she say why?”
Eve’s mouth tightened. “No. She doesn’t do reasons. She does orders.”
Tegan rubbed her temple. “That’s not ominous at all.”
Faith headed for the SUV. “Fine. Let’s go get yelled at in marble luxury.”
We returned to Faith’s vehicle. And I climbed in, still feeling the disk like a cold current in my pocket.
As we drove back toward Raven Street, the city looked worse. Not quieter. Worse.
Even away from downtown, I saw people in doorways, phones raised, faces lit by screens. I saw a couple arguing on a corner, one insisting it was fake, the other insisting it wasn’t, both loud enough to draw a crowd.
New comments. New shares. New panic.
We pulled up in front of the Magnetic Boutique, the pink storefront standing out against the darker businesses as if it were trying to pretend the world was normal.
Nancy’s sign was still lit.
Which meant either she didn’t know what was happening downtown, or she had decided capitalism didn’t stop for zombies.
We rushed inside and made our way to the stalls.
The door was closed.
Faith didn’t knock. She yanked it open and stepped in as if she owned the place.
The portal shimmered against the far wall, subtle if you didn’t know what you were looking for. The air folded, a thin ripple like water in moonlight.
We stepped through.
The world shifted.
Then we were inside the council chambers.
Marble columns rose around us, white stone veined with gray. Torchlight flickered along the walls, throwing warm shadows across the massive room. The live-edge table dominated the center, polished dark wood that looked like it could handle war meetings and ritual sacrifices without staining.
The magical board filled one wall, pulsing with points of red light that seemed to multiply every time I blinked.
Lucinda sat at the table with Caton beside her, both of them wearing the kind of calm that came from believing other people existed to absorb consequences. Carnell lounged at the table too, looking annoyingly composed, like he’d had time to refresh his cologne and his ego.
Elijah, was there this time. He looked attentive, posture controlled, eyes watchful.
Greyson stood near the table, not seated, hands on his hips as if he’d been pacing. Jeans, T-shirt, calm face that didn’t quite hide the strain in his eyes. He looked as if he’d been up for hours.
Faith stepped in and paused.
Greyson’s gaze lifted, and he winked at her as if this were a casual evening and not an apocalypse.
Faith rolled her eyes, but I saw the flicker in her face. The tiny shift that said she was relieved to see him.
“Greyson,” she muttered.
“Hey, Babe,” he said lightly.
Faith’s mouth tightened. “Not now.”
Greyson’s smile softened. “Later.”