Page 85 of The Hive Queen

Sharpe’s hand settles on my shoulder. “How are you doing?”

“This is nothing,” I grit out through clenched teeth. “I can animate corpses all day long.”

“Maybe when you’re in peak health,” Marc rumbles from the back of the van. “How long can you keep that corpse walking around in your current condition?”

Irritation slices through me, and Ailill takes my brief loss of focus to head for the street. Man used to love his drink, and given the chance, he’ll head straight to a bar.

I pull magic through Anny, who sits on the floor at my feet, and tighten my hold on Ailill’s spirit in warning. Ailill has his instructions, and if he doesn’t obey, I’ll stuff him back into the bottle.

In the parking lot, the zombie lifts a middle finger toward our van before shuffling back toward the pool of honey.

“So messed up,” Johannsson mutters. “When people are dead, they should just stay dead.”

“Stuffing a spirit into a corpse doesn’t make them alive.” I stroke Anny’s head. “The cadaver’s spirit crossed over already, so what does it matter if we use the body left behind?”

Johannsson scowls at me. “Some things should be sacred.”

“Then get cremated.” I rein Ailill back in again. “Stop talking. You’re ruining my concentration.”

Anny licks my fingers, and I rub her ears soothingly.

I’ve never pulled magic through her for this long, but I hadn’t been up for meditating when we got home last night, and it left my well of magic too low for this kind of work.

Not for the first time, I wish there were other witches with familiars who could give me pointers. But Reese is the only one I know of, and he’s no less ignorant about how this is supposed to work than I am.

That’s the problem with old magic returning to the world. There’s no one around to pass on knowledge. Everything I do is an experiment, and I won’t know Anny’s limits until we hit them.

I just hope we don’t learn that lesson tonight.

Sharpe’s radio crackles. “Sir, we have a civilian coming toward you.”

Sharpe grabs the walkie-talkie from his belt and presses the button on the side. “Is it a drone?”

“No,” I say before the detective posted on lookout duty can answer. “He’s human.”

The shine of his soul floats toward us, and streaks of darkness through his light announce a fatal illness. Most likely cancer. The disease takes a toll on a person’s energy.

“He’s probably looking to score,” I add.

With that much darkness, the man must be in a lot of pain.

Sharpe clicks on the walkie-talkie again. “He’s not our target. Move him along.”

Ailill makes another break for it, and I grit my teeth as I force him to stop. I wouldn’t be having this much trouble if I’d used his sister, Bébinn, but we can’t say for sure whether the drone only looks at the outer shell or has a sense for the spirit within, too.

It shouldn’t matter how fussy the spirit is, and on any other day, this would be child’s play. But sifting through an entire city of souls last night burned me out even before Amalia’s little booby trap sent me flying across the rooftop.

I shift in the hard seat to find a position that doesn’t leave my hip throbbing and send spikes of pain up my spine. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this level of discomfort, and I don’t like it one bit.

Why are healers so rare in the witch community?

Pen wedges herself between the driver and passenger seats. Like everyone else, she wears all black, with her hair tucked beneath a rolled-up face mask, and an air rifle pokes over her shoulder, with dozens of tranquilizer darts attached to her belt next to her batons.

Her golden eyes skim over my face with concern. “Thirty more minutes, and then Marc is going out there himself.”

“No,” Sharpe and I say in unison.

He had volunteered for the job back at the station and was outvoted. He and Pen are too used to being badasses. They can’t comprehend how debilitating the buzz that the drone emits is, and we’re not risking one of our people.

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