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On the other side of the walls, Bruiser said soether It was creepy Worse, the flashlight showed h the walls, which were surely spelled No door or latch or catch, no , hidden panel, or bookcase to search for the book that would release the wall Zip Nada

I took a step to pound on the wall andsolid I aimed the flash down It illuminated a handle in the floor A trapdoor

"The one you seek," Kathyayini had said, "she is bound to the Earth She didn’t et away now" The three pocket watches had been transported with ned in a semicircle around the handle, all open, all set for twelve noon Or uys, and snapped it closed with a clack of teeth If I called to the men on the other side of the walls and they broke thehtthat ht be useful I tucked the fatter disc into athered up the pocket watches Thethe watches and dropping the discs into a bucket of sulfuric acid

I reached down, grabbing the handle in the trapdoor And pulled

CHAPTER 24

That Was Before I Killed Her Sister

It opened silently, not with the hair-raising creak I expected Nothing jule sound

The srave I aiht have been ankle bones with two leg bones sticking out of it The angle wasn’t good enough to see anything more, but I was just happy not to see hundreds of rats squealing away Dead bodies, I was getting used to

Seven sot a firrip on the weapon and the flash and paced carefully down the it firm and dry and sandy The floor above me was not insulated, just bare boards, and I could hear people up there walking around, h the wood and sheets of old linoleuht around the crawl space I didn’t knohat I was seeing at first Then I realized it was a head Hu out of the sandy earth It was also alive The head was feht, and I could see a slow pulse in the neck, ht and saw another head, this one less buried, with a neck and shoulders and one ar clothes over her thin skeleton, skin and bones showing at wrist and collar, and her hair was matted into a sli from it, open, set to three o’clock even A little farther to the right was another woman Only her face was visible, the rest of her buried, her head tilted back, herfor a last breath Witches, all All gloitchy power in swirling, oily, foul shades of energy, like the death energies of everything that had ever been alive

I ain The seventh wos partially buried in the sandy soil, her hands free She still wore traces of lipstick, mascara smeared below her eyes in the bruised hollows She had put up a fight She had a black eye and a puffy lip That was not like the passive Misha I had known as a child "Good for you," I whispered

The light caught the gleam of metal A cell phone rested on her lap The amulet on her chest was open, the clock set at ten even I wanted to rush to her, but I had no idea what to do for her and no idea if I would kill her if I tried to pull her from the dirt I moved the flash around the rest of the circle All of the women were buried to some extent or another None of them were the Acheé wo the witches All of theht down and saw a skull with so the black of old fillings and metal dental work

Beside her was another skull, less preserved They appeared to be laid out in the beginnings of soht around the witch circle and realized that the witches and dirt they were buried in lookedwrong As I watched, so moved over Misha’s knee And I realized that the women hadn’t been deliberately buried The earth of the circle was instead sing them I picked out the women who had been buried the least amount of time And I studied the witch as theThe dead witches at my feet were probably the ones who had died in service and been replaced, though I didn’t know if soed them here or if the earth spit theured the Acheé witches were hidden elsewhere, intended as replaceet the witches out of the ground No idea how to stop the spell they were powering No idea ould happen if I interrupted a working full circle and pulled a witch to safety But I kneho ht know

I nearly jumped out of my skin when my private cell buzzed in my pocket I flipped it open to see Eli’s icon "Jane," I said

"Where are you? Alex said you disappeared inside the vamp bar"

I looked at the low boards over h the floor as well as through the cell "Would you believe about twenty feet from you? And down a level?"

"How?"

"The black arcs painted on the floor in each rooh the walls I don’t know But in the center of the house is a small square place without a door, like a tiny hidden room I think the walls are spelled, so don’t try to break in when you find it Whoever is accessing the witches belowground is using the circles to zip from other places to this tiny space"