“What now?” Pamela asked, her hand gripping the handle of the long knife I’d given her. I pulled my crossbow off my back and set a bolt in the channel.
“We go in quietly, see if we can’t knock her out and get the opal on her. It’ll be the only way without Deanna here to help.”
Pamela nodded. “And there’ll be zombies, won’t there?”
“Yes. But they’re slow. Let me go first, I’ll clear the way. You finish off any that I wound. Okay? But no magic unless you absolutely have to.”
“All right.”
Eve had already headed south, though she’d argued with me about it. Finally, though, she’d agreed when I’d pointed out that Alex, Will, and Deanna had no idea where we were, and there was no way we had to contact them.
Setting the butt of the crossbow tight into my shoulder, I crept forward. The rooftop was mainly an open solarium, half-dead plants wilting in their pots, tile set into the roof for footing and even a few garden statues.
We moved quickly, looking for the way down into the house. Pamela found it after a few minutes of looking, partially buried under a large pot filled with dirt and a withered stick that maybe at one point had been a tree or bush.#p#分页标题#e#
“Here, we’ll lift it together,” I said, gripping the edge of the old copper flowerpot.
With a heave, we rolled it sideways with almost no sound. So far so good.
I crouched and slid one hand over the rusted latch. Jaw tight, I pulled it as slowly as I could, praying for a silent mechanism. There was a muffled screech of metal on rusted metal. Wincing, I gave up the subtlety, wrenched the latch open, and jerked the trap door upward.
It gave way, the hinges mercifully silent, though I wasn’t sure how much that would help us now. I peered down into the blackness of what appeared to be the attic. Maybe no one had heard the noise? I Tracked the kids; they were all still here, only a floor or two below us.
“Leave the door open and wait for me to give you the okay,” I said, swinging the crossbow onto my back and then lowering myself through the trap door.
Dropping to the floor below, I waited in a perfectly still crouch. The darkness seemed benign for once.
“Pamela.”
“Coming,” she whispered, lowering herself to hang from the lip of the trap door and then dropping to land beside me.
“Light,” I said, keeping my voice low.
She lifted her hand and a soft pink glow lit up around her fingers.
“Perfect,” I said, getting a good look at the room. Indeed, this was an attic. Across from us was an old steamer trunk, its lid flung open, contents pouring out of it like someone had been looking for something. I looked inside of it, the smell of age whispering up around me.
A name was etched into the underside of the lid. Brittany Mariana Tolvay. This was the daughter’s trunk. I bent and picked up a skirt, far too small for an adult. These were her things.
An idea began to form as I thought about what had brought Anne Tolvay to this point. Giselle had been mad at the end, totally and completely mad. But did that make her a bad person? Was it her fault that the madness had taken over and made her do things that she otherwise never would have?
“Pamela, I think we can end this without anyone getting hurt.”
Her blue eyes flicked up to mine, far too perceptive for her age. “You want me to wear her clothes, don’t you?”
I pawed through the trunk, finding a drab black dress. “You wearing her clothes will do two things. It’ll be a distraction for the Necromancer, and it’ll help to keep you safe. If she thinks you are her long dead daughter . . . .” Bunching up the starchy material I pulled it down over Pamela’s head as I finished my thought. “. . .you will be able to get close to her. Or at least, she won’t bugger off using the Veil as a jump point. If it looks like she’s going to make a run for it, call out to her.”
Pamela wiggled, straightening the dress out. The black old school dress was the right length but it was loose around the slight girl. “What should I say?”
I thought for a moment. “Mother or mama. With you here, if she believes you’re her daughter, I don’t think she’ll jump the veil. Are you ready?”
“Yup, I got it.”
As ready as we could be, I led the way to the door leading out of the attic. Cracking it open a sliver, I could just see the narrow stairwell leading down to the next floor.
“Stay behind me,” I said. Crossbow up and ready to fire, I crept slowly down the stairs.
The air around us seemed to tense the further down we went, or perhaps it was just my nerves. This Anne Tolvay had fucked off on me once; I couldn’t let it happen again. My gut was telling me it was now or never.