A glance at my slowly dying phone made me wish we’d just untied Feish and Crash and hurried away. The numbers blinked dully up at me. Eleven thirty. Thirty minutes before midnight. Thirty minutes, and Eric’s life would be taken from him, and whatever magic was needed from him would be woven into a spell that was no doubt dark. Who would know where Eric was?

“Corb!” I shot forward in my seat. “Is there any way we can get smarmy Darv to let us talk to him?”

Eammon handed me his phone. “You can try. I may be a leprechaun, but luck doesn’t seem to be on my side lately.”

I opened his phone and found Darv’s number, then dialed it into mine.

It rang twice before he picked up. “Eammon, do you have news?”

“Not Eammon, Bree,” I said. “I need you to put Corb on the line. Now.”

“You aren’t the boss of me,” he snapped. Like a freaking child!

I gripped the phone. “If we don’t find the bigfoot, and this spell happens, any number of terrible things could come of it. Do you want to explain to your other council members that you got pissy and that’s why zombies are now roaming the streets of Savannah? Or that there’s some monstrous gate that is allowing demons to wander through on vacation? That’s going to take tourism to a whole new level.”

He was quiet for just a moment. “Zombies. Can’t your necromancer handle that?”

“I’m using it as an example,” I bit the words out, trying not to sound snarky because I needed him to help. Even though I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him.

“No, I won’t help you,” he said finally, and the little turd hung up on me!

“What?” I yelled at the phone and then snapped it shut. I put my hand on my purse, resting it there, thinking that I needed someone who knew the graveyards, someone who could . . .

“Oh my God! Pull over!” I had someone who’d help. I just had to get him out of my purse.

24

Tom yanked the car to the side of the road, and I scrambled out and onto the grassy side median. I dug through my purse until I found the single bone that was Robert. I put it on the grass. I didn’t really know if there was a magic word, or some other less obvious way to make him appear, so I went with simple. “Robert, I need your help.”

His body grew from that single bone until he was just there, swaying next to me, his long hair covering a face I still hadn’t fully seen. “Friend,” he whispered.