Footsteps came up on either side of me. I didn’t run, didn’t turn to look at her two henchmen. “Then I’ll find them, whoever hurt my gran,” I said, “after I stop you.”

“You can’t stop us.” She smiled and tucked the knife away. “You and the Hollows, such fools to only see what is in front of you. To see what I let you see.”

She turned her back on me and snapped her fingers. “Come, boys, the time has passed.”

I breathed out as the two figures brushed by either side of me. The albino bumped me, but I’d already set my stance to hold steady. I barely moved.

Time, it had all come down to holding them off just long enough.

Eric was safe.

No one had died, which in and of itself was a miracle in my books, given all the weapons, magic, and bad guys floating around.

So why did it feel like we’d lost?

25

I found Eric still huddled up to a small child’s statue in the back of Bonaventure Cemetery, clinging to the stone as if the girl would protect him. Maybe she had, because he’d survived a night that I wasn’t sure any of us would make it through.

His dark fur helped him blend into the night, but I still found him.

“Hey, they’re gone.” I held a hand to him. He stood, took a step, and put his hand in mine. The furry mitt completely covered my own hand. “They ran out of time?”

I couldn’t tell if he was happy, sad, or what. Between the dark and the fur covering his face, I couldn’t even guess. “I guess they did. You okay?”

“Maybe. It seems strange that they would just give up. They didn’t fight you?”

I shook my head. “No.” I didn’t like that his own feelings echoed my instinct. “But the timing is off now. Midnight is past, and this”—I waved a hand at the sky to encompass whatever was going on that made tonight special— “won’t happen again for a long time.”

I tugged him forward, tucking my arm in the crook of his elbow as if on a stroll through the cemetery, just checking in on the old ancestors.

Of course, it didn’t occur to me that we’d walked right into a trap.

As we approached the circle where the ceremony had been set up, we both slowed. “That would have been bad,” Eric said.

I nodded, the skin along the back of my neck prickling, and I yanked him to the ground without really understanding why.

There was a whistle, and something flew through the air, landing with a thunk into a tombstone. The knife quivered where it stuck into the marble. My first thought was holy crap, that was a sharp knife, followed quickly by the realization that Eric and I were in serious trouble.