“You are quite wrong about that,” I tell him, letting my magic lift me up, slowly raising me to stand several feet off the dusty graveyard floor. My hair ruffles as I rise, and my nightgown flutters at the gentle movement. I use a spell of disturbance to snap a slim branch from the tree, grasp it in my hands, and crush it into woodchips, which I let go so that they blow away on the unearthly wind around us. “You see, I do have a body. One that is working really rather well just now.”

Stricklend gapes. “You … you are risen?”

“I am.”

“But how? I don’t understand. I used the Elixir myself. I worked the spell, the incantations. I followed the ritual to the letter. Every utterance, every ingredient…”

“Including that of the Great Secret that you had your pet sorcerer’s spirit snatch from my dying words!”

“It didn’t work!” Stricklend insists. “The magic was flawed. It went wrong.”

I look about but can see no corpse. “What hapless follower was prepared to die for you?” I ask him, shaking my head. “You are not fit to use the Lazarus Elixir, Sentinel. You and your kind never were. You never will be.” And in that second I send a spell of disturbance stronger than any I have attempted before. Stricklend is thrown backward, sent crashing against a tombstone, where he staggers, gasping for breath. “You are not fit to use any magic, for you wield it without mercy, without morality, without care for anyone or anything!” I am shouting now, and the power of my own voice amazes me. I keep a finger pointed at the dazed sorcerer, forcing him down to the floor. “I will send you to the Darkness to dwell with all the nefarious, cruel, murderous members of your society who have gone before you!”

A shrieking to my left causes me to hesitate. A female wraith, long dead and clearly insane, is rushing at Louis. I see him work a spell of disturbance to halt her, so that she thrashes wildly against her invisible bonds. While Louis is occupied with her, two demons lumber toward us. Whether they are acting on the directions of Stricklend and Willoughby I have not time to tell, but soon they are upon us. I drop to the ground and spellcast to force one back, but the other reaches Bram before he can raise his rifle to his shoulder. The fiend snatches the gun from him and hurls it away into the shadows of the yew trees, before leaping upon Bram. A shot rings out and the thing falls still and silent. Louis stands, visibly shaken, his handgun smoking. During the commotion Stricklend has cast a spell of his own upon Louis. He cries out, clutching at his heart, and I know at once that he is suffering the same dreadful pain that the Sentinel inflicted on me.