“You’ll never prove it, and you’ll never get anyone to be able to explain the spell to a jury, or a judge.”

“We’ll find someone,” Hudson said.

“It’s an original spell,” I said. “Like his mother before him, he’s real creative when it comes to evil.”

He gave a small smile. Hill pressed a knee harder into his shoulders, leaning more into the neck and head to grind him into the bloody grass. “Don’t smile,” Hudson said.

“He’s used soul magic, which isn’t even supposed to work, to trap Estrella and use her soul, her being a zombie, to give him some of the same ability to take damage, but he’ll heal, unlike her.”

“You mean she’s stuck like that, with a hole in her side?” Sutton asked.

“Zombies can’t heal injuries, so if we can’t free her soul, yeah.”

Max smiled again. Hill ground more weight into holding him down. Max finally made a noise that sounded like pain, so he could still feel it; good.

He spoke between gritted teeth. “I did not expect someone to shoot a hole in her.”

“You shouldn’t have used her as a shield then,” I said.

I could hear sirens now; the ambulance was on its way.

“What can we do for her then?” Hill asked.

“Hope that sunup steals her mind away, and she’s only afraid at night.”

“Her soul doesn’t vanish with the sunrise,” he said, voice still strained.

All the men leaned harder on him, grinding him into the ground and making him bleed faster, but it wouldn’t kill him. Until we either removed the gris-gris, or found a way to destroy Estrella’s zombie, he might not be able to die. Why is it that the really evil bastards are so fucking afraid of death? Cowards, such cowards.

It was two ambulances, and we had to let the paramedics take him, and her, though once they found out she was a zombie they seemed at a loss. One EMT asked me, “Can we sedate a zombie? Can we make her comfortable?”

“I don’t know.”

Then I realized that I’d been stupid, so caught up in the monstrous parts of what talent with the dead could do that I’d forgotten there might be better uses for my gifts. I went over to the zombie where she was strapped to the gurney, still whimpering and saying it hurt. I doubted it really hurt, but it could have been like phantom limb pain in an amputee. Some of them can feel pain in their missing parts for years afterward. Estrella expected the wound to hurt, so it did, and it certainly was scaring the hell out of her. If I’d known I couldn’t free her soul tonight, I’d have still shot through her to save Connie, but I would have regretted it beforehand a bit more.

She looked up at me with wide, dark eyes. I took her hand in mine and aimed my necromancy at her. I thought, Be calm, don’t be afraid. I whispered it to her, and watched her face lose some of the terror, felt her body relax.

Max yelled, “What are you doing, Anita?”

I ignored him, but Estrella jumped, flinching and whimpering. She knew his voice all right, and it meant bad things. “He can’t hurt you anymore, Estrella. You’re safe.” That was both true and a lie, but it filled her eyes with calm again. It helped her relax.

“She’s mine! Her soul is mine! Mine!”

I smiled down at the pretty face, the calm zombie that didn’t know it was dead. She smiled back. “You’re safe. Calm.”

“I’m safe, calm,” she repeated.

I patted her hand and put it on top of the blanket they’d strapped over her, as they moved her toward the ambulance. I went to talk to Max before they loaded him. We were going to accompany that ambulance, because when Hudson had asked me if Max might be able to use his magic to escape from the ambulance, or hospital, I honestly couldn’t say yes or no. He’d already done a piece of magic that should have been impossible, so all bets were off.

“What did you do to her?” he asked, straining against the straps that held him down and the handcuffs on both wrists.

“I helped her be less afraid.”

“I want her afraid. I want her to remember that she only has herself to blame for this.”

“Why, because she dumped your ass? Stalker much, Max?”

“Maximiliano, and she’s mine, Anita, mine! You keep your magic off of her!”

“She listens to me, to my necromancy, when you’ve got a piece of her soul trapped in you, and you still can’t keep me from controlling her.”

“I stopped you over the computer.”

“Yeah, because you could touch the zombie and I couldn’t, but now I can touch her and you can’t. I’m betting I can control her, even if you don’t want me to. I’ll keep her calm and unafraid while we get a judge to sign off on removing the gris-gris so we can free her soul, because trafficking in human parts, even souls, is a felony. Did you know that?”

“How do you prove I have her soul?”

“I don’t have to, someone tried to sell their soul on eBay a few years back and a judge ruled that a soul is the same as any human organ. It’s a felony to sell pieces of ourselves.”

“Fine, take it, it still won’t prove that I did anything to earn an execution, and by the time you get through all the hearings to remove the gris-gris I’ll have healed. It will be years in court before you can prove anything. Magic is so hard to explain to a jury, and I’ll get to tell them what a bastard my father is, and how he abandoned me. His wife isn’t going to like knowing that he had a bastard child with Dominga Salvador.”

Max was right about that.

“Juries love videos, Maximiliano. The sex slavery angle will make them hate you. By the time they see it all, they will be thinking there but for the grace of God go I, or my sister, my daughter, my wife, my child. They’ll put the needle in your arm themselves by the time we’re done with you.”

“A good lawyer will make sure those videos never see a jury, Anita. They are too prejudicial, and would bias the jury against me. If convicted it would be magical malfeasance, which means my execution would be swift. They won’t take the chance of getting the verdict overthrown after I’m dead—that doesn’t look good on a judge’s record.”

“What was your major in college again, Maximiliano?”

“Prelaw.”

“Of course it was.” I smiled at him.

He didn’t like the smile.

“But, Max, all I have to do is get a court order to remove all dangerous magical items from you. I can honestly say that I don’t know exactly what the gris-gris does. I mean, after all I don’t do voodoo, not really. If we cut it off tonight, I think three bullets in the chest will be enough that natural causes will do it for us.”

“You’ll never get a judge to sign off while I’m this hurt.”

I leaned in and spoke low. “You’re probably right, but I’m going to try anyway.”

He smiled, smug and safe behind magic too complicated to explain to most judges and nothing quite hard enough to be called evidence. He should have been safe as they bundled him up into the ambulance and we got in the Bear Cat and followed him. I didn’t want him safe. I didn’t want Estrella to be trapped in her ruined body for weeks while we fought this out in court.