We burst through the cloud cover, thundering down toward the cemetery from which Cernunnos had taken me. For an instant I saw it as an immortal might, patches of green grass and gray granite memorializing the dead. It was both fascinating and meaningless to one who wouldn’t die: gods might understand ritual, but the connotation of permanent loss gave it all an unfathomable air.

Suzanne Quinley and the boy Rider sat together on a stone bench, two distant points of life bound together by blood. Matilda no longer haunted them, nor could I see any sign of her in the graveyard; Cernunnos had delivered on his promise.

The boy stood as we roared down toward them. Suzanne followed suit more slowly, and for all that I was certain my vision wasn’t clear enough to see it, I still saw the boy offer her a sympathetic smile. He murmured something I didn’t catch under the pounding hooves, then turned away and locked gazes with me.

I bent low over the mare’s mane, thrusting my arm out as we approached the two children. With absolute flawless grace and even more perfect timing, the boy reached for me in turn.

Our arms slammed together, fingers gripping with every ounce of strength we had available. I clenched my stomach and heaved, guiding the boy onto the mare’s back behind me. In very nearly the same motion, I dove off her other side, flinging myself under racing hooves and paws.

The Hunt angled skyward and careened over me, never breaking stride. I rolled through dirt and grass and came up against a gravestone, hooting with laughter. Suzy tore over to me, attention ricocheting between me and the disappearing Hunt. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done!” I scrambled to my feet, feeling like a superhero and in search of a handsome man to kiss. There weren’t any around, so I snatched Suzy up and swung her around in circles until I stumbled from dizziness. Her legs tangled with mine at the sudden cessation of momentum, and we went down in a heap of elbows and knees and laughter.

“You were gone forever!” She whacked my shoulder and rolled away, gasping at the sky. “They’re already gone!”

“I don’t think they’re constrained by details like the conservation of mass and energy.” I dropped my elbow over my eyes, still grinning, then peeled it away again. “How long was I gone? The sun hasn’t gone down—” I pushed up, looking for the horizon. Distant clouds were turning gold, harbinger of a perfect Halloween sunset of red and orange. “Oh, hell.” Gaiety fled, I fumbled my phone out of my jeans pocket and punched in Billy’s number. I hated cell phones, but I’d hate having to race through Seattle at rush hour to bear bad news even more.

“Yeah, Joanie, what is it? Where are you?”

“I’m at the Crown Hill Cemetery. You think you can pull off the impossible in the next half hour?”

“You’re at…” I could hear all the questions he wanted to ask and discarded as not strictly relevant just then. “Depends on the impossible. What do you need?”

“Can you call up Sonny’s friend Patrick and ask him to get some local priests to go around and bless the water in the lawn-sprinkler systems in all the graveyards in town? Before sunset? And get them all turned on,” I added, in case it wasn’t obvious.

Billy sounded like his tongue was having a throw-down with his brain over what ought to be said first. “You want the city’s irrigation system filled with holy water?” won.

I said, “Yes,” then, worried, continued, “I mean, it works that way, right? You don’t have to, like, cart in holy water from Jerusalem to mix with the rest of the water or anything, do you? It can just be blessed and be good to go, can’t it?”

Billy’s tongue was still trying to strangle him. I wished my phone had video capability so I could see what that looked like. It sure sounded awful. “Look, I’ve got this other thing to deal with, and I’m seriously not the person to coordinate a citywide holy-water brigade. You saw that black muck in the air. Even if I’m totally wrong about the cauldron disturbing the dead, getting rid of it has to be good. If I’m right, washing it away before sunset is critical. I really need you to do this.”

I also really didn’t want a man whose wife was about to give birth out chasing a death cauldron with me, but I didn’t think that was an argument that would go over well with my partner, so I left it alone. Billy spent about five more seconds choking on his tongue before saying, “What other thing?”

“The cauldron,” I said evasively. Mentioning premonitions of my death seemed like a bad idea. “If you cover the sprinkler thing, I can deal with the cauldron.” I sounded very confident. I hoped I was right.

“As soon as I’ve got this sprinkler thing under way I’m calling back and you’re telling me where to meet up. I mean it, Joanne. You’re not facing this alone.”

“You’re a big damn hero, Billy Holliday. I’ll talk to you soon.” I hung up, all too aware I hadn’t asked him how his interview with Sandburg had gone, but unwilling to draw the conversation out and maybe let slip that I was on a deadly timetable. For a couple of seconds I looked around, feeling a bit wild-eyed and hoping I’d find a priest or a holy hand grenade lying around waiting to be used.

Instead, I found Daniel Doherty standing at the cemetery gates, a hand to his forehead like he was staving off an ache, and a frown between his eyebrows that said he couldn’t have seen what he’d just seen, but he hadn’t yet figured out how to explain it away. I squared my shoulders, looking for a story that would suit him, and headed over to feed it to him.

Right then, the sun’s shadow slipped away from the cemetery, and the zombies rose up.

I suppose I knew on an intellectual level that graves weren’t especially made for getting out of. I mean, you start with a hermetically sealed casket and then you dump six feet of dirt on top of it. Over time the earth gets compacted, which can’t make it any easier to dig through. So even if you’re a very angry and determined zombie, you’ve kind of got your work cut out for you just escaping from the grave.

Which was, I suppose, why we got hit with an initial wave of zombie bugs, birds and rodents. I bet some people would say if you’ve never picked undead mosquitoes out of your teeth, you’ve never lived. Under that definition, I’d be just as happy to have not lived, thanks.

I drew my rapier, feeling its connection to my armor zot to life with a sound like a lightsaber. I was sure that had to be internal editing, that nobody else heard a funky zwonk! of power lighting up, but I kinda hoped they did. Even zombies ought to be smart enough not to mess with a chick wielding a lightsaber.

Well, human zombies, anyway. A half-rotted squirrel ran at my foot, chittering like mad. I let out a perfectly girlie scream and swatted it away with the tip of my sword. Some fencer I was. I skewered a rat, which was much better in fencing terms, and a lot more awful in real-world terms. It kept trying to get me, teeth clattering and scaly little feet scrabbling in the air. I let out another yell and flung it away, hoping a nice hard smash against a tree or gravestone might end its nasty little unlife.

Something bigger than my head dove at me. I shrieked yet again and ducked, not even trying to strike back. Whatever it was pulled up, rained molty feathers on me, then dived again, this time with an unearthly scree that sounded, well, like the dead crying aloud. I thought maybe it was a goshawk, but I was too busy cowering on the ground, hands over my head, to really get a good look.

Not that the ground was all that good a place to hide from the undead. Half-rotted squirmy things boiled up through the dirt, maybe drawn to my body heat, or maybe drawn to all the noise I was making. For a big tough girl like me, I sure sounded like a fifties housewife encountering a mouse. Worse, I felt like one. My heart was in palpitations and my hands were wet with sweat. I wanted to throw up, but I was afraid the doughnuts I’d been surviving on for the past two days would turn out to have an unlife of their own, too, and would turn on me in bilious disgustingness.