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as I passed. The spirits didn’t give up, following me at a safe distance, howling. I still felt the chill of their presence, the malevolence of their intent. Who had brought them from the grave? And for what purpose?
    A thousand years ago a necromancer would summon hundreds of spirits to march before an army, to strike fear into the hearts of the opposing forces. Many fled. If the necromancer was highly skilled, the specters could even kill. But that was history. In modern times, spirits were only called for the purpose of communing with loved ones—séances and that sort of thing.
    Someone’s surviving relative had a lot of money, and some pretty pissed off dead family judging from the specters following me.
    The locked gates of the cemetery were in sight. Darn, I’d need to climb over them, too. I wasn’t dressed for this sort of thing, and my shoes sure as heck weren’t ideal either. I paused, gritting my teeth at the wave of cold that surrounded me from the spirits. I took off my cute sandals, looping the straps over my wrist. Then I began to climb.
    The protective tunnel of light held until I was over the fence, then it vanished plunging me into a world of darkness. I jumped back a few steps from the gate, my heart pounding until I realized that the spirits weren’t rushing to attack. As my eyes adjusted I saw the specters safely inside the graveyard. Interesting. I paced the gates a few moments, watching them as they bounced against invisible barriers. Were they unable to leave the cemetery boundaries? Could they only go a certain distance from the resting place of their physical bodies? Or could they only wander so far from their summoner?
    Either way, they were on one side of a set of iron gates and I was on the other. I smiled, waved, and headed southeast, leaving them behind.

Chapter 3
     
    E VERY WALL SPACE of my tiny one bedroom apartment was covered with books. They were on my little café table, across the kitchen counters, on the floors, couch, bed. Normally they were three-deep in the cheap bookshelves and stacked in precarious columns on the floor. Now the bookshelves stood empty.
    I was exhausted. I’d been up all night researching this symbol and I needed to be to work in an hour. Well, I hadn’t spent all of my time on the symbol. I’d been acutely aware of carrying a large sum of money on me as I made my way through the city, and my apartment wasn’t in the best neighborhood. I figured most robberies were committed by guys, so I hid the cash in a box of tampons. Then I spent about an hour on a yucky-face spell to deter anyone who might decide to check the feminine hygiene products for money. After work I’d give the cash to the landlord, but until then I wanted to take every precaution to make sure it stayed right here. Paranoid, but as Guardians of the Temple with all of its magical artifacts, we Templars tended to take the possibility of theft very seriously.
    Money secure. Still no idea on the symbol. And I was going to be dead on my feet for my shift. Hopefully I wouldn’t screw up too many coffee orders. That wasn’t the only worry on my mind this morning, though. Those specters in the cemetery haunted me in a metaphorical sense. I hadn’t seen any signs of a pending zombie apocalypse outside my window this morning, so I was assuming whatever purpose the spirits were summoned for was benign. Still…
    I grabbed the quickest shower in the history of mankind and ran down the stairs in my work attire with a mess of wet hair and no makeup. I needed to pick up my car anyway. If I hustled, I’d have time for a quick stop before my shift.
    Splurging on a taxi with a twenty from the tampon box, I retrieved my car and was parked in front of the cemetery in record time. Funny how different things look during the daylight hours. The neighborhood which had seemed so dark and menacing last night now just appeared battered and sad. The garbage bags in the alleyway had spilled open where rodents