I didn’t so much try to conjure up my necromancy as release it. The best I could describe it was like having a fist in my diaphragm, a fist that I kept clenched tight, holding on to my power so it didn’t escape. This was unfolding my fingers, spreading my hand wide, letting go that tension that was almost always there just under my ribs. It was like letting out a breath I always had to hold, and finally being able to be free.

Maybe for some it was magic and that was why they needed all the tools and ointments, but for me it was a psychic ability, and all I had to do was unleash it. My necromancy was like a cool breeze flowing outward from me. It didn’t actually move so much as a hair on anyone’s head, so maybe breeze wasn’t the right word, but I could feel it seeking outward from me almost like the rings in water when you throw a pebble into it, except I was the pebble, and the power tended to be a little more powerful and directed in the direction I was facing. I could “feel” behind me, but it wasn’t as strong. I had no idea why.

Smith shivered beside me, and Clive Perry actually took a step back from all of us. He didn’t really feel anything, but I’d learned that his grandmother, like mine, had practiced as a Vaudun priestess, except his had been a bad person and mine hadn’t been. It had made him skittish around me, but not have a problem with Smith.

I searched for the undead. My power never even hesitated at a truly dead body. It was as if my power saw it the same as a table or chair: inert. Then I caught a hint of vampire, like something tugged at the edge of my attention, and I’d learned to direct my power so that it was like a scenting hound. I followed that “feeling,” that energy, and if the pull got stronger, then it was vampires; if not, it could be ghouls, or zombies, or just a place where vampires had been recently. The feeling got stronger, and stronger, and now my power was being pulled.