Chapter 10
The Dangerous Mission

Angela made her way down Castle Hill rehearsing the speech she’d prepared in case anyone gave her trouble. It was a line from one of her plays: “I have business with the Necromancer. You’d best leave me be, or he shall see you to the gates of Hell.” She skulked as she imagined a creature of the night might skulk, keeping to the shadows as she passed by the mill and on through the village. Soon she was at the churchyard. Beyond lay Potter’s Field.

Having never consulted the Necromancer, Angela wasn’t sure how to find him. In her puppet plays, she’d imagined he’d have a little fire to guide the way, but there was none. Nurse had told her that villagers sought him out to contact the dead, or to cast spells to ruin their enemies’ crops or turn their babies into cabbages. So she hid behind a bush, intending to follow one of them.

An hour later, she was still waiting. I could be waiting forever, she thought. I’ll have to go on my own. Angela picked herself up, imagined the field was a giant stage, and made her entrance.

It was hard to see where to go. A blanket of cloud had blown in; the moon and the stars were tucked in bed. She swept the air in front of her to avoid running into bushes, but still stubbed her toes on brick grave markers. The biggest problem was Nurse’s shawl. The coarse knit snagged on things unseen as if fingers were reaching out of the night to pinch her. And the wool rubbing against her ears sounded like creatures whispering.

Angela stood still. The sounds and the pulling stopped. “Who’s there?”

Silence.

I’m imagining things. Angela shivered. She glanced back to where the village should have been, but every last candle had been extinguished. Where was she exactly? She removed the shawl from her head and spun in a circle. Everywhere was nowhere.

That’s when she heard it. A slow, rhythmic tapping. No, not a tapping. What then? A thudding? A thunking? Whatever it was, it was something, somewhere—and something somewhere was better than nothing nowhere.

Angela hurried toward the sound. As she got closer, she heard murmurs and grunts, and saw a tiny light struggling against the night. She ran, catching her foot in the entrance to a weasel’s den. She cried out.

The light disappeared. The thudding and grunts stopped too. Now what she heard was a curse and a scramble.

“Stop! Wait! I know you’re there!” she shouted, and ran even faster toward where the light had been. The ground disappeared. She fell through the air and landed on something hard. It felt like rotting boards. Earth stretched up on either side of her. There was the most horrible stench she’d ever smelled.

She felt up the wall of earth. How would she ever escape? The wood under her feet gave way. Her ankles sank into something squishy. Frantic, she tried to claw her way out, but only loosened the dirt. It fell in her eyes and mouth. She feared the hole would cave in on her. “Help! Please! Come back!”

A hand reached down and gripped her own. “Who are you?” she gasped. “What are you?” There was no answer. Angela took this as her cue: “I have business with the Necromancer. You’d best leave me be, or he shall see you to the gates of Hell.”

“You’ve got business with the Necromancer?”

“Indeed I do,” Angela said in her best heroic voice. “Take me to his dwelling that I might seek his power.” The line had sounded much better in her theater. Still, it had the desired effect. Whoever it was hauled her out, opened the shutter on his lantern, and gasped.

“Little Countess!”

Angela was stunned. “Why, you’re the Boy from the barrens!” She looked down into the hole. “I fell in a grave. Was the sound I heard you digging?”

Hans looked a little sheepish.

Angela gasped. “It was, wasn’t it? You’re a grave robber!”

“No, I’m not!”

This was true as far as it went. Hans had dug up the grave, but he’d yet to enter the Grand Society of Grave Robbers. All month, he’d slept outside the cave. He’d been soaked by thunderstorms, eaten by insects, and burned awake by the sun. Finally, he’d begged Knobbe to let him redeem himself. Tonight had been that chance. But the Little Countess had arrived and Knobbe had fled, leaving him in the worst of all worlds—a failure to his father and a villain to her.

“It’s dangerous for you here,” Hans said glumly. “Let me guide you back to your castle.”

“Not till I’ve seen the Necromancer.”

From out of the night came a laugh as cold and dry as a rustle of birch leaves. “Ah, Little Countess, I’ve been expecting you.”