Letesia had been running the ritual for three nights in a row.

Her fingers trembled with exhaustion, but rest wasn't an option.

The search demanded focus—exquisite, surgical precision. A single mistake, and the current would snap. And when the current died, so did she.

The cards lay before her in a crooked fan—black, weathered things, soft around the edges as if they'd been breathing. The air in the trailer pulsed with the heaviness of the coming storm. The lamp above her flickered, protesting the uneven flow of electricity.

Letesia muttered a few words in that ancient, viscous tongue, and her eyes seemed to sink into the paper. The air thickened, holding its breath.

Then she exhaled sharply and hissed, "Damn it… of course you carry charms. More than one, I bet."

She leaned back, eyes closed, trying to quiet the tremor in her hands. The tea at her elbow had long gone tepid, but she lifted it anyway, savoring the brief illusion of calm. The trailer was a cocoon — curtains faded from years of sunlight, candles trembling in their wax pools, the old heater murmuring like an old friend. For a moment, it all felt safe.

An illusion.

The cold came first. Barely a breath of it, crawling down her spine. Then the prickle in her temples — that signal she'd learned to dread.

Someone was coming.

She straightened in one abrupt motion and peered through the rain-smeared window. The world outside was little more than shadow and silver streaks, but she felt him before she saw him. A presence moving through the rain like a knife through wet paper.

"William," she muttered, irritation threading through her fatigue. "Of course. Who else would wander through a thunderstorm at three in the damn morning?"

She pulled the door open. The wind hit her full in the face — wet, sharp, smelling of electricity.

William stood on the step, soaked through, hair plastered to his forehead. In his arms, he held something that made her stomach turn to ice.

Half a woman. Or what was left of one. Her skin had that greenish-grey tinge, the color of rot soaked too long in water. A ragged wound gaped at her throat, leaking something black that wasn't quite blood.

"Hey, Les," he mumbled, strange and sheepish. "Hope I didn't wake you."

Letesia blinked once. Twice. Then, in a voice soft and dangerous, she said,

"William. What did you drag to my door... and why?"

She crossed her arms. "Don't tell me you've finally decided to explore your… unconventional interests. Necrophilia in the rain — how poetically grotesque."

"Ha. Real funny," he muttered, breath uneven. "No. This—this isn't just a corpse. I think it's a zombie."

Her laugh cracked the air, short and humorless. "A zombie. Please. Those things fester in the southern swamps where the mana rots the soil. You don't get that kind of filth in Pennsylvania. Not with this weather."

But as she said it, she saw it — the faint twitch beneath the corpse's sleeve. A ripple too deliberate to be chance. Then, fingers flexing once, like a nerve remembering what to do.

They both froze.

From the woman's throat came a sound — wet, gurgling, the gasp of someone drowning and refusing to accept it.

"Oh hell," William whispered.

Letesia's lips curved, not in fear, but in that peculiar, dangerous fascination she reserved for things that shouldn't exist. "Now that—" she said quietly, "—is interesting. Bring her in. Quick."

He hesitated. She stepped aside, motioning impatiently.

The smell came first — damp earth, sugar gone bad, old death. William lowered the body onto the cracked linoleum, grimacing.

"Not there!" Letesia barked. "On the floor, idiot!"

He obeyed, eyes fixed on the hollow spaces where the woman's pupils were starting to darken, like something was trying to find its way back behind them.

"So," Letesia said evenly, crouching near the body. "Two kids kidnapped. What comes next?"

"Yeah," he stammered. "Two. I heard about it this morning. Something—something felt wrong. I went to the house looking for... I don't even know. There was no sign of them. She—this thing—just came out of nowhere and attacked me. I tore out her throat, but she... didn't stop moving."

Letesia didn't look up. She just reached out, tracing the air an inch above the corpse, her fingers trembling again but not from fatigue this time. Then she reached over and smacked William lightly on the back of the head.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Her tone was soft, dangerously calm. "We have rules, remember? Beneath the radar. You don't move without me."

"I just—"

He never finished. The body spasmed, back arching, skull thudding against the floor.

A sound burst from her mouth — not a scream, not even human.

It was anguish folded in on itself.

Letesia stepped back, drawing an amulet from her belt. Her voice dropped to a whisper colder than the storm outside.

"Congratulations, William," she said, eyes never leaving the twitching corpse.

"Looks like you've brought us something that refuses to stay dead."

"Hey… uh, Les?" William's voice cracked the silence like a twig underfoot. "Are those—branches? Growing out of her eyes?"

He spoke almost in a whisper, as if afraid the dead woman might overhear. And maybe she could. The remains on the trailer floor still steamed faintly, rainwater mingled with that stench of rot and earth. From the slick hollows of her cheeks, two gray-green shoots jutted outward—thin, brittle, pocked with bulbous knots that glimmered like insect eyes.

Letesia crouched closer, studying them with a small tilt of her head.

"Hmm…" Her voice barely carried. "Not branches. Roots… or maybe antennae. She sees through them. Smells mana. I've only seen this kind of filth in the South." She turned to William with a crooked half-smile. "So it is southern magic after all."

Without hesitation, Letesia reached forward and yanked one of the roots free.

The corpse arched, sinews snapping tight. From the torn sockets erupted a thick black ichor, the stink of marsh gas and decay so sharp it burned the air. A sound came out of that ruined face—not quite a scream, not a breath, but something low and guttural that made the candles quiver.

"Jesus," William gasped, stumbling back. "You don't think that's a little cruel? She—she feels that, doesn't she?"

Letesia looked at him over her shoulder, her expression unreadable. "Oh, I'm sorry, are we pitying corpses now?" Her tone was flat, ragged with fatigue rather than sarcasm. "Trust me—if she could stand again, she'd take your arm clean off."

She pulled the other root free, hard. The sound that followed was like wet paper tearing. The dead woman collapsed into stillness, mouth open, eyes dark and hollow again.

Letesia wiped her hands on a rag, sighed softly, and said, almost tenderly, "All right, sweetheart… let's see what's left inside that pretty head of yours."

Her palm pressed against the woman's cold forehead. The skin was slick and chill, like the belly of a fish dragged from deep water. Letesia closed her eyes, whispering in that same secret language—syllables that rasped like bone against metal.

"Come on, darling," she murmured at last, her voice taking on the ache of a mother's lullaby. "Show Mama what you've been hiding."

William stood forgotten in the corner, unsure where to put his hands. Watching her work always did this to him—both awe and dread twisting his gut. When Letesia slipped past the veil, it was as if something ancient watched back through her.

The candles guttered. The trailer air went thick and heavy, trembling with the pressure of something vast and buried. Beneath the floor, there came a dull sound—slow, rhythmic, too steady to be anything but a heartbeat.

Letesia spoke again, and her voice now sounded layered, as if spoken through water.

"Yes… I see it now. She ran from the morgue. Someone opened the door for her. Not human."

Her brow furrowed, breath catching. "She was being called back. To the house—the family she served. The children."

She paused, then suddenly snapped her head upward, eyes open but unfocused.

"Someone summoned her," she said softly. "Someone very insistent."

"She was the nanny," William muttered. "I remembered. Saw her picture on the news. Murdered right before the kids vanished."

"There it is," Letesia whispered, nodding. Her eyes gleamed with a wet, black sheen. "They're bound. Things like this return to where they die—when death is violent, fast, and dirty."

Her fingertips brushed the corpse's forehead again. The tremor that passed through her hand was almost electric.

"All right, little one… show me who did this to you."

The air thickened until it felt alive. A fog curled from nowhere; the lamp above them flashed and groaned. Suddenly her vision wasn't hers. The nanny's memories tore through her—images jagged and broken, like glass catching the light.

A rain-soaked porch. The high-pitched shrieking of children. A woman's last scream cut short. Two figures standing in the storm.

The man—pale-haired, eyes like chilled glass. The woman—black-skinned and beautiful, cruelty etched into her face. Her right arm shimmered with sigils that writhed across her flesh like snakes made of ink.

Letesia gasped, tearing free of the trance as though she'd been dragged up from deep water.

"They were together," she said, voice hoarse, raw. "A man with blond hair. A black woman covered in marks. They killed the nanny. And they took the children."

William's face was pale as the corpse. "You saw them clearly? We can find them?"

She looked up at him. The shadows from the candles were crawling across her features as though alive.

"Oh, I'll find them," she said quietly. "But now they know I'm looking."

On the floor, the dead woman twitched. Her lips cracked open.

"She's… coming…" the corpse whispered, breath hissing like wind through reeds.

Letesia snapped her fingers, and one of the candles flared to life again—its flame stuttering like it was afraid of its own existence. The trailer filled with the smell of burnt wax and damp earth, that kind of scent that seeps into the walls and never quite leaves.

William was still staring at the corpse, as if sheer concentration might stop it from moving again. He stepped gingerly over one of the severed roots.

"So," he began under his breath, "what the hell is this, Les? Not your garden‑variety zombie, right?"

Letesia's mouth tilted into something that wasn't quite a smile, though her eyes stayed tight and alert.

"Not exactly. A normal zombie's just a puppet—meat with a string. This one…" She nodded at the motionless body. "This is southern work. Swamp witches, delta warlocks, that crowd. Their methods are different. They don't just raise the dead—they thread a piece of soul into it. Sometimes someone else's. Sometimes their own."

William made a face. "Why the hell would anyone do that?"

"Control," she said simply. "And fear. You plant part of yourself in a corpse, you don't just get a servant—you make a bond. You see what it sees, feel what it touches. You hear the ground whisper through it. Down south, entire bloodlines were born that way—the ones who speak through flesh." Her voice bent the air between them, half‑mocking, half‑reverent. "Charming heritage, huh?"

She picked up one of the roots and lifted it toward the lamp. Up close, it looked almost surgical—veins dried into the bark, like anatomy trapped in wood.

"These little beauties," she said, turning it in her fingers, "they're called eyelets. Witch sight. They let the controller look through the dead, no matter how far the body wanders. Signal runs through root to mistress like a pulse. It runs on necrowave—living and decaying matter spun into one thread."

William turned away, gagging softly. "Sounds like a goddamn nightmare."

"That's because it is."

Her tone was calm, clinical. "Down there everything breathes death. The soil's thick with it. To kill something—animal, man—down there is almost worship. They treat death the way we treat water: a thing you can use, drink, drown in, and never question why."

"So the nanny…" William gestured uneasily toward the corpse. "They just didn't let her die?"

"Oh, they let her die," Letesia said, her voice low. "They just didn't let her leave. First they flood the body with swamp toxin. Slows the soul on its way out. Then—" she pointed at the faint marks along the body's skin "—they etch runes on the open flesh. That links her last memory to the will of whoever's binding her. Finally comes the neck mark. Right there." She pointed at the broken throat. "That's where they insert what they call the Key."

William swallowed, pressing a hand to the wall to steady himself. "Key to what?"

Her stare went distant, inward.

"To life. To death. Both at once," she murmured. "It's sealed with a sigil. As long as that sigil stands, the body will rise again—burn it, bury it, doesn't matter. Sometimes even if the witch dies, the corpse keeps moving. Still taking commands from the grave. Like a blind dog that won't stop hunting its dead master."

William made a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. "Christ, stop. I'm gonna puke."

"That's why," Letesia said, a faint smirk twisting her mouth, "you don't meddle in witchcraft unless you know which end of the blade is theirs." She leaned back against the table, eyes glinting. "I watched a fool once try to play hero. Thought he'd ended one of these by cutting her in half. An hour later, both halves were crawling—one toward him, one toward home."

Silence draped over the trailer for a moment, heavy and listening. The rain outside thickened; lightning flared, throwing crooked shadows across the walls.

Letesia sank into the chair by the window. Her reflection swayed in the glass, ghostlike under the trembling light.

"If a southern witch's involved," she said finally, almost to herself, "then somebody paid for it. No one does work like this for free."

"You think the kids aren't the real target?" William asked quietly.

Her eyes met his, dark and certain.

"Anyone can steal a child," she murmured. "But only people like them hunt for what's inside. Souls are currency down there, and those two we saw—they're not collecting ransom. They're collecting power."

Outside, thunder rolled close—too close—and something slammed in the distance: a car door, or maybe not. William flinched all the same.

He pointed at the corpse. "We need to get rid of it. Before she… before it wakes up again."

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