Eighth Grave After Dark

by Darynda Jones

  “You can’t just go traipsing through the woods like that and not tell anyone where you’ve gone.”

  “But, Mo-o-o-o-om,” I said with a schoolgirl whine, “all the cool kids are doing it. And I’m clearly not a virgin, so I’ll survive a traipse through the woods should I come across a slasher.”

  She tsked while dragging me in the front door. “I don’t understand half of what you say.”

  This was like a nightmare. My father gone and my stepmother deciding to pay attention to me after twenty-seven years. Then it hit me. I stilled. It all made sense now. We weren’t on sacred ground. Reyes had lied to me. We were in hell!

  “You need to go upstairs and rest while we clean up.”

  I flashed a boastful smile at Gemma and raised my arms in a long, languid stretch. “You’re right. I’m awfully tired. And Beep has been especially active today. She’s just worn me ragged.”

  Gemma narrowed her gaze before I giggled and hurried upstairs, hoping the loo was desocupado. It was. Thank goodness for small favors. As I washed my hands, I noticed a movement behind me. I turned quickly to find my dad, my wonderful, beautiful father, standing there. I’d caught glimpses of him off and on since we moved to the convent, but he never stayed. He never talked. In fact, every time he showed up, he glanced around nervously, as though he were being watched.

  “Dad,” I said, walking up to him. Even these few seconds were the longest I’d been able to see him since he passed, and my mind reeled with questions. “Dad, are you okay? What’s going on?” I put my hand on his cold face for the first time, and a sob escaped my throat. “Why can’t you talk to me?”

  “Charlotte,” he said, his voice soft. He stared in amazement, as though seeing me for the first time. “My Charlotte. I had no idea what you are. How important you are.”

  “What? Dad—”

  “I’m so proud of you.”

  As long as I kept contact, he couldn’t disappear on me. “Stay and talk to me. Please. I have so many questions.”

  “You have questions?” he asked with a light chuckle. But something caught his attention. He looked toward the bathroom door, breaking my contact, then was gone. I held my hand in the air a few seconds more, savoring the coolness he’d left in his wake, wondering why he disappeared so abruptly.

  A knock sounded at the door, followed by a deep, smooth voice. “Charley?”

  Even through the door, I could feel my husband’s heat. His inferno. Then I looked back to where my dad had just stood. Was it Reyes? Was he afraid of Reyes?

  I opened the door, a new worry creeping into my mind to add to the other one already running rampant. Why would my dad be afraid of him?

  “Hey,” he said, narrowing his lashes on me. “You okay?”

  “Me? What? Of course.”

  He pressed his mouth together, the act causing the most sensual dimples to appear. “Spill.”

  At least I had an excuse for my nervousness now. I could use that to keep the truth at bay a little while longer. Once Reyes learned what I’d done, he may never talk to me again. The thought made my throat constrict.

  “Dutch,” he said, almost in warning.

  “It’s just, I saw my dad.”

  He glanced inside the bathroom. “Just now?”

  “Yeah, but he disappeared again when you walked up.”

  He frowned at me, his gaze darting to his left, but he didn’t say anything. I looked over his shoulder, and he took the opportunity to nuzzle my neck.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  “For a walk.”

  “An odd time for a walk.”

  “An odd time to go check on Artemis,” I countered.

  He stepped back in alarm. “What did you see?”

  It took me a moment, but I realized he thought I was checking up on him. If he thought that, then he was hiding something. Crazy how guilt worked. “Trees. Grass. Bushes. The silvery black hides of hellhounds.”

  A muscle in his jaw flexed with tension “How close to the border did you get?”

  “Not very. I was just at the gazebo. But I could see them in the distance.”

  “If they’re that close, maybe you need to stay away from the gazebo.”

  “Maybe you need to tell me why you were checking on a departed dog who couldn’t possibly get into any trouble.”

  He grinned. “Have you met your dog?”

  He was right. I relaxed my shoulders. “Okay, she can get into trouble, but—”

  “She’s been trying to fight the hounds.”

  I gasped in surprise. “Artemis? Are you kidding me?”

  “I’ve been trying to keep her away from the border.”

  I let out an astonished breath. “Thank you. Why would she even do that?”

  “She’s your guardian and she sees them as a threat to you. She’s very perceptive.”

  I nodded absently.

  “So, we’re grilling. You hungry?”

  “Aren’t I always?” He had been a fantastic cook before, but put that man behind a grill, and the heavens opened up to watch him work.

  “I’ll bring you a plate.”

  “Perfect.” He was still wearing the tux, the sight of him breathtaking. “You can’t change, though.”

  “No?” he asked, the dimples back in full force.

  “No. I have this whole James Bond fantasy going on.”

  “You know, I don’t have to return this until Monday.”

  I curled my fingers into the lapel and pulled him close. “I have a feeling this is going to be a very Moonraker kind of evening.”

  * * *

  Reyes left me at the door to our bedroom, where Cookie and Amber were changing. I joined them, changing out of my dress into a pair of stretchy pants—they had to be stretchy to accommodate my girth—a sweater, and a soft pair of boots.

  “Okay,” Cookie said as Amber helped her out of her dress, giggling when her mother’s hair got stuck in the zipper, “what’s on the agenda?”

  I put my hand on my hip. “Your pre-honeymoon honeymoon.” When she started to argue, I added, “Amber, Quentin, and I are going to make popcorn and watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

  Amber nodded exuberantly.

  “You’re just saying that to get me to leave,” she said, freeing her hair at last. “I know you. Quentin and Amber are going to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show while you work the case.”

  She had me dead to rights. “True, but I can do this while you’re banging my uncle.”

  A loud bark of laughter burst from Amber before she contained it.

  “I promise to fill you in the minute you get back. This is your wedding day, Cook.”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Amber said. She winked at me. “I have your six, Aunt Charley.”

  We high-fived. I loved that kid. But Cookie shook her head as she hung up her dress.

  “Robert and I have already agreed. I’m going to help you with the case while he does what he can on his end. He’s already gone into town to see if there have been any new developments.”

  “Cook, this is insane.”

  She walked to the sink to wash the glitter off her face. “Charley, we aren’t going on our real honeymoon until after Beep’s arrival anyway. It’s okay.” I sensed a ripple of apprehension go through Cookie when she mentioned her honeymoon. I’d sensed it almost every time we talked about it. If I didn’t know better—and admittedly, I didn’t—I would’ve sworn Cookie didn’t want to go on a honeymoon at all.

  Still, it was her wedding day, for heaven’s sake. No bride should work on her wedding day. I was about 90 percent certain there was a law against it. Then again, who was I to argue?

  “Okay, I need everything you can get. Friends. Social media activity. Phone calls lasting more than a couple of minutes.”

  “She’s fifteen,” Amber reminded me. “All her phone calls last more than a couple of minutes.”

  I smiled at her. “Excellent input, grasshopper.” I’d make a PI out of Amber yet.

>   She flashed her pearly whites.

  I took a few pages out of the file Kit had left with me. “I’ll go check in with Rocket, inquire about Faris Waters’s … status, and then comb through her texts. If I find anything suspicious, we can cross-reference them with her phone calls. If she was lured somewhere by a predator, I want to know.”

  Cookie’s face brightened as though she’d been champing at the bit to work on a new case. It had been a while. We’d done some small side jobs that didn’t require our presence, though nothing of this caliber for a long time. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this had more to do with her honeymoon than with the case.

  I reached over and brushed glitter off her cheek, regret consuming me nonetheless. No one’s wedding day should be spent looking for a missing child.

  “Do you think she’s still alive?” Amber asked.

  Cookie placed a hand on her shoulder as I glanced up toward the attic.

  “One way to find out.”

  6

  My death will probably be caused by being sarcastic at the wrong time.

  —TRUE FACT

  I left Cookie to get what she could on Faris’s social life while Amber went to find Quentin. He was staying the night, since he didn’t have to be back at the School for the Deaf in Santa Fe until the next day. While Amber wanted to help with the case, she decided spending quality time with the cutest boy on the planet—her words—would be more fun.

  I walked to the end of the hall on the second floor, where another set of stairs led to the attic. Rocket had been staying up there since we moved here. We’d already had to replace the drywall twice. Rocket filled his days scratching the names of those who passed onto the walls. He knew the name of every person who’d died everywhere in the world. There was no way he really wrote them all. I’d read once that there were over 150,000 deaths worldwide every single day. So I wasn’t sure why he chose to scratch certain names and not others, but for decades, recording the names of the departed had been what he considered his job. Who was I to argue? Surely there was a method to his madness. I’d have to pay closer attention someday, to see if the names he inscribed had any kind of connection to one another.

  Just as I was about to ascend the stairs, I felt a rush of cold air at my neck. It whispered through my hair and caused goose bumps to erupt across my skin. I turned and saw her, the girl I’d been trying to talk to for months. Not the sobbing woman in my closet. She’d shown up just a few days ago. This other girl had already been living in the convent when we moved in. She was a young, almost childlike, nun, but her habit was of an older style than what they generally wore now.

  I stopped and turned slowly toward her as one would do with a wild animal one was trying to capture. I didn’t want to scare her off. She’d been trying to show me something; I was sure of it. Every time she appeared, she would hurry away from me, stopping to glance back every so often, as though making sure I was following her. But every time I did follow, I’d lose her in the forest.

  “Not this time,” I said as she turned away.

  She walked quickly down the hall toward the main stairs and disappeared. I descended the stairs and went out the front door, knowing she’d be waiting for me. And she was, her expression full of fear, her lashes spiked with recent tears before, just like always, she ran away.

  “I’m not losing you,” I said to her back. She didn’t acknowledge me.

  We continued on the same path as always, the one that led in the opposite direction from where I’d been earlier, the way long since overgrown with vegetation, and as always, she disappeared from there. I stopped and whirled around in frustration. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. What was she trying to show me?

  I continued deeper into the forest. “Where did you go?” I asked the empty air around me. Maybe I needed to have Angel tail her. Perhaps he could keep up. She was like Rocket, believing I could run through solid objects just as she could.

  The last time we played hide-and-seek, I’d scoured the forest just to the left of the trail where it dead-ended. This time I went right. I stumbled over the uneven ground then got in some cardio when I passed through a spiderweb, flailing my arms and shuddering a lot. I heard growls in the distance. I stopped and the scent of lavender hit me. Very faint, but there nonetheless. Why would I smell lavender out here? After gaining my bearings, I realized I was getting closer to the border, but I still had a few yards yet. Or I did until I felt a sharp push from behind.

  I toppled forward as the land slanted beneath me. Barely able to catch myself on a branch, I held on, but my feet had gone out from under me, the branch broke, and I was sliding down the side of the mountain. The trees around me blurred. They scraped and cut until I was able to grab hold of a root. The sudden stop jerked at my shoulder painfully. I had no idea the mountain was so steep on that side of the house. I fought to get my footing and was startled when someone reached out and grabbed me.

  I looked up into the huge frightened eyes of the nun. She pulled and I struggled until I had crawled onto even ground. At first, I wondered if she’d pushed me. If so, then she wouldn’t have helped me.

  “Thank you,” I said, dusting myself off. She didn’t answer. “Did you see who pushed me?”

  She just stared. I was getting that a lot lately. No matter. I had a very good idea I knew who had done the deed.

  After scanning the area, I walked as close to the edge of the drop-off as I dared, keeping a death grip on a tree, because something had caught my attention moments before I went over.

  There was one point I could see out over a clearing with a stream running through it. I’d never traveled down there, because it was beyond the border, but neither could Reyes travel that far. Yet there he was, standing pretty as you please by a group of bushes, talking to Angel. My Angel. My sidekick and lead—aka only—investigator.

  First off, that was far past the border that Osh had staked out. Reyes should have been mincemeat. Second, what on earth would Reyes and Angel have to discuss?

  I eased closer and squinted. The clearing was beautiful. It was one of those places perfect for a picnic. The sun hung low on the horizon, glistening across the field, elongating Reyes’s shadow. He looked pensive, angry even, as he spoke to Angel. He no longer wore the tux jacket, and the top buttons of the starched white shirt had been undone, the sleeves rolled up.

  He scrubbed his face with his fingers and turned sharply from Angel. He and Angel had never gotten along. Why would they be talking secretively now? Did he know about the Loehrs? Had Angel been spying on me earlier? Fear seized my lungs for a solid ten seconds before reality sank in. I looked awful with a blue face.

  I filled my lungs and turned back to the young nun, but she was gone. And being left alone in the woods with someone who was clearly trying to kill me made me a tad uncomfortable, so I hurried back to the convent, doing my best to shake off the dread I felt. Was Duff trying to kill me? He’d said something earlier about pushing me, and I’d definitely been pushed. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.

  After sneaking back into the house, I rushed upstairs to change again since I was now covered in dirt and grass; then I headed back to the stairs that led to the attic. If the nun showed up again, I was not going to chase her. It was getting dark out, and there was a homicidal pusher roaming the countryside.

  I took the steep stairs slowly. I’d been having a pain in my abdomen since my fall, and it was getting sharper with every step I took. I didn’t think it was labor. It was too sharp and too concentrated in one area. I’d simply bruised myself on my trip down. Taking in a deep breath, I opened the door to the attic. Rocket was there, scratching a name into the Sheetrock.

  He turned and brightened. “Miss Charlotte!” After lifting me into a hug that magnified the pain in my side, he set me down, turned back to his work, and started scratching again.

  That was a short conversation. I leaned back against a column and said, “Rocket, I have a name for you.”
>
  “I have too many.”

  “Too many names?”

  “Yes. Too too many.”

  “I’m sorry. Can you check on one for me?”

  “I don’t think so, Miss Charlotte.”

  “Why ever not?” I asked, massaging the pain.

  “I have too many.”

  “That was a beautiful wedding.” Strawberry stood beside me, holding her bald Barbie doll. “Cookie was so pretty. I wish I could have done her hair.”

  A sharp stab of horror washed over me at the thought. “Is Blue here, too?” I had yet to see Rocket’s little sister. That girl was the best at hide-and-seek I’d ever seen.

  “Yes, she’s in the round room.”

  I frowned in thought. “What round room?”

  “The tiny one.”

  “What tiny one?”

  “The one downstairs nobody knows about.”

  This could go on for days. “Okay,” I said, acquiescing. “Well, I just hope she’s having fun.”

  “She likes it in there. It’s quiet.”

  “Wonderful.” I suddenly wondered if she was talking about the closet we couldn’t get open. There was a door to a closet or a room or pantry in the laundry room off the kitchen. A door that was stuck. Or locked. Or both. Even Reyes couldn’t open it. It became quite the challenge for a while; then we moved on to other, more interesting things.

  What no one understood was that nothing, nothing, is more interesting than a locked door nobody could open. I had every intention of getting inside that room. I just didn’t know how yet.

  “Okay, seriously, Rocket. I need you to check on Faris Martina Waters.”

  He seemed to sadden. “Not on my list.”

  “Oh,” I said, brightening. “That’s good.”

  “Yet,” he added.

  That was bad. “So, soon?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “No breaking rules, Miss Charlotte.” He continued to claw at the drywall.

  And though I also knew the answer to my next question, I tried anyway. “Do you know where she is, Rocket?”

  “Not where, only if. No breaking rules.”

  Damn it. “For your information, rules were made to be broken. Just whose rules are these, Rocket? Who gave them to you?”