Things She's Seen

by Pat Esden

  There were things like the cambion out there too. Sure, they were protected inside the motel room’s ward, and in the van, but they wouldn’t be in the cemetery. It didn’t seem like Magus Dux could have figured out what they were up to—or that he necessarily cared if they dug up Saille’s body. Still, they hadn’t foreseen his involvement or Rhianna’s murder until it happened. He could be one step ahead of them now, or right behind them. He could have even been involved with the Circle’s problems all along, even way back when Saille was killed.

  Em turned around and raised her face, letting the water cascade against her skin, breathing the steam. She closed her eyes, clamping them tight. Please Alice, watch over and protect us tonight.

  Chapter 23

  You meet me at the grave. It’s quiet and dark, the moon as pale as white lilies.

  I look down, across the river at the drift of blue light on leaves, to their ghosts.

  You foresaw them like this in a nightmare from which you woke in terror,

  as if pulled by a string of children’s cries.

  —Memory. A client’s premonition. Dalton, Massachusetts. 14 years old.

  The moonlight shimmered on the chain-link fence, six feet tall and perfectly straight. Em shoved her hands into the warmth of her pockets, watching as Chloe and Devlin scaled the fence and dropped down on the other side.

  After she’d showered, Em ate while Gar and Chloe left the motel room to dispose of any clothes that had Rhianna’s blood on them. Between the bath and the food, her uneasiness had subsided by the time they returned. All she felt was relief that soon they’d be a lot closer to proving the Circle’s innocence and helping Saille find peace.

  Gar patted her shoulder. “Your turn.”

  She latched on to the fence. Its mesh rattled as she shimmied up. She flung her leg over the top and climbed halfway down, then Devlin grasped her by the waist and helped her jump noiselessly to the ground.

  “Careful,” Gar whispered as he passed the duffel bag full of shovels to Devlin. Then he vaulted over the fence like an Olympic gymnast. He gestured for them to follow, then loped under the evergreens and into the spidery moonlight cast down through their branches.

  “I hope he’s not expecting us to keep up,” Chloe whispered.

  Devlin tucked the bundle of shovels under his arm and flicked on a flashlight, brightening a narrow swath of ground ahead of them. “What do you expect? Like he said, it’s his loup-garou nature.”

  Em bit her tongue, keeping her thoughts to herself as she followed them away from the fence and deeper into the grove of trees. Gar really was amazing, and the more she learned about him, the more she liked him.

  His outline appeared ahead of them, silhouetted among the trees. He circled back, then guided them more slowly through sparser woods and into the cemetery. Under the gleam of moonlight, the cemetery’s neatly trimmed bushes and weeping trees glimmered silver. They passed an angel statue that truly looked ethereal and an obelisk that cast a shadow in the shape of a hunched man.

  Gar led them across a dirt drive and into a patchwork of mausoleums and slightly sunken graves. The sensation of decaying bodies beneath her feet lightened Em’s steps and filled her with comfort. Dust to dust. The cycle of life completing itself. The only sounds were the soft swish of their movements and the murmur of a ghostly voice reciting poetry, too far off for Em to make out more than an occasional word. It was truly pleasant.

  Chloe hooked her arm with Em’s and snugged her close. “I wish Midas was here,” she said. “I bet he has a gizmo for jamming security cameras. I’d sure rather be walking on a road than over these creepy graves.”

  “Me too,” Em fibbed, though she agreed about disabling the security cameras. Those cameras had allowed them to use maps and street views to plan out the safest route through the cemetery in detail. Unfortunately, they were also the main enemy as far as getting in and out undetected.

  Chloe released Em’s arm and flicked her fingers to ignite a tangerine-size energy ball. It hissed and smoldered, sending sparks of brightness fanning in front of them like a flashlight beam.

  As they left the older graves and crossed into a newer section, Em’s sixth sense started to prickle and more ghostly voices reached her. A woman weeping. A child’s cries. A tuneless whistle. The air chilled as an apparition paced past them, unaware of their presence.

  Chloe hugged herself. “I may not be a medium, but I sensed that.”

  “There are more spirits in this part than the other section,” Em said. She pulled her hands up into the insulated sleeves of her new jacket, shivering from the sudden drop in temperature.

  “Anything we need to worry about?” Gar asked.

  “Not that I can tell,” Em said, hoping she wasn’t missing something.

  They hurried across a paved drive and down a row of modern gravestones. The frost on the grass thickened and icy fog billowed up from the ground. An owl swooped past. In the far-off distance, a police siren screamed and then fell silent.

  “We have to be almost there,” Chloe said.

  Gar bent close to Devlin and jutted his chin toward a monument shaped like a Celtic cross, ahead and off to their right. “Is that the one Zeus told us to look for?”

  “Maybe. I’ll go check.” Devlin handed the shovels to Gar. With his flashlight cutting a path ahead of him, he jogged behind one of the shrubs that flanked the Celtic cross. A second later, he reappeared and gestured with the flashlight beam at a knee-high gravestone a few yards farther into the darkness. “It’s right here.”

  Chloe blew out a relived breath. “Thank goodness.”

  “I agree,” Em said, as they rushed to join him. “I was starting to wonder if we’d walked right past it.” Now they just had to hope Zeus was right about Saille’s casket not being sealed in a concrete burial vault. He’d been at Saille’s funeral, but that was years ago. It wasn’t impossible that he’d remembered that detail incorrectly.

  When they reached the grave, Chloe increased the strength of her energy ball, floodlighting the headstone. It was natural rock with butterflies etched above a simple inscription:

  Saille McClure Webster

  June 21st, 1908–June 21st, 1983

  The end is but the beginning, so mote it be.

  For a moment, everyone bowed their heads in reverent silence. Then Gar thrust one of the shovels into the ground. “Let’s get this over with and get out of here,” he said.

  “Wait a minute. I want to try something.” Devlin hurried to the foot of the grave.

  Gar grinned. “I was wondering if you had some landscaping trick up your sleeve.”

  “It won’t eliminate all the work, but it should help.” Devlin knelt and placed his hands on the grass, fingers spread. He glanced up. “Everyone might want to step back. I’m going to attempt to peel the sod from the dirt.”

  Em retreated with Chloe to stand beside Saille’s headstone. As much as she respected Gar’s prowess, she was glad Devlin had taken the lead on this. He was the Circle’s high priest, and he hadn’t gotten to be that so young purely because he was a Marsh. She’d worked conjoined magic with him and felt the searing strength of his energy. Also, being in charge might help take his mind off Athena, at least for the moment.

  Devlin closed his eyes, the hum of magic rippling out from his fingertips. His voice echoed in the air. “Leaves. Blades. Roots. Release the earth. Reveal what lays beneath. I beseech you. In the name of the Great Mother, show to me what lies beneath thy hold!”

  A low rumble reverberated under Em’s feet. The ground shuddered.

  Chloe dropped to her knees. She pressed her hands against the earth, her energy crackling outward from her fingertips and joining with Devlin’s. “Reveal what lays beneath.”

  “I beseech you!” Devlin demanded.

  Steam hissed from the ground. The earth shook and rippled.


  “Holy crap,” Em said, struggling to keep her footing.

  Devlin sent another wave of energy snap-crackling into the ground. “Release. Now!”

  A ripping sound, like a tent zipper yanked open, reverberated and the grass peeled back from the grave in a single sheet, revealing the dirt.

  “Wow. That was fucking impressive, though a little loud.” Gar held his hand out to Devlin, offering to help him to his feet. “You don’t happen to have another trick up your sleeve, like, say, one that will remove the next few yards of dirt down to the casket?”

  Sweat glistened on Devlin’s forehead and temples. He wiped it off with his arm. “I wish. Unfortunately, the spell is designed for gardening, not grave digging.”

  “Guess I better get to work, then.” Gar thrust his shovel deep into the naked dirt.

  A hollow thunk reverberated.

  “What the hell?” Gar glared at the ground, confused. “That sounded—and felt—like wood. It can’t be the casket. Not this close to the surface.”

  He began to dig furiously, excavating dirt off a wide swath. Em grabbed the other shovel and joined in. The sound could have been his shovel hitting a burial vault. But it hadn’t made a ping like metal hitting concrete.

  Thunk. Em’s shovel hit something with an equally hollow sound.

  “It is a casket,” she said, but something was off. She didn’t sense the natural peacefulness of Saille’s decaying body. Instead she felt—

  Her sixth sense whispered what she also felt in her heart. Emptiness.

  Chloe brought a new energy ball to life, kneading it between her hands until its brightness illuminated the area around the grave. Devlin pinpointed his flashlight beam on the spot where Gar was working. In less than a minute, the entire top of a simple pine casket was revealed.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Gar said. “It was barely under the grass.”

  Devlin shook his head. “I should have realized something was up. The turf came free too easily, as if the grass was barely rooted.”

  Setting the shovel aside, Em knelt on the edge of the grave and touched the casket. She hated to tell them that the situation might be far worse than a casket buried too close to the surface. If she was right, then any chance of testing Saille’s body and implicating Rhianna in her murder was gone. She didn’t want to say anything, but she had to.

  She got back to her feet. “I—I think the casket’s empty.”

  Devlin’s horrified gaze darted from her to the casket. “It can’t be.”

  Gar wedged the tip of his shovel into the crease between the casket’s body and lid. “We’ll know for sure soon.”

  “Let me give you a hand.” Chloe stepped up close to Gar, her forehead wrinkling in concentration as she compressed her energy ball until it became a sizzling mass of power, sparkling like a diamond and no larger than a golf ball. “On the count of three, you try to pry it open and I’ll hit the same spot with my energy. Ready?”

  Gar nodded. He took a fresh hold on the shovel’s handle, preparing to put all his muscle and weight into popping the casket lid open.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  Gar shoved the handle downward and Chloe hurled the energy ball.

  Bang! Snap! Cracks splintered across the casket’s lid. Hot air and light flashed out from the impact point. Another flash and a duller sparkle crackled, followed by the whine of magic. Then everything went dark all around them, except for the flashlight’s glow and the silvery moonlight shining through the icy fog.

  Everything was silent too, even the cemetery’s resident ghosts.

  Gar jammed the shovel into the widest crack. A loud snap sounded as he pried off a narrow section of the lid.

  “I hope to hell you’re wrong, Em,” Devlin said, shining the flashlight beam into the narrow gap.

  “I do too.” Em squeezed her hands into tight fists, hoping and praying her sixth sense was wrong.

  The flashlight beam filtered through the opening, fanning into the casket’s interior and illuminating folds of white satin. And more satin. Nothing else.

  A sinking feeling tumbled through Em. It was empty.

  Devlin groaned. “What are we going to do now?”

  “First we’re going to fill this damn hole,” Gar growled, decidedly unhappy. “Then we’re going to get the hell out of this cemetery. We’ve made enough noise to wake up a lot more than the dead—like the cops.”

  “Wait.” Chloe rushed forward and dropped down at the edge of the grave. “Even if someone destroyed Saille’s body to hide evidence or whatever, I should be able to locate any remaining trace of her body with my pendulum. But the odds will be better if I have a piece of something that’s touched her, like the casket lining.” She glanced up. “Does anyone have a knife?”

  “I do.” Em pulled her knife from her pocket, opened it, and handed it to Chloe. She knew what Chloe had in mind. This was like when she’d increased the odds of finding Merlin’s crystal by using the nest of grass that had been inside the packing box. It might work.

  With knife in hand, Chloe stretched out on her belly and reached her arm into the narrow crack in the casket’s lid.

  Em slid her hand into her pocket, rubbing her six-month medallion for extra luck. “It doesn’t seem like Saille’s remains can be that far away. I saw her spirit in the park only a few months ago. The ghost in the Goodwill store mentioned her.”

  Tension burned in Em’s stomach. This wasn’t a dead end. It couldn’t be. They’d find Saille’s body. Somewhere. She could feel it was the truth as clearly as she could feel the raised emblems on her A.A. medallion, the serenity prayer embossed on one side of it, a triangle on the other.

  A triangle.

  In a flash, Em knew her previous uneasiness had nothing to do with her being hungry and everything to do with her forgetting something. She’d figured out that Caliban kept appearing in her visions because Dux was a cambion. But she’d overlooked the symbols. The triangle etched in graphite. The three yellow diamonds.

  “Dear Goddess,” she said, slapping her hands over her mouth to smother a gasp.

  Chloe stopped working to glance at her. “You all right?”

  “No. Not really. I just—” Her pulse hammered so hard, she could barely think.

  “What is it?” Gar asked.

  “When Saille possessed me, I saw a triangle. Three corners. Three—like the traditional power of three witches. That’s what the ghost in the Goodwill meant. Not just priestesses—three priestesses: Saille, Athena, and Rhianna. Three Northern Circle high priestesses.”

  Devlin frowned. “Three witches. Three missing bodies. Three restrained spirits. Right?”

  “Exactly,” Em said. “We don’t know if Rhianna’s spirit is restrained. But the wraith took her body and I sensed the tug-of-war, so it makes sense. Whatever Dux is up to, it’s big.”

  “I totally agree about the big part.” Chloe pulled her arm out of the casket, a scrap of white silk gripped in her hand. “But you’ve got one part wrong. Rhianna never really was a high priestess, certainly not of the Circle.”

  Gar interrupted. “But Rhianna was wearing the Northern Circle signet ring when she was killed.”

  Em’s sixth sense prickled, then screamed an alarm. Something’s coming. Run!

  “Something’s here!” Em screeched.

  Gar glanced toward the driveway, as if expecting to see the police. “Who? Where?”

  The air temperature plummeted, twice as cold as before.

  Wraiths swooped out from the darkness, flying at them from all sides. Flashes of energy exploded. Putrid green haze fogged the air. Em’s breath became icy vapor.

  “Son of a bitch,” Devlin shouted, hurling an energy ball. It caught a wraith upside the head. Howling, the wraith summersaulted to the ground and vaporized in a spray of black sparks. The stench of rotting flesh flooded
the air.

  Em grabbed a shovel and swung at the wraiths closest to her. They hissed and circled. Gar was beside her, dart gun in his hand, taking out one after another. Still the wraiths kept coming, hollow eye sockets wide with glee. Their ear-piercing screams rang in Em’s ears. The air was almost unbreathable from their stench.

  Clawed fingers grabbed Em by the hair, yanking her to the ground. She rolled into a ball, protecting her head with her arms. This was stupid. They needed to conjoin their magic. She couldn’t help like this. Not alone. Unless…

  Em gulped a breath and squeezed her eyes shut, drawing up her magic fast and hard. Her vision narrowed into a black tunnel. Her consciousness wavered toward oblivion as she focused her intention on the wraiths and pushed all her energy into a single phrase. She’d seen Rhianna do it when she exiled Athena’s orb from the complex. She could do it.

  Em bounded to her feet and released the command, “Be gone!”

  She gasped for breath, curling forward. Her body felt limp. Her energy was spent. It took her a second to fully come back to her senses. When she did, she found the air silent.

  Every wraith was gone.

  No claws sliced at her. No sparks of magic crackled in the air. No hissing. No horrible gaping mouths.

  “Where’s Chloe?” Devlin screeched.

  Em whirled around, looking toward where she’d last seen Chloe, stretched across the grave. The only thing there now was a piece of white satin, fluttering slowly to the ground.

  Chapter 24

  WESTFIELD, MA—Child psychic locates body of missing ten-year-old. The body of a missing girl was discovered in St. Mary’s Cemetery by psychic medium Violet Grace, according to her manager, Lynda Brewster. Grace is widely known as the world’s youngest psychic medium. Westfield police are not refuting Brewster’s claim or ready to elaborate on the circumstances of the girl’s death at this time.