I turned and peered through the darkness, searching for a diaphanous form in the fog, but there were no ghosts in Oak Grove Cemetery. Even the dead didn’t want to be here.
“Looking for someone?”
I kept my gaze averted from Devlin. The magnetism he radiated was palpable. It was odd, but I’d felt the pull even more strongly once we passed through the gates. “Excuse me?”
“You keep glancing over your shoulder. Are you looking for someone?”
“Ghosts,” I said, then waited for his reaction.
His demeanor gave nothing away as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small blue tube. “Here.”
“What is it?”
“Eucalyptus vapor. I can’t promise it’ll ward off evil spirits, but it should help with the smell.”
I started to tell him that I had no intention of getting so close to the body that I would need to worry about masking the smell, but already I’d caught the trail of something fetid, a malodorous undertone to the earthy fragrances of the ferns and wild hyacinths that blanketed the nearby graves.
“Go on,” Devlin said. “Take it.”
I rubbed the waxy stick onto my finger, then smeared the balm across my upper lip. The medicated vapor burned my nostrils and tightened my throat. I put a hand to my chest and coughed. “Strong.”
“You’ll be glad of that in about two minutes.” He pocketed the tube without using it. “Ready?”
“Not really, but I suppose there’s no turning back, is there?”
“Don’t sound so fatalistic. Your part will be over soon enough.”
I was counting on that.
He turned without another word and I followed him into the maze of headstones and monuments. The stepping stones that marked the path were slippery with moss and lichen. I trudged along behind him, mindful of my footing. I wasn’t properly attired for the cemetery. Already my shoes were caked with mud and I felt the sting of tiny nettles nipping at my bare legs.
The rumble of voices grew louder and I could see flashlight beams moving along the pathways. The scene was eerie and surreal, reminding me of a time when bodies were buried by moonlight and the glow of the grave digger’s lantern.
Up ahead, a small crowd of men in uniforms and civvies had gathered around what I assumed was the unearthed victim. My view was mostly obscured, but I noted the silhouette of the headstone and scanned the surrounding monuments so that I would later be able to pinpoint the location of the grave on my map.
One of the cops shifted and suddenly I caught a glimpse of pale skin and milky eyes. A wave of nausea drenched me with sweat. I retreated down the path on shaky legs. It was one thing hearing about a murder; coming face-to-face with the gruesome aftermath was quite another.
I’d spent most of my life in cemeteries—my graveyard kingdoms. Each a calm, sheltered, self-contained world where the chaos of the city seemed anathema. Tonight, reality had stormed the gates, wreaking havoc.
Drawing in long breaths, I stood there wishing I’d never mentioned my dinner plans to Dr. Ashby because then Devlin wouldn’t have been able to find me. I wouldn’t have known about the murder. I wouldn’t have glanced into those frosted eyes.
But with or without Devlin, I’d been drawn into the violence the moment my briefcase was stolen. On the way here, I’d managed to convince myself the theft had been random. Someone had seen my briefcase through the back window and decided on impulse to take it. Now that I’d glimpsed the body, I feared the worst. If the killer felt threatened by something captured on one of those images, he could be acting purely out of instinct and self-preservation. What if he tried to break into my house to get at my camera and computer? To get at me?
Pulling my raincoat tightly around me, I watched as Devlin joined the circle around the body. Even in my current state of distress, I couldn’t help taking an interest in his interactions with his colleagues. He was shown respect, reverence even, but I also sensed an overall air of uneasiness. The other cops kept their distance, which intrigued me. But clearly Devlin was in charge and in his element, and I found it a fascinating dichotomy that he should seem so alive and vital in the presence of a violent death.
Or maybe it was because his ghosts hadn’t followed us through the gates.
I turned away, letting my gaze wander through the shadowy necropolis, lingering here and there over broken statuary and vandalized crypts. If most cemeteries offered solace and evoked hours of deep meditation and self-reflection, Oak Grove stirred dark thoughts.
My father had once told me that a place need not be haunted to be evil. I believed him because Papa knew things. Over the course of my childhood, he’d imparted much of that wisdom to me, but he’d also kept things from me. For my own good, I was certain, but those secrets drove a wedge between us where once there had been none. My first ghost sighting had changed us both. If Papa had withdrawn deeper into his own private world, he’d also become even more protective of me. He was my touchstone, my anchor, the one person who understood my isolation.
After that first sighting, I never again saw the old white-haired man, but there had been others. Over the years, legions of beautiful, floating phantoms. Young, old, black, white, they drifted through the veil at dusk, a delicate parade of Southern history that both thrilled and terrified me.
After a while, those unearthly transients simply became a part of my world and I learned to steel myself against the frosty breaths at the back of my neck, the icy fingers that trailed through my hair and down my arms. Papa had been right to train and discipline me, but acceptance of the situation hadn’t alleviated my questions. I still didn’t understand why he and I could see the ghosts and Mama couldn’t.
“It’s our cross to bear,” he explained one day, keeping his gaze averted as he weeded a grave.
That didn’t satisfy me. “Can my real mother see them?”
Papa still didn’t look up. “The woman who raised you is your real mother.”
“You know what I mean.” We never talked about my adoption even though I’d known about it for a long time. I had a lot of questions about that, too, but I’d learned to keep them to myself.
Papa had already started to shut down so I went back to the ghosts. “Why do they want to touch us?”
“I’ve already told you. They crave our warmth.”
“But why?” Absently, I plucked a lone dandelion and blew the seeds into the wind. “Why, Papa?”
“Think of them as vampires,” he said with a weary sigh. “Instead of blood, they suck out our warmth, our vitality, sometimes our will to live. And they leave nothing behind but a living, breathing husk.”
I seized on the one word that made any sense to me, even though on some level I knew he was speaking metaphorically. “But, Papa, vampires aren’t real.”
“Maybe not.” He rocked back on his heels, his eyes taking on a haunted, faraway glaze that chilled me to the bone. “But I’ve seen things in my time…unspeakable desecrations…”
My terrified gasp brought him momentarily out of his gloomy reverie and he placed his hand on mine, squeezing my fingers in reassurance. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, child. You have nothing to fear, so long as you follow the rules.”
But his words had filled me with a formless dread. “Promise?”
He nodded, but turned away quickly, his careworn face shadowed with secrets…
Over the years, I’d followed Papa’s rules faithfully. My emotions were well-schooled, always under control, and I suppose that was why I found my response to John Devlin so troubling.
He’d come up behind me in the cemetery and must have said my name, but I was so lost in thought, I didn’t hear him. When he placed his hand on my shoulder to get my attention, the hair rose up on my scalp like the aftermath of an electrical jolt. I jerked away from him without thinking.
He looked taken aback by my reaction. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just…”
“This place? Yeah, it’s pretty creepy. I would think you’re used to that, though.”
“Not all cemeteries are creepy,” I said. “Most of them are beautiful.”
“If you say so.” Something in his tone—a cold, brittle undercurrent—made me think of his ghosts. I wondered again who they were and what they’d been to him in life.
He was still peering down at me curiously. For some reason, his height hadn’t been so obvious to me earlier, but now he seemed to tower over me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“I guess I’m still a little jumpy from earlier. And now this.” I nodded toward the body on the ground, but I kept my gaze trained on Devlin. I didn’t want to stare at the corpse. I didn’t want to put a face with a restless, covetous ghost that I might one day see wandering through the veil.
“I lead a dull life,” I said without irony. “I don’t think I’m cut out for crime scenes.”
“There are a lot of things in this world to be afraid of, but a dead body isn’t one of them.”
Spoken like a man who knew things, I thought with a shiver. His voice was the kind that made one think of dark places. The kind that made the skin ripple along the backbone.
“I’m sure you’re right,” I murmured, searching the mist behind him, wondering if his ghosts might have slipped through the gates after all. That would explain the unnatural static that seemed to surround him and the sense of foreboding I felt at his nearness.
But no. There was nothing behind him in the dark.
It’s this place.
I could feel the negative energy clutching at me like the ivy roots that burrowed into the cracks and crevices of the mausoleums, the kudzu that wound tightly around the tree trunks, slowly strangling the magnificent old live oaks for which the cemetery had been named. I wondered if Devlin felt it, too.
He tilted his head and moonlight washed across his face, softening his gaunt features and giving me yet another teasing glimpse of the man he’d once been. I could see the gleam of mist in his hair and on the tips of his eyelashes. His cheekbones were high and prominent, his thick eyebrows perfectly symmetrical and a fine complement to the strong curve of his nose. His eyes were dark, but I’d not seen them in enough light to tell their true color.
He was handsome, charismatic and intensely focused, and he intrigued me almost as much as he disturbed me. I couldn’t stare at him for long without hearing the echo of my father’s third rule inside my head:
Keep your distance from those who are haunted.
I drew a breath of moist air and tried to shake off his strange spell. “Have you found out anything about the victim?”
Even to my own ears, my voice sounded tentative and I wondered if he would pick up on my unease. He was probably used to a certain amount of discomfort in his presence. He was a cop, after all. A cop with a very complicated past, I was beginning to suspect.
“We don’t know who she is yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”
So the victim was female. “Do you know how she died?”
He paused, his gaze sliding away before he answered. “We won’t know conclusively until after the autopsy.”
It wasn’t so much what he said as what he didn’t say. And the way he hadn’t been able to meet my eyes. What was he hiding from me? What terrible things had been done to that poor woman?
And then I thought of all the hours I’d spent working alone in this cemetery. What if the killer had happened along at one of those times?
As if reading my mind, Devlin said, “I can tell you this much. She wasn’t killed here. Her body was brought to the cemetery for disposal.”
Was that meant to comfort me?
“Why here, I wonder?”
He shrugged. “It’s a likely spot. This place has been abandoned for years and the ground over the old graves is soft. Makes for easy digging. Cover it up with a few dead leaves and some debris and a casual observer would never even notice the soil had been disturbed.”
“But then the rain set in.”
His gaze returned to me. “The rain set in and you came along. Even if the dirt hadn’t washed away, odds are you would have noticed the fresh digging when you cleaned up the grave.”
Call me a coward, but I was glad it hadn’t gone down that way. “Who found the body?”
“A couple of students climbed over the wall for a little private party. They spotted the exposed head and torso and reported it to campus police. Dr. Ashby notified Charleston PD, and then met us at the gate to let us in.” There was a slight shift in his voice. “She mentioned that you also have a key.”
I nodded. “She gave me one when we signed the contracts.”
“You haven’t loaned that key out to anyone in the past few days, have you? It hasn’t gone missing or anything like that.”
“No, of course not.” I stared up at him in alarm. “You’re not suggesting that the killer used my key to get in, are you?”
“I’m merely asking you the same questions I asked Camille Ashby. It doesn’t appear the lock was tampered with, so the logical conclusion is that the killer used a key.”
“Maybe he didn’t come through the gate. He could have climbed over the fence like those kids.”
Devlin glanced around. “Those walls are ten, maybe twelve feet high and overgrown with vines and briars. It would be one thing to climb over with a bottle of Jack or a six-pack. Dragging a body over…not so easy.”
“He could have had help.”
“Let’s hope he didn’t,” he said, something dark and chilling running beneath his words.
I wondered what was going through his head at that moment. He struck me as a very thorough man, one so meticulous and driven he would leave no stone unturned until he found his answers.
Which brought me back to his ghosts…
Were they bound here because of him?
In spite of what my father had told me about the parasitic nature of spirits, I’d come to the conclusion that some did linger because of unfinished business, be it theirs or the unwitting host’s. This made them no less dangerous to someone like me. On the contrary, those entities worried me the most because they were often desperate and confused and sometimes very, very angry.
We fell silent and the night grew still. The mist muted the voices of the police personnel as they went about their grim business.
I started to ask Devlin how much longer he would need me, but another officer came up just then and he turned to speak to him in low enough tones that I couldn’t hear. I didn’t want them to think that I was trying to eavesdrop, so I moved away and went back to my silent lurking.
No one paid me any attention, and after a while, I decided I could probably just leave and no one would notice. The idea tempted me greatly. I wanted nothing more than to be home, safe and sound, in my own private sanctuary, but I resisted the urge. I couldn’t just leave after giving Devlin my word. I was a Southern girl raised by a Southern mother. Duty and obligation were as deeply ingrained into my psyche as the need to please.
As Papa had, my mother had instilled in me a certain set of rules by which she expected me to live my life. The more superficial edicts I’d long since discarded—I no longer ironed my bed linens and I didn’t always use a tablecloth when I dined alone. But going back on my word…now that was something I would do only under pain of death.
The hair at the back of my neck prickled a warning as the air around me stirred. I knew Devlin had come up behind me again, and I turned before he could touch me.
“The coroner’s finished,” he said. “They’ll be moving the body soon. After that, you can take off. We won’t be able to do much out here until daylight.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll let you know where to send your invoice.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
“Why not? You earned it tonight. Just one thing, though. When word of this gets out, reporters are going to hammer the university for a statement. If your name is
mentioned as a consultant, they’ll likely want to get something from you on the record. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t release any information without first clearing it with me.”
“Of course.”
I had no intention of talking to the press about the grisly discovery in Oak Grove Cemetery. All I wanted to do was go home, crawl into bed and put this night behind me.
But a tidy ending was not meant to be. Everything in my world was about to change forever.
Including my father’s rules.
Four
My house on Rutledge Avenue was pure Charleston—a narrow, two-story clapboard with upper and lower verandas and a front garden surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.
More important to me, it was one of those places my father had long ago taught me to seek out. There were no ghosts in this house. It was a sanctuary, a safe haven, the ground beneath hallowed, but I had no idea why. In the six months I’d lived here, I hadn’t been able to dig up much of its history, only that the house had been built in 1950 after the original structure had been torn down.
Sometime in the 1990s, the owner had installed central heating and air-conditioning and divided the house into two apartments. Both units had access to a low-ceilinged, dirt-floor basement with brick walls and crumbling mortar—the only part of the original structure that remained—and a quaint backyard garden that smelled like heaven in the late afternoon when the Queen of the Night on the east side of the house started to bloom.
A medical student named Macon Dawes rented the upper level. I didn’t know much about Macon. Our paths rarely crossed. He worked a crazy schedule at the hospital and I often heard him coming and going at odd hours.
As I arrived home, I hoped to see a light in one of his windows and his old Civic parked in its usual spot. We were barely on a first-name basis, but tonight of all nights, I would have welcomed his presence. I didn’t relish entering an empty house alone, even one protected from the other world. Ghosts couldn’t penetrate the walls, but there was nothing to prevent a desperate killer from breaking a window or picking a lock to gain entrance.
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