Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Colleen Gleason

  To Gabriel, the cemetery symbolized the fact that he could never die, that much better people than him left this mortal realm, some far too soon, and he was condemned, by his own misconduct, to walk the earth forever without purpose. The cemetery made him angry, and it frustrated him that he was denied entrance, figuratively and literally. He didn’t often use his strength, chose largely to ignore what he was and what he was capable of, but he wanted in, so he reached out, picked up the lock, and yanked it down.

  It broke, separating so that he could easily detach it from the gate. “Look at that,” he said, showing Sara the busted pieces, before shoving the gate open. “Guess we can go in after all.”

  Sara made a sound of protest. “Gabriel! It was locked for a reason. They don’t want us in there.”

  He was already moving inside, knowing she would follow him. Her fear of the cemetery, of breaking the rules, wasn’t nearly as great as her fear of being left alone. The shells crunched under his feet as he walked, and pausing at the first tomb on the right he turned back to her. “Come on, Sara. It’s not a big deal.”

  “The gate was locked.” She had inched forward, just inside the gate, but she was peeking around like she expected to get arrested for trespassing, or maybe to encounter either a mugger or a ghost.

  “I’ll replace the broken lock. But since it’s open, we might as well take some pictures. I’ll show you Anne’s tomb.” He wasn’t sure why he didn’t just let the whole thing drop. Why he didn’t just turn around and take Sara back to his apartment. But he thought she needed to be pushed. Or maybe he wanted to be pushed, and if he pushed her, she’d push back.

  They had a lot in common. Both living in a precarious little isolation tent, struggling to survive, to be normal. Kidding themselves. Lying and ignoring the blatant truth– that they were clinging to the edge, one stumble short of going over the side.

  “Come on,” he said again, and this time he reached out, took Sara’s hand in his, and pulled her forward into the cemetery.

  She sucked in a quick breath, and looked up at him with luminous blue eyes. Her head went back and forth, a protest, but at the same time, she walked forward, settling in beside him, her hand light and warm in his. It had been a long time since he had touched anyone, and the sensation of warmth, of her hand lightly shifting in his, their skin caressing, felt so acutely good, so intense and real, that painful longing rose up in him. The desperate need for someone to share pleasure, conversation, time with. Futile, ridiculous wants that he had no business entertaining.

  So he let go of her hand and moved forward at a pace he knew she couldn’t match.

  He was standing in front of the tomb he had paid for, that held the remains of Anne Donovan, when Sara stopped next to him and said, “It’s very peaceful in here.”

  “Yes.” It was. The cemetery was quiet, the sun silently beating down on the many white tombs, casting a shadow over the front of Anne’s tomb. “This is where Anne Donovan is buried.”

  “How do you know? There’s no faceplate.”

  “It fell off. Marble tends to crack from the moist climate, and then it just drops off without warning.” And he hadn’t replaced it. Wasn’t exactly sure why not, but he hadn’t. “But church records indicate this is the correct tomb. She’s interned in it alone.” Another point to which he felt some guilt. It made no logical sense, given he knew her soul didn’t reside in the brick structure, but in New Orleans tombs were crowded, families buried together, the bones of three, eight, twenty people all together in one tomb. It seemed a comfort, an appropriate display of connectedness to other mortal beings. Anne lay alone. In death as she had in life.

  “I read that John Thiroux paid for the burial.”

  “Yes. She was cremated first.”

  “I wonder why?”

  Because he hadn’t been able to handle the image of her body, once so young and attractive, decaying beneath its brutal wounds.

  “I don’t know.” It was an attractive tomb, with a wrought iron gate around it, tidy and recently painted, a weeping angel statue resting pensively on top. Gabriel hadn’t wanted that damn angel statue, had been appalled when he’d first seen it a hundred and fifty years ago, but he had given his lawyer at the time the funds for the tomb and had him handle all the details. He’d been too grief and guilt stricken, too chronically drunk to make the arrangements on his own, and it was of course the ultimate irony that the lawyer had chosen the symbol of an angel weeping to decorate the top of the tomb.

  “How do you know she was cremated? I thought the Catholic Church didn’t allow that then.”

  Caught in his own truthes. “Maybe I just thought I read that.” Lifting his camera, he took shots of the tomb, of the angel.

  “It must have been a sad, lonely funeral.”

  Gabriel shook his head, wondering if that would have been better or worse than the spectacle he could still see and hear and feel as clearly as if it were the day before. “Quite the contrary. People have an intense fascination for murder. Anne Donovan’s funeral was a crowded, throbbing mob of morbid curiosity-seekers. It rained that day, a torrent of steaming, warm water, and the street, the sidewalks, the cemetery, were a sliding, muddy mess. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees with the storm, and there was a fog, so that all you could see was the black hat in front of you, and the tombs rising suddenly out of the mist. A fitting ending to a gruesome death.” And Gabriel had also seen a woman who had approached him, a child’s hand clasped tightly in her own, her face pinched with anxiety, cheeks streaked with tears. She had slapped him soundly, straight across the cheek, penetrating the fog of the air, his brain, the ever-present guilt. It had been Anne’s cousin, or so she had said, and she urged him passage to hell, before retreating, never to be seen or heard from again.

  But the irony was that Gabriel had already been condemned to a personal hell long before receiving her vehement request. He was still in it.

  Sara leaned against the wrought iron gate surrounding the tomb and stared at the blank spot left by the crumbled face plate. “No one deserves to die like that. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Yet so true.”

  Her arm brushed his, the top of her head only coming up to his chin. Gabriel was surprised again at how petite she was, at how fragile she could look, yet how determined her voice was. “This must be hard for you, because of your mother.”

  A sigh slid out of her mouth. “It is.” Fingers gripped the fleur de lis spikes of the fence. “Her funeral was similar to Anne’s in that there was tons of media coverage. Spectators. It was noisy and obnoxious, and disrespectful. And everything was happening so fast in those first few days, the police questions changing, always shifting, always looking for something, the media searching for the angle, trying to figure out which way to take the story. I really wasn’t aware of it at the time, I was just numb, trying to help the investigation, trying to deal with the details, and the shock. The police were at the funeral, a good ten strong, in full patrolmen uniform. It was to ensure crowd control, they said, but it was so invasive. And the paper made a big deal out of me showing up with Rafe… but the thing is, he cared more about my mom than anyone else. He and I were friends. Of course I would go with him.”

  “You went with Rafe?” Gabriel knew that actually from reading the articles online about Sara’s mother’s death, but he wanted to hear what Sara would say about him.

  “It was completely normal to go with my mom’s boyfriend given that I don’t have any other family.” A finger slipped under her sunglasses and wiped at her eye, but he didn’t think she was crying. “At the time I didn’t realize he was the primary suspect. It only took the police five days to decide he was guilty and arrest him for murder, but it took nearly a year to acquit him in court.”

  “Like John Thiroux.” Him. “Is that why you’re interested in this case? Or is it strictly your mother’s case that you want to solve?”

  “No. I want to solve both. Though I don’t think my mother’s murder is solvable at this poi
nt. I came more to see if forensics could shed light on Anne’s case, and yes, because there are strange similarities. The weapon used, the method of the murderer– killing them in bed. Boyfriend’s accused. Boyfriend’s who discovered them.” And something else that Sara suspected no one else knew, not even Gabriel. That Anne Donovan was the great-grandmother of Jessie Michaels. That before her mother had died, she had received a copy of the original newspaper article announcing Anne Donovan’s murder.

  Sara hadn’t told the police, or Rafe, or Gabriel, what her mother had gotten anonymously in the mail thirty-six hours before her death because Sara had the horrible feeling that only one man could have known about the connection, and confirmation of that would shatter her. Some answers were far worse than never knowing at all. She shouldn’t even be talking to Gabriel about her feelings, emotions over her mother’s case, but he was easy to talk to. He stood and listened, and there was never any judgment written on his face. It was like he understood he had no right to cast stones, but at the same time he was capable of compassion, rational discourse.

  “I would guess there have been a lot of boyfriends accused of killing their lovers. And I’m sure a large percentage actually did it,” Gabriel said.

  “Do you think he did it? John Thiroux?” Sara stared hard at the tomb, at the crumbling square where a name and date should have been, but was gone, obliterated, like the woman behind the stone. The surface blurred and crossed in front of her eyes, the heat enveloping Sara and closing up her throat.

  “I haven’t read all the documents yet. We don’t have the DNA results from the knife back yet. I don’t know if he did it or not.”

  It shouldn’t even matter. But it did. Sara felt that if she could figure out what had happened to Anne Donovan, she could figure out the pieces of her own life. She could triumph over death, let the past go, face the future with hope. Go back to work. Be normal.

  The grieving process was different for everyone. Sara found that hers included striving desperately to find ways in which she could exert control, rebel against a universe that dictated her fate.

  “We’re going to pick this apart until we have an answer,” she said. “For Anne. For my mother.”

  Gabriel made a sound. “It’s for you and I, too, Sara, as much as it is for them. We need to know, don’t we? But the thing is, there may be no answer.”

  She believed him, even though she hated it, even though she wondered why it mattered to him. What did he care, really? This was her family, her past, her present, her future. Not his.

  The dizziness wasn’t abating, and the cemetery suddenly felt stifling, claustrophobic. “Can we leave? I need a drink of water.”

  And without waiting for him, she turned and headed towards the gate, sliding in the gravel in her flip flops. When she burst out onto the front sidewalk, she felt like she could breathe again. But the anxiety didn’t go away.

  She wondered if it ever would.

  * * *

  After stopping for water from a street vendor Sara had decided to go back to her apartment and try to sleep, and Gabriel figured that was probably the best thing for her. She had looked pasty and clammy in the cemetery, actually swaying on her feet slightly as she turned to leave.

  The water seemed to help, restoring color to her face, and she had bought a granola bar and eaten it before getting in her car to head back. Gabriel had accepted her plea to postpone their trip to Bourbon Street until the following night, and he walked back to his apartment, feet comfortable on the uneven sidewalks. He had lived in the French Quarter for a hundred and fifty years, had never lived anywhere else on earth, and he appreciated its familiarity. He knew every crack, every building, every nuance, every odd local, and every change that occurred, however slight. Intentionally, he chose to cut down Bourbon, to pass the bars that were already gearing up for Friday night. To force himself to walk past signs that advertised beer as three for the price of one. Hand grenades. Mojitos. Jager bombs. To smell the unique odor of beer, bleach, and fried food.

  It gave him a feeling of power, of control, an encouragement that he was still his own master, when he could stroll past temptation to drink every three feet and not succumb. In his human body it was easier to fall prey to weakness and sin, to struggle the way mortals did. It had been meant to serve as a source of understanding for him as he had watched and protected those around him, but it had only accelerated his fall. Illuminated his own flaws and stoked his craving for escape from the overwhelming reality of human pain and suffering.

  Whenever Gabriel started down Bourbon Street, he always wondered what would happen if one day he could no longer traverse the hot coals, and picked up a drink. But so far he had always resisted, and he did again.

  Only to arrive home and find Alex waiting just inside his courtyard gate, lounging in Gabriel’s wrought iron chair reading the newspaper.

  The gate was still locked, of course. Alex was fond of the dramatic.

  Gabriel sighed, not feeling up to dealing with Alex and his manipulations, but at the same time grateful Sara had gone home. He didn’t want Alex encountering her. “What are you doing here?”

  Alex smiled, a charming smile full of straight white teeth. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

  “I wasn’t aware we were ever friends.” Gabriel walked straight past him, and headed for the stairs.

  Following him, Alex said, “I think technically our relationship is more like that of brothers. We were angels once together. Now we’re demons. Grigori demon brothers.” Alex laughed. “I like that. It sounds like we’re a circus act. The Amazing Grigori Demon Brothers will dazzle you with their scintillating feats of sin.”

  Gabriel rolled his eyes as he jogged up the stairs.

  “Hey, you’re not laughing. That was funny. I’m funny.”

  “Whatever.” He opened his front door and went in, dropping the camera on his end table. Ignoring Alex, he headed for the kitchen. Lunch was long gone, and he was hungry.

  “Since you have no manners whatsoever, I’ll just invite myself in and make myself comfortable,” Alex called from the living room.

  “I knew you would.” Gabriel couldn’t even bring himself to ask Alex why he was paying him a visit, even if he was curious. He didn’t want to show any interest at all, because Alex–like all the other Grigori demons–were not men Gabriel wanted to spend time with. They were a reminder of what he had been, what he was, what he thought in his heart and soul he was better than, but time showed over and over he wasn’t.

  As Gabriel pulled out a frozen burrito and tore off the wrapper, Alex said, “I’m looking for Marguerite. Have you seen her?”

  Gabriel paused in shoving the burrito into the microwave and glanced back. He couldn’t see Alex, who was probably sitting on the couch. “I haven’t seen Marguerite in years.” Didn’t want to. Marguerite had betrayed him during his trial and he trusted her even less than the rest of the Grigori.

  “No? I hadn’t realized that. But if you do see her, please let me know. I need to speak to her about something and she’s been gone for months, and I can’t seem to find her.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. At least not by you.” When the bell dinged, Gabriel removed the burrito from the microwave and dropped it on a paper towel.

  Alex sounded offended. “I’m her father. We have a good relationship.”

  Gabriel didn’t know what constituted a quality relationship between a demon and his half-demon daughter, but Alex and Marguerite did seem to get along. But it had nothing to do with him. “I’ll let her know if I see her, but I can’t imagine I will.”

  “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  “No.” That was intentional. Gabriel walked into the living room, taking a bite out of his snack, and found Alex sitting on the couch looking at his camera.

  “Who’s the blonde?” Alex turned the camera around and Gabriel saw Sara on the viewing screen, standing on the street, in profile.

  Damn. The idea that Alex
would even know of Sara’s existence made him uncomfortable. Striving to sound casual, not wanting to alert Alex in any way, he just shrugged. “Just a girl who does some research for me.”

  “She could be hot if she didn’t look like she’s just come off a three-day bender only to find out her cat died.” Alex made a face at Sara’s image, his lip curling up. “You could do better than this if you’re looking for a little fun.”

  Gabriel didn’t agree with Alex’s assessment of Sara at all, but that wasn’t the point. “I’m not looking for fun. It’s a business relationship.” Not that he wouldn’t like to explore other, more intimate possibilities, but it couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t allow it to happen.

  Alex set down the camera and gave him a wry look. “I don’t doubt it. You’re not exactly known for being a fun guy. What I have never been able to figure out is why you don’t just embrace what you are. You’re fallen. You’re a demon. Live it up a little, Gabe. Enjoy it.”

  Yet Gabriel still had a conscience, where Alex had none. Or at least Alex could rationalize his way through anything. “Your concern is touching, but I’m fine.”

  “What you are is in a purgatory of your own making. You don’t seek redemption, but you don’t embrace sin either.” Alex stood up, frowning at him. “It’s like you have no purpose– you exist just to exist.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “Take care. I’ll see you around.”

  And he was gone, leaving Gabriel with a half chewed bite of burrito in his mouth and the knowledge that Alex was right. Until he knew if he had killed Anne or not, he could never move on.

  To what he didn’t know, but that was a step for another day.

  First he had to get to the truth before the doubt consumed him and the loneliness eventually drove him back to comfort of the bottle.

  * * *

  Sara was struggling to stay awake, knowing it would be a disaster to take a nap at five in the afternoon when she was already having trouble sleeping at night. She paced back and forth in her apartment, hating the dingy gray carpet, the purple and gray tweed sofa. It was cheap furniture, but that wasn’t what bothered her–she didn’t need labels or expensive fabrics. What she didn’t like was that it had no character. Nothing in the room reflected her–her likes, dislikes, interests. She loved houseplants and artwork, soft, aging quilts, and flat screen TVs with Tivo so she could watch all the reality shows she couldn’t get enough of.