One Grave at a Time nh-6

by Jeaniene Frost

  “What did I do?” I sputtered, so outraged by the question that I couldn’t even begin to formulate an answer.

  “I don’t have the patience for this today,” Bones growled, running a hand through his hair. “All you need to know, Williams, is that we’ll be surrounding ourselves with burning sage until we catch this sod again or you can’t locate her by concentrating, whichever comes first.”

  Even if my reaction hadn’t been enough, the edge to Bones’s tone should’ve told Don to tread lightly because we were both on our last nerves, but my uncle seemed oblivious to the warning.

  “That won’t work,” he stated. “Cat knows I need a way to get to her if something comes up at the compound. How am I supposed to do that if every place you’re staying at is smoked out like a Christmas ham?”

  Did he not notice what happened at the town house yesterday? I wondered in disbelief. “We don’t have a choice. If Madigan pulls any new shit, Tate and the guys will have to handle it on their own. If there’s a life-or-death emergency, go to our cabin. A vampire’s there who can get a message to us.”

  That was the best I could do. I didn’t expect Madigan to make a lethal move against the guys, but if he did, I’d act. In the meantime, Don would just have to accept that he couldn’t drop in on me until the last of Marie’s power was out of my system, and we didn’t need to burn sage twenty-four hours a day anymore.

  My uncle stared at me like I’d grown two heads. “It’s really that easy for you to shuck me off? I might not be solid, but I thought you still considered me to be your family.”

  I sucked in a gasp, feeling like he’d just punched me in the gut. Before I could release that breath in my defense, Bones’s voice lashed out.

  “Don’t you dare attack her. If you’d been forthcoming with what you knew about Madigan, it’s very likely we’d have no need to keep sage lit around us because that ghost would be locked in a trap.”

  Don bristled. “Now wait a minute—”

  “No, I won’t,” Bones said, his anger blazing forth. “It’s obvious that you knew Madigan had connections with other vampires, and yet you didn’t inform us. If you’d been honest, we could’ve anticipated his actions instead of being caught off guard at the cave. But no, you chose to keep silent about that.”

  “You don’t understand. I . . . can’t tell you everything about him. Not yet,” Don said roughly.

  Bones stabbed his finger through my uncle’s chest. “Keep all the secrets you fancy about things that don’t endanger her life, but it’s clear Madigan has an interest in her and an agenda beyond climbing the corporate ladder. Either tell us everything you know about him now or stay away from your niece.”

  Don backed up at the vehemence in Bones’s tone. So did Tyler. I admit to flinching because his aura crackled with enough power to make it feel like I was standing in a sandstorm. I’d only seen Bones more upset one time, and that incident was still burned on my memory.

  Bones turned to me then, his gaze dark and steady.

  “I’m sorry for how that will hurt you, but I can’t have him near when he’s withholding information that might get us killed. What if Madigan had showed up at the cave with his vampire associates instead of juiced-up humans? What if he had informed our enemies where we were? We had no idea the sod had connections to our world beyond the team members I sired, yet Don knew, and he kept it to himself.”

  Back at the cave, I’d also noticed that Don hadn’t looked surprised when Madigan proved to have soldiers hyped up on vampire blood that didn’t come from Tate or Juan. In the midst of everything that had happened, I hadn’t had a chance to question him about it to see if I was right, but now there was no need. My uncle’s guilty yet defiant expression confirmed it all.

  “You need to spill what you know before anyone else gets hurt, or worse,” I said, drilling him with my gaze.

  “If I tell you everything, he’ll just kill Madigan because that’s all he knows,” Don snapped with an accusing wave at Bones. “But killing him before I find out what I need to know might end up costing innocent lives. You want that kind of blood on your hands?”

  Bones’s laughter cut the air like a whip. “Know whose blood I care about? Hers. And those women the ghost is after, I care about their blood, too. So you’re right that I’ll kill Madigan if he’s a threat to them. In truth, if we weren’t so busy, I’d be tempted to kill the sod so he couldn’t interrupt us the next time we attempt to trap that ghost.”

  Don’s expression was wary now, as those flatly delivered words clued him in to how serious Bones was. “You can’t do that. Cat, promise me you won’t let him do that.”

  I thought about the years I’d known Don. He had some truly noble qualities, and I knew he loved me, but he’d always been secretive and somewhat Machiavellian in his actions. I’d been okay with that back when I worked for him, but I wasn’t okay with it now, considering how it had endangered me and Bones in this latest incident.

  Bones was right—Madigan’s unknown vampire ties meant he could’ve brought a far more dangerous entourage with him to the cave. Plus, if we’d known that Madigan was more than a puffed-up suit, we would’ve picked a place that had no ties to my former team. I thought of everything I’d read in the Malleus Maleficarum about what Kramer did to those who were at his mercy. About Elisabeth’s face as she described her rape, torture, and death, and Francine and Lisa being the latest in a long line of women Kramer had marked for the same horrific fate.

  My mouth hardened. “Either you come clean with us about Madigan, or Bones is right. You need to go.”

  “How can you say that?”

  I hated the betrayal in Don’s voice. I loved him like the father I’d never had, so it struck me right in the heart, as did the repelled look he gave me.

  “Every Halloween, three women are kidnapped, raped, tortured, and burned alive by the ghost that Madigan’s interruption prevented us from trapping,” I replied, meeting the gray gaze that was identical to my own. “Bones and I might not get another chance to trap that ghost, and if we don’t, many more women will die.” I drew in a breath for courage. “I love you, Don, but you can’t keep treating me like an employee on a need-to-know basis. Even if you don’t trust Bones to react rationally to whatever you know about Madigan—and I disagree with that—after all we’ve been through, you should at least trust me. I’ve more than earned it.”

  Bones slid his arm around me, his aura changing from dangerous spikes of anger into strength, pride, and compassion. Those emotions flowed over me and through me, seeping into the very fiber of my being until it felt like we’d melded into the same person.

  Don’s expression hardened into a stubborn mask that I well recognized, and I knew with deep sorrow that my words had fallen on deaf ears.

  “I can tell you this—Madigan doesn’t have ties to the undead world like you’re thinking. Any vampires he’s getting blood from are his captives, not his allies, and no, I don’t know who they are or where they are.”

  He didn’t say anything else. He just dissipated with that mixture of stubbornness and how-could-you still stamped on his features. I blew out a long, slow sigh, leaning in closer to Bones’s embrace.

  “Looks like that’s another problem we need to deal with,” I said. If these captive vampires were random Masterless murderers, then Madigan could keep them and tap their veins like tree trunks for all I cared. But if they were innocent vampires snatched up while minding their own business, or they belonged to a powerful Master who might take revenge on their capture by wiping out my entire former team, we needed to act.

  Right after we found a way to lock up a homicidal ghost, that was.

  “Indeed. Madigan’s playing on dangerous ground, and so is your uncle,” Bones said, his tone still edged in anger.

  Tyler patted his shoulder in a comforting way. “Family. Aren’t they a motherfucker sometimes?”

  That summed it up so well, there really was nothing else left to say.

  Twent
y-seven

  A thick cloud of smoke hung in the air, its acridness stinging my eyes. The cellar had no windows, and the single door that opened into the farmhouse pantry was always closed when Bones and I were down here. If I were human, I’d have passed out within the hour, but of course oxygen wasn’t an issue for me. Neither was the darkness. The only light came from the orange halos around the sage as the flames curled the plants into blackened, smoking remains, but Bones and I had no trouble seeing as we pieced together hunks of limestone, quartz, and moissanite into another trap. We’d spent the majority of the past five days down here, working toward that single goal. Good thing we’d helped Chris and the team make the last trap so we knew what we were doing, and if we spent the next week down here, we’d have it done in time.

  Then we had to worry about finding a way to force Kramer into it. No matter how I turned the problem around in my mind, it always came back to our best chance being when he was solid. I couldn’t force vapor into the trap. Neither could Bones, even considering that he worked on expanding his telekinetic powers almost as much as on this trap, but those were useless against a disembodied form. Yet waiting until Kramer was solid meant waiting until Halloween night, and we hadn’t found the third woman yet, so her life was at risk. Plus, the Inquisitor might only show up if we used Francine and Lisa as bait to draw him out. All the different things that could go wrong haunted me whenever I considered that option, no pun intended.

  A knock sounded on the cellar door. “He’s back,” Tyler called out.

  Bones rose, but I waved him back before wiping aside a chunk of hair that had come loose from my ponytail.

  “You went the last two times. My turn.”

  His lips tightened, yet he made no comment, knowing it would lead to an argument that I’d win. I wasn’t about to let him bear all of Kramer’s loathsome personality, and the ghost only got more pissed when he was ignored. Considering the damage he’d already done to this house, we had to buy it by the time this was over.

  I went up the stairs, noting that the wooden steps vibrated from the multiple thuds reverberating through the house. What’s he using now? I wondered. Kramer couldn’t come inside, not with all the sage we kept burning in every room, but he made good use of everything in the near perimeter. The car we’d driven here had been impressively destroyed, its windows and tires not lasting the first night, the rest of it bashed and battered over subsequent days. The old farmhouse lost its windows on that first night, too, plus a section of the front porch. We’d nailed wood over where the glass used to be, which proved far more durable, and spent a few hours watching TV until Kramer ripped off the satellite dish and chucked it through the car windshield.

  Thank God there were no neighbors nearby to hear the unbelievable racket, but that was why we’d chosen this property. The surrounding land had once been a soybean field but clearly hadn’t been planted or harvested in a while. I didn’t know what circumstances had led the former owners to leave and, failing the sale of the house, choose to rent it, but it was the perfect place for Bones and me to build the trap without Kramer’s prying eyes seeing what we were doing. All the materials had been delivered and put in the cellar before I got here, so Kramer hadn’t been able to follow us to this place until after they were safely out of sight. I had no doubt the ghost knew Bones and I were busy with something, but he could only guess at what.

  Tyler sat in the pantry, my iPad next to him and an open can of SpaghettiOs to the right of that. We’d stocked the refrigerator when we came here, but then Kramer ripped out the electrical lines leading to the house, and that meant no power to keep things fresh. He’d zapped himself in the process, all that electricity coursing through him rendering him solid for about ten minutes, but beating his ass while he was channeling high voltage would have only resulted in Bones or me getting electrocuted, too. Pity the trap wasn’t ready yet. That would have made getting the bejesus shocked out of us worth it.

  Tyler had been eating canned goods ever since the food spoiled, and his baleful expression said loud and clear that he hadn’t developed a taste for them in the process. I didn’t remind him that Bones could fly him to Spade’s, where there would be plenty of better food to eat. Tyler was determined to help us catch the ghost, and any mention of his leaving was met with flat refusal.

  “Want a bite?” Tyler said, holding up a speared forkful of noodles and meat medley.

  I managed not to grimace out of sheer force of will. “Ah, no thanks.”

  “Me neither,” he said, coughing a little before he went on. “Have I told you about all the steaks you’re going to buy me when this is over?”

  “Kobe, filets, prime ribs, you name it,” I promised him. “Any luck on your research?”

  While Bones and I were in the cellar cutting various rocks and minerals to piece together the trap, Tyler had been scouring the Internet for any authentic-sounding reference to a weapon against ghosts. It burned through a new backup battery a day, damn that lack of electricity, but as the time drew nearer, I was more anxious to find something that might help us prod Kramer into the trap. Yes, we had burning sage, but that made Kramer poof away—helpful when we wanted him gone, but not so much if we wanted to force him into a ghost jail. So far, Tyler hadn’t come up with anything that we could test on Fabian or Elisabeth, but he was determined that the information existed and just had to be found.

  “What do you think of this?” Tyler asked, turning the iPad around so I could see the screen.

  I stared at the page displayed, wondering why Tyler was showing it to me. He must be starting his Christmas list early because this item had nothing to do with the supernatural. Then I looked at it more closely, thought it through . . . and started to smile.

  “I love it,” I said, careful in my reply because I knew Kramer was listening. “I want ten. No, make that two dozen. Bones has his credit card numbers memorized, get them from him later. We’ll ship them to where Spade’s staying.”

  Tyler grinned. “Sure will. Say hi to ol’ Michael Myers for me.”

  “Huh? Oh, because Kramer’s a Halloween serial killer, I get it. Sure, but you make sure to stay in here and don’t come out.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Girlfriend, you might be dead, but I don’t want to be yet. Bet your ass I’m staying in here.”

  Another crash sounded near the front of the house, louder than the other ones. My cue that Kramer was getting impatient. I’d love to leave him out there stewing in his own ectoplasm, but we had to keep the house standing for the next week, so we could finish the trap. Getting it out of here without the ghost seeing was going to be tricky enough. We didn’t need to add to that trouble by having to move the trap to a new location just to finish it.

  I left the pantry, passing through the kitchen with its bare, open cabinets—those doors made for great window coverings—and the family room where mattresses were the only furniture. When I got to the main entrance of the house, I picked up one of the glass jars filled with burning sage and ducked out of habit as soon as I opened the door.

  Sure enough, a hunk of tree branch went whistling over me, followed immediately by two side mirrors from the car. They clanged into the family room, one landing on the mattresses, the others resting by the rest of the items Kramer had chucked at Bones earlier. I made a mental note to carry them out later and reappeared in the doorway.

  “Guten Tag,” I said, hefting the sage jar in salute. “Stay where I can see you, or I go back inside.”

  I knew he’d comply because, for some twisted reason, Kramer liked to do his cursing and threats to our faces. Grumbles in German came from the side of the porch that had the worst damage to it. If Kramer kept ripping out porch boards and flinging them at the house, there wouldn’t be any more of it left in the next couple days. But the sage that had Tyler continually coughing kept Kramer from entering the house. All he could do was poltergeist things at it while cursing us in a mixture of German and English, with possibly some Latin thrown in for good me
asure.

  Dark swirls appeared next to the porch, then the familiar white hair sticking out like a stack of bleached hay topped the ghost’s tall, thin frame. I waited, not saying anything, tapping the side of the glass in mute warning.

  “Hexe,” Kramer hissed once he was fully manifested.

  “Uh-huh,” I replied, recognizing the German word for witch and wondering how long he would ramble on this time. “I’m a woman, so that’s how you see me. Watching the feminist movement these past several decades must’ve really burned your toast.”

  The Inquisitor didn’t respond with a slew of curses like normal. He just smiled wide enough to reveal teeth that were best kept unseen. Eww didn’t begin to cover my revulsion at those scraggly brown stumps.

  “Toast? No, that is not what I burn,” he replied, his expression showing that he savored each word.

  If I hadn’t known that Bones was in the cellar working on this murdering prick’s trap as we spoke, I’d have turned around and gone right back inside. But that would only mean more damage to the house that we’d have to take time away from the trap to repair; plus it would let Kramer know that he’d gotten to me. My biggest motivator for staying, however, was simple: Every second that Kramer was out here pissing me off meant he wasn’t tormenting the last woman he’d picked out. Elisabeth still hadn’t found her, and our research efforts hadn’t turned her up yet, either. I wasn’t alone, with no one believing me about the torment the ghost dished out, like she was. I could stand here and deal with him because it was all I could do for that woman until we found out who she was and brought her to Spade and Denise.

  “You’re going to have a lonely Halloween this year, what with Francine and Lisa being out of reach,” I noted coolly. “And what will you do when we find the last woman—and we will, my snaggle-toothed friend. Then the only things you’ll be toasting with your temporarily fleshy paws are marshmallows.”