Deadhead (Damned Girl Book 1)

by Clare Kauter

  “Sorry,” I managed to squeeze out between sobs.

  “All good, Ness,” he answered. “It’s been kind of a big day.”

  “So – many – corpses!” I wailed.

  “So many,” he agreed. “They all deserved it, though, so don’t get too bent up over it.”

  “Patty didn’t deserve it!”

  “No, well… I guess not,” he said, unconvincingly.

  I glared at him.

  “What?”

  I kept glaring at him.

  “Oh, like he was so concerned about my death.”

  “His blood is literally still wet on my skin.”

  “That doesn’t make him a good person.”

  “He was going to help us solve the robbery! He could have told us who killed you!”

  “Which means he must have had something to do with it. Don’t go feeling too sorry for him.”

  That shut me up. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Did that mean that Ed’s other housemate, Jon, had been involved too? Why kill Ed? Had he seen something? Heard something? He didn’t seem to think so. At least, not that he’d told me about.

  “Sorry,” I said finally. Having finished crying, I wiped the various fluids off my face with my sleeve. “It sucks that your friend would do that to you.”

  “Nah, it’s OK. I’ve got new friends now.”

  “Who?”

  He grinned at me. “OK, maybe ‘friends’ was a bit far. How about ‘people who wouldn’t have me killed’?”

  I pretended to think about it. “Hmm… I don’t know. I mean, I probably wouldn’t kill you…”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s good to know.”

  “Ed,” I said, growing serious. “Why would they want you dead? Are you sure you didn’t overhear something, or see –”

  He cut me off mid-question with a kiss. Oh, OK. So this was happening. His lips were on mine. That was fine. I could deal with this. There were only slight butterflies in my stomach. I probably wasn’t nauseous enough to vomit on him. As long as I didn’t catch a whiff of the blood and guts that my clothing was splattered with.

  Ed’s lips were a weird temperature – not warm like a human, or cold like a vampire. Kind of… room temperature. I didn’t have much of a chance to dwell on that thought, though, because a moment after our lips touched, a red flash of energy flared between us, making a cracking sound like a whip. My lips began to sting like they’d been hit with a very small bolt of lightning.

  We both pulled away, startled. “What the hell was that?” Ed asked, rubbing his lips with his hands.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Is this part of your weird inner demon magic thing?”

  “No!”

  “How do you know?” he asked. “Is it because I’m a ghost or something? Does this happen when you kiss other people?”

  “Um…”

  “Oh my god, was that your first kiss?”

  “I’ve kissed loads of people!”

  Wow. Well done Nessa. Not overly defensive at all.

  “There’s no shame in –”

  I was very glad when Daisy, who was walking towards us from the police car, cut him off by shouting, “Nessa! Who is that ghost with you?”

  Say what?

  “You can see me?” Ed shouted back. He turned to me. “What the hell did you do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said dazedly. That wasn’t strictly true, of course; I knew that I’d broken the clouding spell. But I didn’t know how, and that kind of scared me. And Ed’s freaking out didn’t help.

  “Is that – is that you, Ed?” Daisy asked. “How…”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There was a flash, and…”

  “Well, it’s – it’s nice to meet you,” Daisy said, sticking out her hand. They shook and turned to me.

  I shrugged at them.

  Henry and Hecate walked over and joined us, Hecate looking Ed up and down. “Taller than I thought,” she said. “Considering how much of a wuss you are.”

  “Oh, thanks,” he said.

  “It’s true,” she said.

  “Oh, right. You can hear me now. Uh – ” He looked at me in a panic. “Right. This is going to take some getting used to.”

  “What happened?” Henry asked.

  “No idea,” I said.

  Simultaneously, Ed answered, “Don’t know.”

  “There was a flash –”

  “ – and a whipping sound –”

  “ – and suddenly my lips were really sore and – ”

  “Your lips?” Henry’s little doggie eyebrows were sky high.

  I coughed. “Anyway, we don’t know what happened.”

  “I might be able to help with that,” said a deep voice from behind me. I turned to see Death standing there in his full regalia – scythe, cape and all.

  “Oh, hi. Thanks for stealing my witness,” I said bitterly.

  “Satan wants to talk to you.”

  “And?”

  “And I offered to give you a lift.”

  “Oh, did you?”

  “I did. Let’s go.”

  “And why should I?”

  “Have I ever given you any reason to distrust me?”

  “Apart from five minutes ago when you stole Patty’s ghost from me right when he was about to tell me who the murderer was and solve all of our cases?”

  “He was not about to tell you and you know it.”

  I rolled my eyes in response, because I knew he was right but still wanted to be difficult. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Death rolled his eyes right back at me before turning and creating a portal by cutting a circle in the air with his scythe.

  “Well, that’s just showing off,” I said. He grinned at me. I turned to the others. “You guys have fun getting to know each other. Sorry, Daisy and Hecate. The honeymoon is over. Now you have to actually listen to what this guy says.”

  “Hey!” said Ed, mock offended.

  I smiled at him before following Death through the portal.

  Chapter 18

  Death’s portal opened up in Hell’s waiting room.

  “I’ll wait out here,” he said.

  “You’re sending me in alone?”

  He nodded.

  “Coward.”

  “Good luck.”

  I squared my shoulders, straightened up and walked the short distance from the portal to Satan’s office door trying to look confident and calm. Internally this felt like a walk to the gallows. I knew I was in trouble. I wasn’t sure which of the billion stupid things I’d done over the past couple of days she was angry about, but I knew that Death’s decision to wait outside meant that something was about to go down.

  I pushed open the door and strode in. The second the door shut behind me, Satan began to speak.

  “I warn you to stay away from that filthy little creep and what do you do? Blatantly ignore me.”

  Oh, OK. So this was about the kiss.

  “I was looking for information.”

  “What, inside his mouth?”

  “He kissed me.”

  “Yes, because you decided to disregard my warning completely and befriend him. Hug him. Cry on him.”

  “So?”

  “So blaming him for that kiss is nearly as stupid as if you, say, walked into a vampire’s cave and blamed them for you getting bitten.”

  “OK, firstly that’s not the same thing at all, and you and I really need to have a talk about victim blaming. Secondly, that’s an issue for another time.”

  “You’re right. I’ll revisit your horrendous stupidity later. For now, let’s focus on the main issue. You told him everything.”

  She was furious. Her hair was smoking. There was literal smoke coming off her head. Oh god.

  “Well, who was I meant to tell?”

  “No one!” She threw her hands in the air. “I explicitly told you to trust no one!”

  “Well, sorry, but I do trust him. It’s not like he murdered himself.”

/>   She threw her hands in the air and rolled her eyes.

  “They’re all lying to you. I told you. They’re all lying to you. Faery girl, ghost boy, witch wench, monkey dog. All of them.” Wait, they were still lying to me? There was something other than the bank robbery? “You’re far too trusting. So naïve that I had to intervene.”

  “Intervene? What do you mean…” Of course. The red flash. It had been Satan’s energy that zapped me and Ed when we’d kissed. “Why can people see him now? What did you do?”

  “You were taking too long to figure it out. I’m helping you. I did hope you were mature enough to handle this matter yourself, but apparently you’re not.”

  I didn’t know which matter exactly she was referring to.

  “How? What did you do?”

  “I broke a clouding spell. Just the one, although there are about a billion layers I could have cracked through. Now, maybe, everything will become more transparent. Except Ed himself, of course. He’s considerably more opaque.” She giggled. “Get it? Because they can see him now.”

  Now Satan was cracking dad jokes.

  “Why was he clouded in the first place?”

  “Surely you can figure that one out for yourself.”

  This was infuriating.

  “I thought you were going to help me!”

  She sighed. “Yes, but I’m not handing it to you on a platter.”

  “Please! I can’t do it without you.”

  I pouted and made my bottom lip shake a little.

  “I know you’re manipulating me, but I’m always so proud when you’re deceitful. Fine. One clue. I just broke the spell that made Ed invisible to anyone who met him when he was alive.”

  “What?” But Daisy… And Hecate… “You mean that Ed met the police before he died?”

  “Still think he’s so trustworthy?”

  Good question. Of course, they could have just met in passing. That would explain why Daisy and Hecate hadn’t recognised him. Still, it was all a little bit suspect.

  “I need more clues.”

  “Oh, come on, darling! You’re better than this. I trained you for so long to do things like this. It’s really not that tricky to figure out.”

  “Help me talk it through! Just a little.”

  “Fine.”

  “Um… Well, where do I start?”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “A list of anomalies. Anything that doesn’t sit right.”

  Oh dear. “That might take a while.”

  “Fine. Let’s start with something simple. Why was the building set on fire?”

  That was an easy one. “To destroy the evidence.”

  “Yes, of course. But what evidence? The boy was already dead. You’d seen his body. Why bother burning down the house?”

  “To kill me?”

  “But you’re not dead, are you?”

  “Well, no, but it was close.”

  “Oh, Nessa, I swear you aren’t that dumb.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you really think that if a person capable of that kind of magic wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have been killed that first night in the graveyard?”

  “You know about that?”

  “I know everything.”

  I was beginning to believe that more and more.

  “Well, why didn’t you try to help? What about the grabbers? And the vampires? Did you just decide you wanted me to take my chances?”

  “I wanted to see how you coped.”

  “I hope that was entertaining for you.”

  “I don’t know why you’re getting so emotional. You’re still alive, aren’t you? Anyway, the point is this: if someone with that kind of darkness in them wanted you dead, that fire would have consumed you in a second. In fact, you would have been dead days ago, long before you got to the house. The fire wasn’t to kill you, and it wasn’t to destroy Patty’s body.”

  “So… there was something else in that house?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what?”

  “Oh, I’m not going to tell you everything. You have to do some of this quest yourself.”

  “If you know everything –”

  “I do.”

  “ – then you know that I’ve spent the last few days doing everything I possibly could to find the killer.”

  “I know that you’ve been doing everything you possibly could wrong.”

  Harsh.

  “What?”

  “Catch the thief, catch the killer.”

  “What exactly is that meant to mean?”

  She pressed her fingers to her temples and began massaging. “And I thought you had potential.”

  “What?”

  “Look at the robbery case. I’m sure your police friends have information about it. Everything will start coming together when you start trying.”

  “I have been trying!”

  “I really hope that’s not true, darling, otherwise you’re not who I thought you were at all and I made a massive mistake taking you in.”

  This was getting downright offensive.

  “I thought you liked me for my winning personality, not my skills.”

  “Darling, I only bothered with you because you brutally murdered two people with your magic when you were barely a teenager and I was impressed. If that imaginative side of you is gone, then I don’t really care for what’s left.”

  “I killed three people earlier today! Maybe even four!” I cried, worried momentarily that Satan might become disinterested in me. Then I realised I was bragging about murder to impress her and decided to shut up.

  She grinned. “That’s my girl. Now leave and figure this out before people begin to wonder at your intelligence.”

  Just like that, I was dismissed. I walked back out into the reception hall and joined Death by the portal.

  “Home?” he asked.

  “Yes, please,” I answered.

  We stepped through and ended up in the forest near my house once again. He walked me home to prevent me from being accosted by any magical weirdos. It was full moon, after all. We stopped outside the cottage. There were no lights on inside, so I was guessing Henry and Ed (my honorary roomies) were still at the house fire. Good. I needed a little time to myself.

  “Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for earlier today, too. Cleaning up the grabbers.”

  “No worries,” he said. “Anything for my favourite little murderer.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “No, really. You’re becoming one of my best customers.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Yeah, I know. Gallows humour.”

  I hit him on the arm. “Stop it!”

  “Fine.”

  He was still grinning.

  “Oh, and thank you for the clouding mind-mojo thing you did, too. Although I was going to ask, why didn’t you delete Ed’s memory? Is it because he’s a ghost or something? Or just because he’s pathetic and you didn’t think he was a threat? I was inclined to agree, but after that little chat with Satan I just don’t know anymore. Apparently he knew Daisy and –”

  “Nessa, stop,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  “You clouded their memories. Hecate, Henry and Daisy,” I said slowly.

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

  “What? But that doesn’t make any sense! They can’t remember what happened in the forest, and they couldn’t remember after the vampire bit me in the cave, either, because I accidentally used my magic then as well. At least, I think I did. So I just thought you must have clouded their memories so they wouldn’t know about my demonic purple energy.”

  “Nessa, I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t tamper with anyone’s memory.”

  I felt my stomach drop. What did that mean, then? Who had done it? Why? There was one idea that was forming in my head, but I didn’t want to give it any credence. It made no sense. Unless….

  Nope. I couldn’t think about ‘unless’. I needed to start working wi
th the facts.

  “Well, thanks for bringing me home. Oh, and while I think of it, do you know what the Doomstone does?”

  He half-smiled. “Of course I do.”

  “And would you fancy telling me?”

  “Not on your life.”

  I groaned. “Death puns are not funny when they come from you.”

  “Are you kidding? They’re only funny when they come from me.”

  And with that, he strode back off into the night, cloak billowing behind him.

  Chapter 19

  First things first: list of the weird shit that had happened that was probably significant. I figured it was a good idea to start this without anyone else around, since after that chat with Satan, I was back to trusting no one. I found a pen and the back of an envelope and began listing the weird things that made no sense, trying to draw everything together. A few very messy envelopes later, I’d come up with nothing.

  Well, that’s not strictly true. I’d organised the clues into things that seemed related, but there didn’t seem to be any sort of pattern as far as I could tell.

  Firstly, there was a clouding spell at Ed’s grave, which prevented me from sensing anything about the body. Zombies appeared to ward us off, and then the corpse exploded. Later we found out that the autopsy report was incomplete because the forensic guy had been bewitched. All of this meant that there was something on Ed’s corpse that would incriminate the murderer and they’d worked very hard to hide it.

  Secondly, Daisy and Hecate couldn’t see Ed at first. Now they could, which (according to Satan) meant they’d met him before, but none of them appeared to recognise each other. Were they lying? Had they only met in passing? Either way, I wasn’t willing to trust any of them.

  Then there was the fact that only Ed could remember my crazy magic. Death hadn’t erased anyone’s memories. Someone had clouded them. Who? And why hadn’t they clouded Ed?

  And, of course, we had the bank robbery, my missing encyclopaedia, the murders of Ed’s housemates, the house being set alight – all potentially significant to my quest, but why?