I grabbed the torn neck of his t-shirt and twisted it. “Tell me.”
Now he looked at me, but the terror in his eyes told me everything. “She’s where she’s supposed to be now. I promise.”
I fell back against Tram, too tired to do much else. “I would’ve done anything to have her back, but not like that.”
“I know,” Tram said, his lips close to my ear. “I’m sorry.”
“Your mom was laid to rest right. I made sure of it.” Callum hid his head in his hands, as if what he’d seen had placed a heavy burden on the back of his neck.
“Callum.” His name barely creaked out of my lips, but I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to say to him. Then an awful memory poked shards of ice into my brain. “Where’s Jo?”
“She’s okay,” Callum said. “She’s in my car.”
My breath came in shallow bursts. I clenched the earth over my grave as if to scratch the memory of how close I’d come to death from my brain.
“I need to see her.” Using Tram for support, I stood on shaky legs. Maybe someday I would stop trembling.
Tram and Callum flanked me while we walked out of the center of the Trinity trees in silence, and Tram steadied me with an arm secured around my waist. With Mom safe in her grave again, I finally had the nerve to look around. Dead bodies lay everywhere.
“Oh…no,” I said, my words shaking with my shudders.
Tram set his mouth in a thin line. “I’ll make everything right again.”
The rest of the graveyard looked like a warzone. Heavy smoke hugged the air above the dead trees, their branches and roots strewn about like dropped matchsticks. We stepped over deep cracks in the ground every few feet.
“This war was nothing compared to what would’ve happened if you became Three and the Core opened,” Tram said.
“Let’s not get close to that happening again.” Callum kicked a rock and it skittered down the path. “Ever.”
Tram looked over my head at him. “Agreed.”
The sirens drew closer.
Two shadows slinked toward us farther down the path, then the two figures came running. The moonlight caught Ms. Hansen’s and Mrs. Rios’s dirt and blood-streaked faces. My legs started to buckle with relief, but Tram kept me upright.
Mrs. Rios threw her arms around me. “It’s over. Everything can go back to normal.”
“Normal.” The word tasted strange on my lips, muddy and hopeful at the same time.
“I put up a wall of light to keep the police away for the time being,” Mrs. Rios said, releasing me to look at Tram.
“Leigh, your hair,” Ms. Hansen said through a mouthful of her own. “It’s blonde again.”
I felt for a strand and brought it under my gaze. She was right. Underneath the mud was my usual color. I squeezed that strand of hair and let relief rush through me.
“But just in case.” Her hand disappeared inside her jacket pocket and retrieved a pair of scissors. Then she snipped a lock of my hair.
“Hey.” My hand flew to my muddy head.
“What did you do that for?” Callum asked.
Ms. Hansen frowned at my lock of hair and slicked her fingers down it to remove some mud. “I read people’s past, present, and future through their hair.”
“Not all Sorceresses have dark powers,” Mrs. Rios said with a grim smile.
“Sorceresses?” Callum asked. “You two?” He didn’t sound all that surprised.
I wasn’t either, not after everything I’d seen.
“And not all of us side with Gretchen.” Ms. Hansen popped my locks into her mouth. Her eyebrows waved up and down, a mix of surprise and concern. “It must be the mud. I can’t read anything.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Ms. Hansen tucked my hair into her pocket. “I’ll give it a good rinse when I get home.”
Tram looked around him, his face somber. “We need to clean up, but I can’t do anything for the dead trees outside the Trinity.”
Callum pointed behind Mrs. Rios and Ms. Hansen. “Maybe she can.”
Sarah was coming up the path, a shovel gripped tightly in her hand. Her eyes sparked with something different. Victory maybe? They never left mine as she came closer. The patches of loose skin around her dark mouth fluttered in a sudden cool breeze. She walked around us and nudged Callum out of the way so she could stand next to me.
I took her hand with my free one, and her cold touch crept up my arm. Her whispers weaved through the lacy smoke curtain hanging in the air. I was so happy to be alive, I didn’t care I was breathing in her stench. She’d given me the keys to capture Ica. We’d both dug ourselves out of the same grave. Not many people had that in common.
“Can you bring this all back, Sarah?” I asked.
She thumped a hand over her chest like a heartbeat and shook her head. But someone had made her yard live again. I needed someone to do that with Mom’s lilacs. Their life might stop the tremors that kept skidding below my skin.
Tram took my other hand and squeezed, but even his strength couldn’t still my shaking. “You need to go home and rest. Callum, can you—”
“I’ll be in my car,” he said, his gaze on Tram’s hand in mine. Then he began down the path, his hands in his jeans pockets and head bent.
“We’ll see if we can find out who helped Sarah’s yard. Sarah? Come with me?” Ms. Hansen held her hand out to Sarah.
Sarah glanced at me then took it, and they drifted off.
Mrs. Rios looked from Tram to me with a smile. “I’m proud to know such warriors.” She smiled and followed Sarah and Ms. Hansen.
My gaze swept toward Callum, but night swallowed him. “My mom. I need to check on her.”
Tram wrapped an arm around me, hugging me close, but it did nothing for the chill sweeping through my bones. Under our feet, the rocks shifted and crunched together as we wound our way up the path. A comfortable, normal sound that belonged in a graveyard.
We stopped in front of Mom’s grave. Her blanket of earth was tucked around her in a tight burrito, just like how she used to tuck Darby and me into bed. I crumbled to the ground and stared at her picture in the headstone.
Mom, where do I begin?
I smoothed the fresh footprints over her grave like they were wrinkles in a blanket.
There’s no need to wake up again, okay?
My hand waved through the mud, a gentle caress goodnight.
So, I’m a Trammeler Sorceress. You didn’t think to tell me?
Maybe she had been trying to tell me something. I looked around for a small white card at the base of her headstone but didn’t see anything. The last one I’d found had read Don’t go t— W— and the rest of it was completely smeared.
I blinked. Oh. Crap. Don’t go to Whaty-Whats. Also known as What Gifts She Carried.
Were those cards from you, Mom? Were you trying to warn me?
A tangled mass of questions buzzed around my head. Was my mom, the Anonymous Trammeler and a Sorceress, communicating with me through her grave? The handwriting had seemed hurried and messy, similar to Mom’s, but I hadn’t allowed myself to make the connection.
“Tram, is my mom inside the Core?” I asked.
He knelt and put his arm around me, his gaze aimed at her picture, too. “No. I never put her below my roots.”
I nodded, thankful for his answer. “What happens to Trammelers and Sorceressi when they die, and they don’t go to the Core?”
“It depends on what they believe in.”
“I think it was her leaving messages for me.”
Her grin inside the picture seemed genuine, but it looked out of place on someone so mysterious and full of secrets. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that. My true feelings about all this must be buried underneath the layers of mud covering my body.
“If the dead feel they left too early, their spirits will stay for a while,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “Maybe she’s trying to protect you.”
I sighed, a deep exhauste
d one, and let my head droop.
Please stay put and rest.
I glanced over my shoulder where Callum had disappeared into the darkness.
“Hey.” Tram touched my cheek so I would meet his eyes, then he looked in the same direction I had been. “Are you all right?”
Confusion cast an unexpected stone into my stomach, sending a fresh wave of shudders through my body. No, I wasn’t all right. But my brain was too wasted to pinpoint every reason why right then.
Thumbing the smudge between Tram’s eyebrows, I said, “See you tomorrow?”
The curves of his mouth stretched into a smile. “You know how to find me.”
“Leigh!”
I turned.
Jo shot through the night toward me. Her extra-large I’m Sleepy t-shirt swelled around her, adding fake bulk to her skinny frame. Happiness glowed in her eyes rather than Sorceressi blue.
I jumped up and ran toward my best friend, metal and magnet together at last.
Epilogue
Jo, Callum, and I stood rooted in place outside my house. Long, green blades of grass curled over our feet. Buds on top of thick stems scattered the yard and looked up at the night sky, waiting to say hello to the sun. And on either side of the front porch, Mom’s purple lilacs shimmied in a light breeze.
“Wow,” Jo said.
Callum nodded. “This is…an improvement.”
I was too used up to speak or to wipe away the tears, but I couldn’t look away and didn’t want to. Ever.
The only things that crunched under my feet were all the ash tree keys sprinkled around my lawn, not the nightmare grass that had been here before. Death didn’t seep from my feet anymore.
But what exactly had cured my yard? And who had folded the tarps and put them on the porch in a tidy pile? I took a deep breath and tried to make sense of everything, but that seemed so complicated. How could I wrap my brain around all this?
I was a Trammeler Sorceress, but not a dead one, thank God. So what was I supposed to do with that information? Tell Dad and Darby? Because if I was a Trammeler Sorceress, Darby was one, too.
This was all too much to handle. Especially right now, when all I really wanted to do was kiss every one of Mom’s lilacs, take a long, hot shower, and sleep twenty four hours straight.
I started up the sidewalk and bent in front of the lilacs. They wriggled happily. Nearby crickets cranked the volume on their nightly song. I hovered a fingertip over one of the delicate purple petals so I wouldn’t dirty it and smiled.
No more burying things, Mom. It’s time I dug up the truth about my gifts.
The End
Continue The Grave Winner series in book two, What Gifts She Carried.
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http://mybook.to/whatgifts
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www.lindseyrloucks.com
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Lindsey Loucks’s Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1nFiNR3
About the Author
Lindsey R. Loucks works as a school librarian in rural Kansas. When she's not discussing books with anyone who will listen, she's dreaming up her own stories. Eventually her brain gives out, and she'll play hide and seek with her cat, put herself in a chocolate-induced coma, or watch scary movies alone in the dark to re-energize.
Read More from Lindsey R. Loucks:
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www.lindseyrloucks.com
Damned If I Do
Erin Hayes
Damned If I Do © copyright 2015 Erin Hayes
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All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Damned If I Do
They killed my sister and infected me.
Now I have to pick up the pieces before I die.
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I’ve spent the last five months trying to find the bastard who did this. Yet, even with the help of a hot amnesiac vampire named Jude, I’ve had zero luck.
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Until now. And it could change everything. Even though I grew up in a family that hunted the supernatural, there were still things I didn’t believe in.
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Now I have to hurry for the slim chance that I could save us all. Because when you fight against immortal vampires, you’re the one who’s running out of time.
Prologue
Edie
"Edie, did you have to go with something so…loud?" my older sister Meghan asks as we walk out to the car.
I shift my shopping bags to my right hand so I can flip my long, pitch black hair with blue highlights over my shoulder in an exaggerated fashion. My hair has been freshly dyed during our shopping trip for last-minute Christmas gifts as a present to myself, so I’m teasing her with my show of flair.
"I kinda like it."
Meghan rolls her eyes and fishes her keys out of her pocket. "We both know the truth."
"That you're jealous?"
"Uh huh," she says with a good-natured grin. "Sure, Edie."
It's just after six o'clock on Christmas Eve, and Barton Creek Mall's parking lot is empty except for Meghan's CR-V. We spent a lot longer than expected gathering gifts for Amelia and Graeme, Meghan's daughter and husband. We have more bags than what's appropriate, but I'm feeling pumped at the prospect of seeing my three-year-old niece's face when she opens her Christmas presents. I picked out a camo bear at Build-A-Bear Workshop for her and dressed it in an adorable tutu with a tee that says, "I'm Unbearably Cool". It's perfect for Amelia despite Meghan's protests that camo is for boys.
My niece is going to be one of those plucky, cool girls that can do anything she wants.
The shadows lengthen as we near the CR-V, throwing the whole eastern side of the mall into twilight. Tonight, we're planning on having a family dinner with my boyfriend Mike, and we're running too late to cook anything. I imagine there will be a spruced up Boston Market rotisserie chicken in our near future.
A chill runs down my spine, as if there are eyes on me. I glance back at the mall, wondering if anyone else has left the building behind us.
I see no one.
I look back at Meghan to see if she senses it too, but she's too busy checking her emails on her phone. I hurry my pace and grab her arm.
"Come on," I say.
She looks at me with curiosity, then, seeing my face, she immediately goes alert. "What's wrong?
"Something's not right. Can't you sense it?"
She takes my hint and quickens her pace, somehow walking faster than me in high heels. She digs in her purse for something. Her keys are already out, so I know she’s searching for something else.
"Meghan?"
There’s a clatter, like someone has kicked gravel behind us.
My sister whirls back on me in fear, our eyes with their identical shades of hazel clashing against each other. Her eyes plead with me to do something, anything.
Although what, I'll never know.
They pounce on us.
Vampires.
I don't even see where they come from. Talon-like nails grip my arms, pulling me backwards and separating me from Meghan. I scream her name and flail, helpless in their grasp. I'm strong, but not strong enough to throw off eight vampires.
"Edie!" Meghan shrieks, finally freeing what she's been looking for in her pu
rse.
A wooden stake.
She uses it much like a dagger, flashing it about with deadly efficiency. She catches the closest ones in the chest, her speed surprising our assailants. As she stabs them and pulls out the stake, they crumple to the ground, gasping in pain as blood spurts forth in an uncontrollable fountain of thick ichor.
Still more take their place. It's a full on assault. I can tell that they've pulled out all the stops to attack us. This isn’t some random assault; they’ve coordinated this.
Both Meghan and I have trained for situations like this all our lives, but their sheer numbers overwhelm us. The worst part is, I can't help my older sister fight them off.
I'm forced to watch as Meghan spins and fights, parrying their attacks. She's in a ballet of death at the moment, reminding me why she's the best at what she does. And she hasn’t even pulled out the big, scary weapon yet. Vampires fall in heaps around her. They may have her outnumbered, but they can't match her passion.
I'm helpless.
Fuck!
I don't yell out to my sister any more for fear of distracting her. One false move and they’ll use it to ensnare her. I can't do anything to help, and Meghan can't get to me to free me.
I try calling up some magic spells to fight back, only they leak like water through a sieve in my brain. Nothing is sticking, nothing works. If I can't visualize the spell in my mind because I'm too freaked out, I’m useless. My meager powers don't offer any sort of help in this situation.
Fingers grip my throat, forcing my head backwards and tearing my eyes away from the carnage in front of me. I grunt in pain while I try to fight it off.
"Shhhh, little Harker."
A face floats into view, someone I don't recognize. I thought I knew most of the vampires in Austin, the good and the bad, but apparently not.
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