Shallow Grave (The Lazarus Codex Book 3)

by E. A. Copen

  It made sense. Every killer has to deal with the bodies, and often that’s where they screw up and leave behind lots of evidence. One of the world’s most prolific serial killers had only been caught after a flood washed the remains of dozens of victims out of the guy’s crawl space. If a killer had someone to eat the remains, he’d have a much easier time of getting away with it, and this killer would have if Serkan’s ghoul hadn’t tipped me off last month. But then, why was that body different than the rest? And why bury the rest of the bones now and not when he was finished? Maybe the killer and his clean up crew had a falling out.

  I knew one thing. If Serkan’s story was true, then all I had to do was find one of them, and I’d be able to track down the other. Good thing I had a lead on where to find a soul who’d been kicked out his body.

  “You know what, Serkan?” I gestured to him with my staff. “You’re not such a bad guy after all. Thanks for the tip. I’ll have what you asked for delivered day after tomorrow by eight.”

  “Horseman,” he called as I turned my back.

  I paused and looked over my shoulder, even though all I could make out was the faint outline of his body in the darkness.

  Serkan’s eyes weren’t focused on me, but instead on Khaleda. “Be wary of accepting help from Morningstar. He is not what he seems.”

  Khaleda stopped beside me, waiting. I couldn’t see her face, but I could sense she was interested to see how I’d respond to that.

  “Trust me, Highness, I’m well aware of that,” I said and sloshed through the water toward the exit.

  Chapter Eleven

  I got lost in the tunnels and had to wait for another ghoul to come to my rescue.

  By the time we made it out of the underground and back into the graveyard, the gray morning had gotten grayer. I could smell the rain on the wind, and it felt more like a threat than a promise. The air was too warm still, meaning that it was more likely to be a storm than a gentle rain shower.

  The blood moon, huh? I thought, looking up at the billowing clouds. If the storms didn’t clear, I doubted we’d be able to see it, but that probably didn’t matter to the spell and whoever was trying to cast it. There were no weather delays in magic. I had until tomorrow night to find the killers and stop them, which meant they’d either killed more people and we hadn’t found the bodies yet, or they were about to ramp things up.

  Khaleda tugged at the zipper of her suit. It had to be uncomfortable in the high humidity. Not that I minded. The lower the zipper went, the better the view.

  I shook my head and turned away. No, Lazarus. Bad necromancer. Don’t get seduced by the hot woman that will literally drive you crazy if you do the deed one too many times. Although that wouldn’t be the worst way to lose my mind…

  “So,” she said, pulling her hair into a messy bun, “how do you plan on letting the ghouls look at the sun?”

  “A bulk order of sunglasses and free two-day shipping,” I answered as we reached the edge of the cemetery. “Pretty sure ghouls don’t know how to use online retailers, or they’d have them already.”

  She stopped, threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Lazarus, you are adorable.”

  “I’ve been called a lot of things, but adorable’s a first.” My cell phone buzzed, and I yelped, forgetting I even had the damn thing. After patting myself down, I pulled a small zippered baggie from my pocket and squinted at the screen through the water. After losing my first phone while trekking through the swamps looking for that damned urn, I learned my lesson. Swamplands and smartphones don’t mix.

  I pulled the phone out of the bag and answered the call. “Hey, Emma. I just got done with the ghoul business.”

  “Never mind that.” Her voice held an unfamiliar edge. Was that…panic? In all the time I’d known Emma Knight, I’d never heard her panicked. Upset, yeah. Pissed off? Sure. Panicked? Hell no. She was the calmest and most collected person I knew.

  It made my back stiffen. “What’s going on?”

  “Missing persons just took a report. Eleven-year-old girl, Lazarus.”

  “Do you think it could be our guy?”

  “Don’t know,” she said, her voice slightly muffled, as if she were intentionally trying to keep quiet. “I do know it’s possible. The parents are frantic. It’s recent. She was last seen just a few hours ago.”

  I knew what that meant. The only reason we hadn’t been able to get any information so far was because all the evidence was decayed beyond use. Even as a necromancer, my powers have their limits. While I’d been able to sense some things from the collection of bones Emma had presented me with, I couldn’t use them to trace my way to the murderer or even to identify the victims.

  For the first time, we had a chance to do both. With a simple tracking spell, I could find this kid, and if we moved fast, we might even find her before the bad guys finished their work.

  “Where?” I said and gestured for Khaleda to hurry.

  “Estelle. Connaught drive.”

  “Got it. I can be there in twenty.”

  “Hurry, Lazarus.” She ended the call.

  “Girl problems?” Khaleda said, pulling herself through the hole in the cemetery wall.

  “Got a missing child that might match the profile of the other victims. I’m going to go find her.” I closed my eyes and slowly worked to rebuild the defenses I’d let down. The two ghosts who’d previously been interested in me got the eviction notice and retreated from touching my psyche. Good riddance.

  Khaleda was frowning when I opened my eyes. “And if you run into this Undying or the ghoul that’s eating his scraps?”

  I pulled myself through the hole in the wall and took off running down the sidewalk. Khaleda had no trouble keeping up, even in heels. “I kill the ghoul.”

  “And the Undying?” Dammit, she wasn’t even winded.

  “Still working on that.”

  I let Khaleda drive, which may have been a mistake. The little car didn’t have much kick, and it frustrated the hell out of her until she figured out she could weave in and out of traffic more effectively in it. She nearly scratched the paint more than once. With the driver’s side window still busted, it was also a very wet ride, which just made trying to change in the front seat more difficult.

  I didn’t have much in the way of spare clothes after running around in the swamp for three days, but I did keep a pair of sweats, and an old Nirvana shirt tucked in behind the seats for just such an occasion.

  Khaleda stole a long look at me after I pulled off the filth-covered shirt and tossed it into the back. “You know, I don’t understand something.”

  “Watch the road!” I screeched.

  She rolled her eyes and jerked the steering wheel to the right, narrowly avoiding an oncoming minivan. “Why did Morningstar tell me you killed Osric? Just to get me to find you myself?”

  “Seriously, Khaleda. The road!” I braced myself against the frame as we zipped through a red light.

  “Stop whining. Besides, if you wanted me to watch the road, why take off all your clothes next to me?”

  “I’d like to at least make an effort not to smell like death water when I show up to talk to a missing kid’s parents.” I let go of the car to jerk the sweatpants up over my boxers. “Besides, I didn’t take all my clothes off. And don’t act like you’re all innocent, not after last night.”

  She smirked to herself. “Too bad I had to break the handcuffs. Bet we could have a lot of fun.”

  “See what I mean? No way a naked necromancer whose only workout is running away from things that want to kill him makes you blush.”

  I hadn’t told Emma about Khaleda, and I hoped she didn’t ask too many questions. Maybe it was too much to hope when I was showing up with someone in skin-tight black leather, carrying colored vials and smelling of a crypt. Emma was smart enough to draw her own conclusions if Khaleda spent any time talking to her, and she almost certainly wouldn’t approve of me accepting help from a succubus. Never mind that I didn’t have an
y choice. I really did need all the help I could get on this one.

  We sped through a yellow light at twenty over the speed limit. It was a wonder we hadn’t gotten pulled over yet honestly, but Khaleda seemed to have a knack for avoiding the cops. I hadn’t seen a single cruiser on our route. “Listen, Khaleda. When we get where we’re going—”

  “Lay low?” She frowned. “You don’t want your cop friends to see me? Are you ashamed of me, Lazarus?” Khaleda stuck her bottom lip out.

  I grunted and focused my gaze out the window. “I barely know you. I certainly don’t trust you. It’s been less than a day since you tried to kill me last. Besides, you’re armed to the teeth, and I’m not sure all of that is legal and Emma… Emma really likes to arrest bad guys. Or gals, as the case may be.”

  “And I’m a very bad girl.” Khaleda’s frown turned into a flirty smirk.

  I tried not to focus too much on her. My focus had to be on finding this kid, which meant prepping for a tracking spell.

  There were wizards that specialized in finding lost items, but I wasn’t one of them. Oh, I could pull off a tracking spell. That was basic magic that I learned from Pony early on. But I’d have to concentrate to hold it, and it wouldn’t come easy. For me, it was sort of like stretching a muscle I hadn’t used in a while. As soon as the spell locked on to her location, we’d have to move out of the house and either drive or walk to wherever the magic pointed in a hurry. There’d be panicked parents, shouting police, and the sounds of traffic. I’d have to concentrate through all of that. Having Khaleda next to me with her pouty lips, perfect hips, and nice, long legs…

  Ah, dammit. Now I was going to have to start over again.

  I closed my eyes, let out a deep breath, and focused on the magic in me, mentally picturing it as I saw souls, as a raw force pumping from the low center of my chest through the rest of my body. As I did, the chill of the grave touched me from behind.

  “Lazarus,” Jean hissed into my ear.

  “Not now,” I growled back. “Later.”

  “Problem?” Khaleda asked, taking a hard right.

  “Ghost.”

  At the same time as I answered her, Jean whined at me. “But it’s important. Trust me, you’re going to want to hear this.”

  I might as well answer him since I won’t be able to hold concentration as long as he’s talking to me. My eyes snapped open, and I twisted in my seat to sneer at the iridescent form hovering in the narrow space between Khaleda and me. “What?”

  “I found Dominique. Well, his ghost at least. He’s still here in the city!”

  It didn’t seem useful, but Jean was really worked up over it, his eyes sparkling with excitement. Then again, the guy was his half-brother. I didn’t have any siblings left, but I’d be happy as hell to be reunited with my sister after not seeing her for two hundred years. I still wouldn’t interrupt a necromancer when he’s trying to concentrate.

  “That’s nice, Jean, but I really don’t have time to deal with—”

  “He says he knows where his body is. It’s still up and walking around!”

  Now that was valuable information. If the body was still up and walking around as one of the Undying, I could corner it, maybe even figure out what to do with it. More than that, since Jean and Dominique were related by blood, I could use a sample from Dominique to find Jean’s body. I might actually be able to help the guy. After I found the missing little girl and saved her from the monster, that was.

  “That’s great, Jean,” I said, turning forward. “Right now, I need to focus on helping the police find a missing little girl though. Helping you will have to wait. Turn here.” I pointed down the last street, repeating what the GPS program on my phone said.

  It wasn’t hard to guess which house we were supposed to go to. Only one house had two police cruisers and a black Escalade parked outside. I directed Khaleda to pull in behind the last squad car and was out the door before we’d come to a complete stop, jerking my staff from behind the seats so fast I almost hit Khaleda in the head.

  A uniformed cop stood by the door. He stepped away from the door as I came up the walk, blocking my path forward. “Lazarus Kerrigan, right?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Don’t figure you remember me, but we’ve met before.”

  I glanced at the name badge on his uniform. Dawson. I didn’t think I knew anyone by that name, so I studied his face, and it came back to me. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been gaunt with bruised, sunken eyes and smelled like Vicks and beer sweat. He’d also had a ghost hovering over his shoulder. Now, he was a clean-shaven guy who looked almost ten years younger. The ghost I’d seen with him was also absent.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I remember you. You look much better. You doing okay?”

  “Thirty days sober now. Thanks to you.” He extended a hand that I took. “Detective Knight says you’re a good guy. She also said you were coming to help with the search. Hope we don’t need you.”

  “I do more than see ghosts,” I said, pumping his hand. “They inside?”

  He stepped aside. “Said to send you on in when you got here. You let me know what I can do to help.”

  I pulled open the screen door and paused, looking down at the door handle. It was broken, but that wasn’t what had caught my attention. As soon as I pulled open the door, I got a whiff of something foul, dark and greasy magic that reminded me of a burning oil slick in a trash heap. The sudden assault of residual energy made me remember to check the threshold.

  The stories about vampires not being able to enter homes without being invited in aren’t all fiction. Most supernatural bad guys can’t enter a happy home uninvited while it’s occupied by the family. There were certain cases in which that protection didn’t apply, and it didn’t prevent them from trashing the threshold to get in, but for the most part, it was a general rule. If something supernatural had grabbed the girl, it probably hadn’t been invited in. This threshold, however, was completely intact. By itself, that didn’t mean anything, but I made a note of it for later use.

  Inside, dim lighting and warm colors characterized the house. Children’s drawings were pinned to the fridge along with a spelling test someone must’ve been proud of. Cereal bowls littered the sink, and the calendar was stuck on the wrong month. In short, it looked like any other house with working parents and kids. The only difference was the heavy despair hanging in the air, punctuated with the buzzing anxiety of the mother weeping on the sofa.

  She wore bright blue scrubs and a floral cardigan. Her sandy blonde hair had stray grays, despite her younger appearance.

  Emma sat next to her, a hand on her back and a small pad of paper in her hand. “Mrs. Michaels, I know this is hard…”

  A red-faced man in a white dress shirt with the cuffs undone and the sleeves rolled back paced into view on the far side of the sofa, hands on his hips. “Someone should have been here,” he snapped in a tone reserved for angry, grieving people. “I told you to get a sitter.”

  Moses, who stood near a wall full of family photos, frowned. “Mr. Michaels, I really don’t think this is the time for blame. We all want the same thing.”

  Mrs. Michaels sat up and lifted a tissue to wipe away tears. A left hand with no wedding band. Ah, that explained it. There was definitely enough turmoil in the house between those two to render the threshold nearly inert. The nervous energy in the air wasn’t just due to the missing girl, but it was old, practically ingrained in the wood.

  I stepped into the living room, and Emma left Mrs. Michaels’ side to come to me. “How long’s she been missing?” I asked.

  Mr. Michaels crossed his arms. “Who’s this?”

  “This is the consultant I told you about,” Emma said. “Evan Michaels, this is Lazarus Kerrigan. Laz, Mr. Michaels.”

  He sneered at me, so I didn’t bother trying to shake hands. No time to try and force pleasantries on the miserable. Instead, I repeated my question.

  “We think about two hours, maybe more,�
� Emma said.

  “She was fine this morning,” Mrs. Michaels said, her voice thick. “I had an early shift at the hospital, but I got her up for school before I left. I didn’t know anything was wrong until the school called to tell me she was absent.”

  “Where’s her bus stop?” I asked. There was a chance she hadn’t been abducted from the house at all, and instead, they’d grabbed her off the street.

  The mother shook her head. “They stop in front of the house. They always do. She’s the only kid on the street.”

  Well, there went that theory. At least now I knew for sure she’d been taken from there, which meant she might not be far away. Or, they could’ve shoved her in the trunk of a car and driven her to the airport. They could be on a plane headed anywhere.

  No, I can’t let myself think like that. Not if I want to find her. I have to believe she’s still close by. I studied the father with his angry scowl. My inner caveman wanted to sock him one just for being a dick to his wife when she needed him most, but it wasn’t my place. Best I could do was try and bring their daughter back to them.

  “What’s her name?” I asked as gently as I could.

  “Kaitlynn,” she said with a sniffle. “Kaitlynn Michaels.”

  “Mrs. Michaels, do you have anything that was part of Kaitlynn? Maybe some hair from her hairbrush or even fingernail clippings? Something biological.”

  “You’re that charlatan,” Mr. Michaels ground out. “The idiot palm reader who says he can do real magic.”

  Emma tried to step between him and me, but it didn’t stop him from storming across the room to get in my face. “Get out of my house.”

  I met his angry eyes and reminded myself I was seeing him on what was probably the worst day of his life. Could be he was a nice guy any other day, but I doubted it. “I’m here to help find your daughter. I don’t need you to believe in what I do for that to work, but I do need for you to get out of my face before I feel threatened.”