Seventh Grave and No Body

by Darynda Jones

  I shrugged a shoulder. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  “True. I rock at selling vacuum cleaners. And you have a house to dispossess. Chop, chop.”

  After I got dressed, I searched Reyes’s apartment for him, but to no avail. I stepped back into my own pad to see Osh dressed and wearing his top hat like he was going places.

  He stood. “Rey’aziel had to go check on things at the bar. He asked me to escort you today.”

  The sting was quick and brutal. I fought to suppress it. “Okay,” I said, wondering if Osh was like Reyes and me. If he could feel emotion.

  Either way, we ended up going to the Amityville house together. In absolute silence. Maybe he could feel emotion. We crossed the Rio Grande at eight thirty and found the house with relative ease about ten minutes later. Sadly, it looked nothing like the real Amityville house. And it certainly didn’t look possessed.

  Father Glenn stood out front, waiting for us.

  “Where’s the family?” I asked as I climbed out of Misery.

  “Work. Kids are at school.” He shook my hand and nodded to Osh, who stood close behind me.

  “It looks so normal,” I said, and the father chuckled.

  “That’s what I said. It seems very interested in meeting you.”

  “Wonderful. Shall we?” I asked Osh. I’d of course packed Zeus, but if there was a real demon inside, I could easily get rid of it with my light, or my inner glow, as I liked to call it. I’d done it before.

  Osh nodded and followed me to the door.

  “It’s open,” Father Glenn called out. “I want you to get a feel for the place before I join you.”

  “’Kay. Thanks.” I wasn’t sure what else to say to that.

  “It has a dark aura,” Osh said quietly.

  I slowed my step. “That’s bad?”

  He nodded. “Houses don’t have auras.”

  “Oh. So, yeah, bad.” Probably an angry demon.

  He went inside with me, but just in case, as we crossed the threshold, I summoned an even angrier demon. “Rey’aziel,” I whispered.

  “I’m here,” he said at my ear. Of course he would already be there, watching over me incorporeally. I felt his heat slide along my skin, the scorching sensation oddly comforting.

  As we searched for the room Father Glenn told us about, the one with the most activity, I asked Osh, “How do you do that? How do you see auras? I’ve done it, but I can’t do it every day. And I’m the grim reaper, for heaven’s sake.”

  “It took a while for me to learn it, too. You were made to see the departed, to focus on them. Maybe that’s why the auras of the living are unimportant to you.”

  “They’re not unimportant.”

  “Just a thought.”

  “So, how did you learn?”

  “First, you have to realize human sight is different from our own. We see a thousand times the number of colors that they do.”

  “Seriously? Okay.”

  “Then you have to adjust. To see things from more than one plane at a time.”

  “And how do you do that?”

  “You catch fire.”

  I stopped and turned to him. “You what?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “That’s the only way to describe it. When I was first learning, it felt like I would catch fire. Then I could see every color the sun had to offer. And every nuance of every color. Every gradation in between until the shades between black and white were in the millions.”

  “Yes. That,” I said, pointing to him. “I want to do that.”

  “Push inside yourself until it feels like you catch fire. And hurry, because it’s here.”

  I whirled around, looking but not seeing. “I don’t understand. I’ve seen demons a dozen times. Why can’t I see it?”

  “You’ve seen them when they’ve allowed you to. You need to see them with or without their permission. And, yeah, I’d hurry.”

  My adrenaline kicked in, my gaze darting from corner to corner in a narrow hall. The wood floorboards creaked with every movement. I did what Osh said and concentrated. Tried to catch fire. A spark of heat flared to life inside me and grew, spreading until it consumed every inch I had to offer, until it blurred and shifted my vision from what I saw as a human to what I saw as a supernatural entity. And slowly a figure took shape in the darkened corridor.

  “I see it,” I whispered.

  He leaned closer. “You see the one that wants you to see it. You still aren’t seeing the other two that don’t.”

  That did it. I pushed in and pushed out at the same time, sending my light out to illuminate the world around me, and two more demons came into focus. Sadly, they were all three hanging from the ceiling, their slick black heads twisting in curiosity, their teeth glistening.

  One fell from the ceiling like a spider and partly unfolded itself in front of me, its limbs full of sharp angles and odd positions. Osh quickly traded places with me, his head lowered, his fists at his sides as he prepared for an attack. I could feel excitement rush through his veins with the promise of battle.

  The demon hissed and scurried back, and I could have sworn I heard the word champion on the air. It was in a language I knew but didn’t recognize. Either way, they knew who he was. What he was.

  I could also see Reyes, his cloak enveloping me like a protective layer undulating around me as he stood at my side. I felt the heat of his visage slide over my skin.

  Along with my newfound sight, the colors like a kaleidoscope glittering before my eyes, came other sensory clues that I was no longer just on the earthly plane. The scent of the demons hit me hard, like someone burning an animal that had been dead for days, its fur acrid, the smell of death strong.

  “You’ve been making an awful lot of commotion to get me over here,” I said to them. “It will be a costly mistake on your part.”

  “Reaper,” one of them said, its voice nothing more than a rasp, one that stabbed me like a dentist’s drill hitting a nerve. And it came from behind us.

  I turned while Osh stayed glued to the ones in front of us. The one behind us was still attached to the ceiling. Its face upside down came nose-to-nose with mine. Or it would have if it had had a nose. They looked so alienlike. So misshapen.

  I could so very easily turn them to dust, but I was curious as to why they would practically invite me over for tea and scones. “Why are you here?” I asked in the same language they were speaking.

  “You realize that by summoning me here, you signed your own death warrant.” Demons were nothing to take lightly. I’d seen what they were capable of, but I also knew they were no match against the light that shone inside me.

  “I do,” it said, and I fought to place the language we were speaking. I knew it was ancient. Possibly the first language ever spoken in the universe. “Unless we sign yours first.”

  “Is that what you think will happen here?”

  “Dutch,” Reyes said into my ear, “stop playing with your dinner.”

  “I just want to know why they’ve come onto my plane so brazenly. So callously.”

  “We are quedeau,” it said, and I had to translate the word in my mind.

  “Hunters,” I said, but it was more than that. “Bounty hunters.”

  “Close enough.”

  “If you’re going to do something, now would be a good time,” Osh said.

  I glanced around. The hall had filled with the slick, insectlike beasts. I felt a ball of oppressive energy gathering near the end of the hall, where the demons were entering through a crack in the wall. They looked like a horde of spiders emerging from a nest. Before I knew it, there were dozens of them surrounding us.

  “Why did you want me here?” I asked the one staring me down.

  “We are strongest here.”

  “Look closer,” Reyes whispered, and I saw that beyond the crack in the wall was a darkness, thick and a million miles deep, and it was literally hemorrhaging demons.

  “A gate?” I asked him, t
aken aback.

  “One of several gates to hell,” Osh said. “But the trip even to get this far is perilous. They must have emptied hell of these lice to get this many across.

  “There are more,” the demon said, his head twisting as though curious about me. “The Twelve have been sent. You are not long for this world, Reaper.”

  “There are more gates?” I asked Osh.

  “Yes. I came through one similar to this centuries ago, but I looked a lot better than these roaches.”

  As we spoke, the demon closest to me decided to take advantage of the distraction. He lurched toward me, claws extended, teeth bared, and in one blinding moment, I let loose the light that would burn them all alive. I focused my energy on the gate, tried to close it, but even my light couldn’t accomplish such a feat.

  Still, after I reined in my energy, they stopped coming through. Either they’d wised up and decided to stay on the other side, or I’d killed all those that had made it this far.

  “We should go just in case one of the Twelve had a passport stamped at this particular checkpoint.”

  “How many are there?” I asked as we hurried out of the house. “How many gates?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They aren’t what you think.”

  I stopped short and glanced up at something shiny in a corner where wall met ceiling. A small circle reflected light down at us, and if I was not mistaken, it belonged to a camera lens.

  “Coming?” he asked.

  I nodded and followed him out, wondering about the good father who’d summoned me here. Did he know this house sat on a hellmouth? Of course, the family could have placed cameras about the place themselves in an attempt to catch paranormal activity. It wasn’t the camera itself that caught my attention, but the fact that it was so well hidden, almost undetectable. And it looked like a professional installation.

  I pulled him to a stop in the foyer. “Is that what you looked like in hell?” I asked Osh. “One of those things?”

  “Hell no,” he said, offended. He adjusted his top hat. “I looked like me.”

  “Then what were they?”

  “Demons.”

  “But you’re a demon.”

  “Let’s just say there are as many species of demons as there are animals on Earth. Those are the lesser demons. Kind of like worker bees.”

  “They were below you?” I asked. “Below the Daeva?” I didn’t want to use the word Reyes used to describe them: slaves.

  He shook his head and looked away as though embarrassed. “No one was below the Daeva.”

  I stepped even closer, my curiosity burning. “After they threw Reyes off that grain elevator and I kissed him —”

  “You brought him back,” he assured me.

  And maybe I had. He’d fallen seven stories. He’d been crushed and lay dying at the bottom. All he’d asked for was a kiss, and when I kissed him, I’d felt an electricity run from me and into him. A warmth. But it was still hard for me to believe I had such a gift. I was the grim reaper. It was my job to escort the dead to heaven. Not to bring them back to life.

  “Fine. Let’s say I did, but for a few seconds afterwards, I saw something else. Something dark. Something very much like those demons. And then it was gone. Did I kill the demon inside him?”

  He offered me a sad smile. “Sugar, he is the demon inside him. You cannot separate the two.” This time, he stepped closer, his expression hardening. “Make no mistake, Charley, there is a part of him that is as dark and dangerous as Lucifer himself. That part lives in all demons.”

  I raised my brows in question. “Even in you?”

  “Yes, even in me.” He stepped back and dropped his gaze to the floor. “Especially in me.”

  “Thank you for being honest.” I looked up. “And thank you for being here, Reyes,” I whispered before we stepped out into the light. But he didn’t respond, and for the second time that day, I felt a sting, quick and brutal.

  “The good news is they’re gone,” I said to Father Glenn as we walked toward him.

  “What? Just like that?” he asked, straightening. “You weren’t in there five minutes.”

  “We’re super-efficient. The bad news is, this family is living smack-dab on top of a gate to hell.”

  He stilled, then opened a journal to jot down a note. “How do you know?”

  “I saw it.”

  His lids rounded into saucers. “Can you describe it?”

  “I have another case to get to,” I said. “But we can talk another time, yes?”

  “Yes, of course. What do I owe you?” he asked as we walked to Misery. Despite my suspicions, he didn’t seem deceptive at all. He had a burning curiosity, but who wouldn’t when told of the location of a gate to hell? I thought about the file he’d given me, the one from the Vatican. “Paid in full, Father.”

  He shook my hand, then tipped an invisible hat as Osh tipped his real one and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “I think I need to know more about your world,” I said to Osh as we headed back to the office. He drove, which was probably a good thing, since I was shaking and a little light-headed from our ordeal. Being surrounded by dozens of demons in that form felt a lot like standing in the middle of a room crawling with flesh-eating spiderlike roaches. I shivered. “And the gates. What the hell are those about? And the whole marking-of-souls thing I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “Okay,” he said, more compliant than I’d expected.

  “And just how, exactly, do you feed off the souls of humans? Is it like a vitamin-deficiency thing?” I winced as Osh changed lanes to avoid ramming into the back of a Sunday driver. We had places to be, damn it. “And do all demons do that? Or are you like an incubus?”

  He laughed. “If I were an incubus, sugar, I’d have had you in my bed weeks ago.”

  “Osh,” I said, scolding him teasingly, “you really need to work on your self-confidence. Low self-esteem is such a tragedy in today’s youth.”

  “Isn’t it?” he said, his mouth tilting up at one corner. His eyes were such a fantastic shade of bronze, a color I’d never seen on anyone before, and I wondered if he was lying about the incubus thing. I had a feeling he didn’t want for womanly affection.

  Ubie called before we could dive deeper into the conversation. He had good news and bad news. He’d managed to get a warrant for the storage unit from the card we found in Dad’s hotel room. That was the good news. The bad news was that a woman had called the police to her house off Academy. She hadn’t heard from her son, so she went to his house that morning and found a suicide note but, of course, no son.

  “I can meet you there,” I said, my phone beeping with another call. We could still save him.

  “Actually, pumpkin, I’m headed over to the station. I’ll call you when I know more.”

  He was acting awfully weird. “You’re acting awfully weird,” I said to him, my mouth echoing my thoughts involuntarily.

  “We have a lead. I’ll get back to you.” His tone was tightly controlled. He was in full detective mode, which was fine since he was a detective and all, but I was on the case with him. Why would he keep the lead from me?

  “Okay. Keep me in the loop.”

  “Pumpkin,” he said, then hesitated a moment before saying, “you know I love you, right?”

  My chest tightened. That was beyond weird. “Of course, Uncle Bob. Tell me what’s going on.” Fear spiked within me like the percussion of a nuclear blast.

  “I’ll explain later.”

  I hung up so I could answer the other incoming call.

  “I wanted to call you,” the woman on the other end said. “I figured it out. I know who’s writing the suicide notes and kidnapping people.”

  “Mrs. Chandler?” I asked, recognizing her slightly Texan accent. She was the widow of one of the “suicide” victims. “What do you mean?”

  “I called the police this morning, and now they have someone in
custody. I got him. I got that bastard.”

  “Mrs. Chandler, tell me what happened. How do you know who it is?”

  “Okay, well, I don’t watch a lot of TV. Hardly ever, really. But my son was home, and he had the TV on. It was that woman. That newswoman from Channel 7 who goes out and interviews people in Albuquerque? Ted always said she was dumb as a box of rocks.”

  “Okay.” I couldn’t argue that. “Sylvia Starr.”

  “Yes! But I didn’t know he’d been released. It’s him. He’s the kidnapper.”

  “Who, Mrs. Chandler? I don’t understand.”

  “That Reyes Farrow boy.”

  My vision blurred and darkened around the edges. Osh must have sensed my distress. He pulled over to the side of the road. Horns honked behind us, but they could have been a million miles away, for all the attention I gave them.

  “The guy she did the story on. Said he was innocent and the state let him go after ten years in prison. That’s how I knew. My husband was on the jury. I called and told them to look into it, and they said I was right. Said all the victims were on the jury.”

  Osh put Misery in park. Mrs. Chandler was practically screaming into the phone. He couldn’t have missed a word she said.

  “Mrs. Chandler,” I said, swallowing back the acrid taste of bile in my throat, “I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”

  “It’s him, I tell you!” She was growing frantic. “I wanted to let you know I figured it out. I have to call Betty back. She’s not picking up. I’m calling everyone.”

  Another false accusation against Reyes Farrow. If they investigated him or questioned him in any way, he would never trust cops again.

  “How did you come to this conclusion?”

  “I remembered where I saw that other victim. She was a juror. It didn’t hit me till I saw that news story. He’d been accused of killing his father, and both my husband and that other one, that Anna girl, were on the jury that sent him to prison. But he’s been released! Now he’s coming back for revenge!”

  “Your husband was on the jury that wrongfully convicted Reyes?”

  “Yes! No! The evidence was overwhelming. I understand now it was a setup, that his father was still alive, but they didn’t know that. Now Farrow is exacting his revenge. Ten years in prison changes a man. I have to try Betty again.”