Grave Matters Read online

  Cinda leaned on the railing, staring down the hill at her house as Elly came outside. She eyed the plastic bag, clearly disappointed. “Is that, uh, your kit?”

  “Yup.”

  “In a bag from Food Stop.”

  “Yup.”

  “What are you going to do, throw a can of soup at it?”

  “If that’s what it takes.” She held the bag open so Cinda could see what was inside. “If I walk down the street with a bag covered in runes, or some ancient carved box, anyone who sees will be curious, won’t they?”

  “I . . . guess?”

  “This draws less attention. You don’t want people knocking while I’m down in your basement getting rid of a ghost, now, do you?”

  “No, I guess not.” Cinda’s mouth twisted in a bitter line. “No one really bothers with anyone else, anyway, though. It’s not that kind of neighborhood.”

  Elly had no response to that—Cinda was right. The girl shrugged and led her down the hill.

  * * *

  HOUSES IN GENERAL were a new concept for Elly, “normal” houses even more so. Father Value would find an apartment for them to squat in from time to time, but they rarely had furniture beyond pallet beds and secondhand tables and chairs. No pictures on the walls, no magnets on the fridge—if the places even had a fridge.

  She’d mostly gotten used to Cavale’s house; the biggest shock these days was that he still seemed to want her in it. The furniture was secondhand, refurbished to the best of Cavale’s ability. Some nights she’d come home to find him asleep on the couch, book spread across his chest. Of course, the book was often some obscure occult tome he’d taken from Val’s collection at the bookstore, Night Owls, but it was almost, almost an image from a normal life.

  Val’s house was the next step up, on a pretty, tree-lined street in quaint, sleepy Edgewood, not a paint peel anywhere on the outside. Inside, you’d even think it was the home of a businesswoman doing moderately well for herself: furniture being slowly upgraded from the original cheap discount-store stuff to the real thing. (The bookcases must have been the first to get replaced, Elly suspected. Not a piece of particleboard in sight, there.) It looked normal until you realized there was no food in the cupboards, never a dish in the drainer, and the only time there might be food in the fridge was when Chaz had come over, ordered dinner for himself, and forgotten to bring home his leftovers.

  That, and when you noticed the blackout curtains hanging on all the upstairs windows so Val and Justin didn’t have to sleep on the cold, packed dirt floor of the basement.

  Sunny and Lia pulled it off the best: beautiful home, happy, well-to-do couple, and home-cooked meals every Sunday if anyone wanted to come by. Except they were succubi, and Elly knew it, and that made her less twitchy than if it were someone normal when she sat at their kitchen table and tore into a piece of roasted chicken.

  Cinda’s house, then, set Elly’s nerves jangling. They entered through the side door into a cluttered kitchen. Most of the surfaces had things on them: mail piled on the counter, last night’s dishes in the sink, schoolbooks and craft projects littering the table. Every inch of the fridge was covered—report cards, photos, the week’s school lunch schedule clipped from the newspaper. Elly paused to look at a picture of Cinda and her parents. The Christmas tree loomed in the background. Mom and Dad waved at the camera. At first glance, Cinda seemed to be scowling, but on closer inspection she seemed to be fighting back a grin herself.

  “They insisted on wearing those stupid matching snowman sweaters,” she said, coming up behind Elly. Even now, she seemed stuck between grown-ups, ugh and smiling at her parents’ goofiness. Elly had absolutely no context for it. Father Value had never owned anything remotely like a snowman sweater, and certainly never made her and Cavale pause for embarrassing family portraits.

  From below them came a thud that made the dishes rattle, saving Elly from having to come up with a response. Oh thank God. “Where’s the cellar door?”

  The ghost in the basement was the only thing here she truly understood.

  While Cinda slid open the barrel bolt, Elly took out the vial of lavender oil. A long time gone, the Brotherhood would have burned dried lavender flowers and rubbed sigils onto their faces with the ashes. Elly found it much more convenient to go to a craft store and buy essential oils from the potpourri aisle. She thumbed a streak of it above each eye, fished her crystals and holy water from the Food Stop bag, then nodded to Cinda to crack the door.

  Sometime back in the eighties, the downstairs had been finished and turned into an entertainment room. Cinda’s family had brightened up the wood paneling with colorful posters, but the dark walls beneath made it slightly claustrophobic anyway. An overstuffed couch dominated the far side of the space, facing a TV with a game system hooked up to it. Bookshelves overflowing with books and board games and baskets of art supplies covered one wall. Beside the couch, bent to get his fingers underneath for another lift-and-drop, was Cinda’s ghost.

  Elly hmmphed from the stairs. “Slamming furniture around and blaming it on a Girl Scout. That’s where you’re going with this afterlife thing? Really?”

  He looked up at her, surprised, and stepped back from the couch like a kid caught contemplating the theft of a candy bar.

  “Yeah, I can see you. Can you talk?”

  He opened his mouth, but the only sound he made was a staticky hiss. It reminded Elly of a radio stuck between stations; if there were words buried within, she couldn’t make them out. The problem with ghosts was, they were never consistent. Some of them would jaw your ear off if you let them. Others stuck with the more traditional wailing and rattling of chains. What they could do depended on how they’d been called from beyond the grave. The ones who wanted to communicate and couldn’t? They tended to get pissed.

  Like this guy.

  He squared his shoulders and advanced on her, skirting the couch on his way past.

  Still moving like he’s alive. Doesn’t know all the neat tricks he can do yet. “Don’t you want to try knocking once for yes, twice for no first?”

  “I tried asking him that,” said Cinda from way too close. “It makes him upset.”

  Elly bit back a curse. Without turning to look at the kid, she reached out and gave her a shove. “Get upstairs. Close the door behind you and lock it.” A sharp intake of breath from Cinda, the kind you took before spouting off an argument. Elly recognized it because she was occasionally guilty of it herself. “Go.”

  There was enough snap in her voice that Cinda listened. Her footsteps pounded up the stairs; the door slammed a second later.

  “And pour a line of salt along the threshold!” Elly yelled.

  The ghost hadn’t stopped coming. He was halfway across the long, narrow room, taking his time getting to her. He’d been in his mid- to late thirties when he died, assuming the manifestation matched his age. If it weren’t for the pallor, Elly might even have called him handsome. Long, dark red hair hung loose, down past his shoulders. It got ugly from there: The tee shirt, emblazoned with the name of a local band, had a jagged hole just above the heart. Pale skin peeked through. Elly couldn’t help but watch as a smooth, unblemished patch of his pectoral blasted outward, tatters of skin peeling back like flower petals.

  Or like a bullet exiting.

  Shot in the back, she thought. The wound began to bleed, fluid so dark red it was nearly black spilling forth in pulses, soaking the front of the tee shirt.

  Elly stepped out into the room, keeping her back to the wall and circling away from the ghost. She could end it violently if she had to, but better if she could get him to go peacefully. Besides, something wasn’t adding up about this, and she wanted answers before dispatching him back to the grave.

  She didn’t have much time to contemplate. One second he was a good five paces away; the next he was up in her face. Did he just figure out a new trick, or w
as he holding out on me before? Either way, he had the creepy teleportation thing down.

  “Easy, now,” she said, but he wasn’t interested in talking. He let out another hiss of static and shoved her against the wall. New trick number two. The poster behind her tore with the impact as he pushed her higher. His face wasn’t so handsome now, the pallor slipping toward rot, blood gathering at the creases of his eyes like tears. Dirt was caked beneath his fingernails, and as he drew back for a slap, she saw that a couple of them were peeled back like he’d tried to drag his way along a hard surface.

  He’d likely died frightened. Probably still was, even. Doesn’t mean I have to let him smack me around.

  She thrashed in his grip, kicking and flailing until she jarred herself loose. The ghost might not have consciously realized he could spend most of his time all see-through and, well, ghosty, but he flickered out for a heartbeat, incorporeal.

  The second Elly felt him lose tangibility, she dropped to a crouch and rolled. When she came up to the balls of her feet, she scuttled around behind him.

  As soon as she’d gotten a look at the room, she’d assessed everything in it for its potential as weapon or cover. Books as projectiles, video game guitar as club, plenty of breakables if she needed a sharp object. Give her ten seconds and Elly could make this room into a battlefield, hopefully one that gave her the advantage.

  But no way in hell would Cinda be able to explain that to her mother, so Elly had to play it clean. That meant staying close and ending it quickly.

  The ghost spun, expecting Elly to have straightened. She stayed low instead, driving forward and bulling into him with her shoulder. The wall shuddered as he crashed into it, that damn print tearing, the abuse too much. Elly got a noseful of him: blood and grave dirt, the faint ozone smell she’d come to associate with hauntings. He battered at her, fists pounding at her back, cuffing her upside the head. She didn’t think he’d been in many fights while he was alive.

  She kept him pinned as best she could, one hand flailing for her pocket. She’d shoved a handful of obsidian dust in there while putting her kit together, and brought it out now. Tiny shards dug into her skin as she shoved herself backward and down, executing a mangled sort of reverse somersault to give herself some distance. She’d never been a graceful fighter, but efficient? That was what mattered.

  He was flickering again now, uncertain. Elly pitied him, but there simply wasn’t time for her to soothe an angry ghost; that could take days, let alone hours. Hell, Cavale had one customer he’d been working with for years.

  The quick and dirty way, then.

  The obsidian dust looked like beach sand in her palm. The overhead track lighting caught its facets, made them glitter. Elly danced in close and blew a puff of it at the ghost.

  He threw his arms up to block, old living instinct kicking in. There was something written on his forearm, a sigil scrawled in black marker. It looked . . . new. Fresh.

  It wasn’t one Elly recognized, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t just an ill-advised tattoo. “Someone’s tagged you,” she said.

  Another one of those staticky hisses. He clawed at his face, dragging bloody furrows down his cheeks. His thrashing now had nothing to do with Elly; he didn’t so much as swipe at her as he staggered past, hiss-howling in agony.

  But obsidian dust shouldn’t hurt.

  It was a cleanser, a purifier, like all the other tools she’d brought.

  The dust should have stopped him and calmed him, given her time to light the smudge sticks and send him on his way. This . . . You’d have thought she’d hit him with acid.

  Books and games cascaded to the floor as he careened off the shelves. The flickering came more rapidly—some of his flails knocked things over; other times his hands passed through whatever he tried to send flying. The wound in his chest seeped faster, leaving a spoor trail along the stick-on laminate tiles. Elly took up a smudge stick and sparked her lighter. The thick scent of lavender and sage filled the air as the dried herbs caught.

  She picked up the ketchup bottle filled with holy water and crept toward the ghost. He’d stumbled into a corner, near the door that would lead to the bulkhead and outside. If he saw her coming, he paid no heed. Pieces of obsidian dust stuck to his face, held there by his own blood.

  “I’m sorry,” Elly said as she squeezed out a curve of holy water, trapping him against the walls. “I don’t know what’s wrong.” Two brightly colored cereal bowls had been left on an end table, the potato chip crumbs inside the evidence of Cinda’s and Leila’s last afternoon snack. Elly snatched them up and shook them out. She lit the second smudge stick off the first and set them down in the bowls to either side of the ghost’s new prison.

  He slammed himself from one wall to the other and back again. Wisps of smoke drifted off his forearm, where the sigil had gone from ink black to molten red.

  “I grant thee rest,” Elly intoned, her voice steady despite the strange spectacle before her. She squirted another line of holy water and waved the smoke from the smudge sticks toward him. “I grant thee forgiveness. I grant thee closure.”

  He backed into the corner and slid down the wall, leaving a streak of blood like a paint smear.

  “Your debts are paid. Your journey ended.” She held up a piece of white string, snapped it. “What tied you to this earth binds you no longer.”

  He threw his head back and screamed. An actual human scream this time, not the hiss of an untuned radio. When it ended, he turned his arm to show Elly: the sigil was gone.

  “What bound you?” she asked, then thought of the better question: “Who did it?”

  But Elly was good at what she did. Damned good. Even as he held the arm up, he was fading, fading, gone.

  She stood alone in the semitrashed basement in a spreading puddle of holy water, ringed by smoke. Mission accomplished and all, but I could have used another few seconds. Damn it.

  The creak of the door upstairs. “Elly?”

  “I thought I told you to sit tight.”

  “It got quiet,” said Cinda, ignoring the question. “Is he gone?”

  “Yeah, he is. You can come down now.”

  Cinda gasped when she got to the bottom of the stairs, but not at the state of the room. Instead, she pointed at Elly herself. “You’re . . . That’s . . . That’s a lot of blood. Are you okay?”

  Elly glanced down at herself and saw the mess for the first time. “It’s his, not mine. He got a little, uh. Leaky.”

  Now Cinda took in the room, including the trail the ghost had left. She paled. “I don’t think I can clean all that up before my mom gets home.”

  “It’ll go away,” said Elly. “It’s ectoplasm.”

  “Like from that movie? With the slime ghost?”

  “Yeah. Well. The term’s a lot older, but yeah.” The kid probably didn’t want a lecture on ghost hunting in the eighteen forties right then. “If we let those burn awhile”—she gestured to the smudge sticks behind her—“they’ll clear it up. Sort of like sunlight killing mold.”

  Cinda bit her lip. “Will it be gone before my mom gets home? In like an hour?”

  “Enough of the way that she won’t notice it, at least. Let’s pick up the stuff she will see.” Really, Elly wanted to bolt. To gather her things, get out of here, and go look up that sigil. Someone had raised that ghost, and whoever did it had been fighting her attempt at exorcism. She wanted to know why, and who.

  But Justin had been trying to instill some degree of social skills in her, and if she bailed on Cinda now, she had a feeling he’d be disappointed when she recounted the story later. Plus, the kid was all right in Elly’s book. She’d done as she was told—mostly—and kept a cooler head than most people would have when faced with a haunting.

  So she stayed.

  2

  CHAZ BOTH WAS and wasn’t a fan of October in New England.

>   About midway through the month, the weather got squirrelly as fuck—crisp fall days bookended by raw, cold, and rainy on one side and summery surges on the other. Not that his apartment was ever what you might call orderly, but the piles of clothes on his bedroom floor (what Val had once referred to as his floordrobe) had to serve three seasons at once.

  There usually came a week when the temperature took its final dive, where you couldn’t just throw an extra blanket on the bed and ignore the chill any longer. When you had to grit your teeth and turn up the thermostat, and brace yourself for next month’s heating bill. Some years it held off until November, but Chaz was pretty sure this year, wearing shorts at Halloween meant you’d be risking frostbite on your bits.

  He wasn’t one for leaf-peeping. He resented how the stores broke out their holiday decorations before trick-or-treaters’ candy-overload stomachaches faded. In fact, he’d long ago imposed the “Not one fucking jingle bell until Black Friday” rule at Night Owls.

  The good thing about October, though, the best thing, was how sunset crept earlier and earlier every day. Sure, it’d been doing that since late June and all, but October was when it really got obvious. Night stole in, leaching away the illusion of summer, and that meant Val was around a lot more. Vampires rose when the daystar set, after all.

  So his reasons for digging October were pretty selfish, and screw anyone who had a problem with that: Chaz got to see more of his best friend.

  His best friend, his boss, and oh, also his master, though she curled her lip at the term. These days, if one were counting, he technically served two masters, though he had no intention of ever taking actual orders from Justin.

  It had been easier, they’d decided after Justin’s turning a month ago, to let him stay with Val while he got used to his fangs.

  And figured out what, exactly, the fuck he ought to tell his parents. Mom, Dad, I’m a vampire was right out: they’d either have him committed or donate him to science.

  It wasn’t at the crisis stage yet, at least. The kid had a bit of breathing room: Thanksgiving break was a month away, and Justin had stayed on campus for it last year rather than flying home to Oregon. He could probably stay again this year, recycling the excuse that Night Owls needed him to work on Black Friday. The real reason, back then, was that his girlfriend lived on this coast and they’d been in that clingy-cute stage. He’d stuck around in the Ocean State so he could spend his long weekend necking.