The Dirt on Ninth Grave

  “Have a good day,” I said, practically bouncing out of the shop. But I’d taken a peek at the dog, now sitting in front of the desk, and a sad sense of elation washed over me. It was the German shepherd. The one from last night. If all dogs, or all animals for that matter, had spirits that could stay behind when they died, why weren’t the streets filled with the ghosts of animals? I saw at least five departed everyday, but besides Artemis, the German shepherd was the only other animal I’d seen. Maybe it was because the dog had died trying to protect his owners. Maybe he stayed behind of his own accord, unwilling to shirk his duty because of a little thing like death.

  And if he had crossed to the other side, was there a heaven just for them? And what would a dog heaven look like?

  Too many unanswered questions. My brain overflowed with them. I left the shop with a bittersweet taste in my mouth, even more confused about how to proceed. Did I dare talk to the man Bobert was setting up a meeting with? I’d already told Ian. I’d set off the Vandenbergs’s house alarm. Had I put them in even more danger?

  Bottom line: I had to find his family, and I had a plan. Unfortunately, it would have to wait until that evening. Mr. V had several family photos, and they were all taken at the same cabin no matter how old his kids were when they were taken. Either he had a cabin or he knew someone with one. Maybe his captors found out and were holding them hostage there. It made perfect sense. No neighbors. Isolated spot. Well camouflaged with a plethora of trees and brush around. And easily guarded. They’d see anyone coming up the road for miles. Most of the leaves had already fallen, and though it wasn’t officially winter, it sure as heck felt like it.

  After that, the day progressed rather normally. If a buttload of women with love in their eyes was any indication of normal. We were swamped. Had been swamped since we’d opened. Reyes might be good for business, but he was bad for my bunions. Or he would have been if I’d had bunions. He was damned lucky I didn’t.

  “Sumi,” I said, trying to get her attention.

  I needed the orders for booth seven pronto. It was full of giggling preteens, and I needed them out. Every time they’d look in the rock star’s direction, they’d burst into a fit of giggles and discuss his expression right down to the position of his brows. The tilt of his mouth. The implication of his glances. Did he like movies? Did he play video games? Did he like them?

  Uh, he would if he were a child molester.

  I wanted to say it but couldn’t bring myself to break their fluttering little hearts. Especially since I’d been doing the same thing all morning. Chancing quick glances. Analyzing every movement. Wondering if he liked me.

  I needed to nip a sticky situation in the bud. Reyes didn’t need to be investigated because a kid declaring her love was taken the wrong way by an eavesdropper. If anything could go downhill fast, it was suspicion of pedophilia. It never ended well.

  After Sumi snapped out of her latest fantasy and tore her gaze off Reyes, she nodded and got me the plates I needed.

  I rushed them over, filled a few drinks, then went to the storeroom for more ketchup, where I came face-to-face with a departed woman. An agitated departed woman.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, walking toward me, her strides angry and aggressive.

  “Stay back,” I said, my voice a soft hiss as I made a cross with my index fingers. I did not want a repeat of yesterday’s fiasco.

  “Oh, stop it.” She slapped my hands away, her long red hair shifting soundlessly. “Rocket’s really upset with you.”

  I could only assume Rocket was a guy. “I’m… sorry? Wait.” I lunged forward and took hold of her shoulders. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Duh. Took me forever to find your skanky ass. What the hell is up with your light? It’s, like, everywhere. And Rocket is freaking out. Seriously. Like the world is about to end kind of freaking out. Something about the angels and how pissed they are. At you, naturally. And there’s this god thing going on. You have to get back there and calm him down.”

  “Get back? Get back to where? Where am I from?”

  “Oh. My. God. Would you stop already?”

  I was a microsecond away from shaking her until her teeth rattled when a thick, billowing blackness rose behind her. I stumbled back. It grew out of the ground like an evil fog. Because only evil fog could be that menacing.

  “Hey,” the woman said, looking around, just as surprised as I was. “What the —?”

  Before she could get another word out, the darkness covered her mouth. Her eyes rounded, and she looked at me as though asking for help.

  I took a hesitant step forward, but the black smoke swallowed her before I could do anything. Then again, what would I have done? What could I have done? When the billowing smoke dissipated, she was gone.

  “No!” I rushed forward, looking for her everywhere. In the mop bucket. Behind the storage shelves. Under the mustard.

  What the hell just happened? And why did my skin burn as though it had been scorched by something powerful? Something angry? Whatever it was, it wanted to silence that poor woman who probably hadn’t hurt a soul her entire life. Just to keep her from telling me who I was. Where I was from.

  I sank onto a box. Was something keeping me here? Was I trapped? A prisoner?

  By the time I went back into the dining area, my section had exploded. Erin and Francie had shown up and Dixie had even called Shayla in early. Lewis was there, too, to help bus, and Thiago, the second-shift cook, was putting on his apron.

  “What about her?” Cookie asked me as she blurred past.

  I was still trying to process the evil fog. I turned to Reyes. He was the only person present who had black smoke cascading off his shoulders like a cape.

  Cookie rushed past again and said, “The blonde at ten.”

  I glanced at table ten while picking up an order from the pass-out window. Reyes was cooking, completely oblivious to the evil fog in the storeroom. At least he seemed to be.

  “What about her?” I called out.

  The next time Cookie and I passed like ships in the night, she paused long enough to say, “I can see a resemblance.”

  I snorted, sounding much like a foghorn on a ship passing in the night. “Please. She looks nothing like me. And I rarely walk around with a stick up my butt.”

  “She doesn’t have a stick up her butt.” She gave her a once-over, then said, “Not a big one.”

  I walked over as the blonde put her Louis Vuitton on the seat beside her. She probably didn’t buy hers off Scooter.

  “Welcome to the Firelight.”

  The woman gazed up at me, her eyes glistening, and I felt a strong sense of expectation coming from her. Hope welled inside me. Could Cookie have been right?

  “Hi,” she said, letting a shy smile soften her face. “I’m Gemma.”

  “I’m Janey.”

  We both seemed to be waiting for something, and I realized she couldn’t know me. Wouldn’t she say something if she did?

  “I’ll be your server. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “I’m here on vacation.”

  “Oh, nice. Welcome to Sleepy Hollow.”

  “I just got here. I had to clear my schedule.”

  “Okay, then.” This conversation was quickly leaning toward strange and unexplainable. “Are you a fan of the story?”

  “The story?” she asked, blinking mascaraed lashes over blue irises. “Washington Irving? ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’?” Mine weren’t even close to blue. They were more of a golden amber.

  “Oh.” She laughed into a hand and cleared her throat. “Yes. The story. Big fan. Absolutely.” She looked up at me again, her oceanic gaze full of expectation and… something else. Something warm. “You?”

  “Love it,” I said, having no idea if I’d ever actually read it or just saw movies about it. I might need to make a trip to the library. “Have we met?” I asked her.

  “I’m not sure. You do look familiar.”

  I sat across
from her uninvited. “Really? Do you know me?”

  She leaned forward, an expectant air about her. “I don’t know. Do you know me?”

  I squinted and thought as hard as I could. Tried to get past the veil that had been pulled over the last few decades of my life, but I just couldn’t penetrate it. After a valiant effort, I shook my head, frustrated.

  “I’m sorry. I have —” I almost told her about the amnesia, but I’d learned not to tell customers. It was like they suddenly didn’t trust me to know the difference between an egg and a hamburger. I stood, because it hit me where she probably knew me from. The news. I looked familiar because of the news coverage when I first woke up. “You look familiar, too. Must have one of those faces. Can I get you something to drink?”

  She seemed to wilt a little. “Sure. Iced tea?”

  “You got it.”

  I had walked to the drinks station to fill a glass of ice when I heard a loud pssst. Only one person psssted at me. I chuckled and looked through the pass-out window at Lewis.

  He peeked over his shoulder, then said, “I need to talk to you about today.”

  Oh, holy crap. I almost forgot. Today was the big day. And it was such bad timing. We were way too busy to pull off a fake robbery.

  “Number four needs a refill,” Erin said, her voice full of derision. That woman hated me so.

  “Thanks!” I graced her with a killer smile and sassy hair flip, wondering how I was going to lift her phone. I might have been clueless about what I did in my past life, but I felt reasonably safe in assuming I wasn’t a pickpocket.

  Cookie and I made it through the lunch rush relatively unscathed. I managed to get a death threat from one of the giggling preteens when she noticed Reyes watching me, so that was a first. Cookie had to buy another man his dinner when he accused her of trying to sell her wares.

  Who knew a simple “Would you like to take some of my buttery cream pie home?” could be taken so metaphorically? She’d made a pie. It was buttery. She was proud.

  By a quarter to two, I’d hit rock bottom. Or, well, my energy level had. A sleepless night in a freezing car did little for my self-esteem or my skin tone. Thankfully, Reyes didn’t seem to mind. At least he wasn’t repulsed by me.

  Bobert had come in, but we were too busy for me to get a word in. I’d have to try to catch him later and explain the whole situation. I was in so far over my head, it was unreal. At the moment, we had only fifteen minutes left on our shifts. I planned on spending that time stealing and invading someone’s privacy. Unfortunately, that meant venturing into the storeroom again.

  I walked past Reyes, who was finally taking a break. The café wasn’t dead, but the rush was over at last. I turned the knob to the storeroom, carrying a box of condiments from the delivery guy to give me an excuse to go in there. Not that I needed one. If anyone found out about the phone, I could plead innocent. Say the mustard made me do it. In the storeroom. With a candlestick. That was such a cool game, and yet I couldn’t remember ever playing it.

  Holding my breath, I peered around for billowing smoke. I so didn’t want to be sucked into some alternate dimension where spiders were the size of elephants. Seeing no smoke of any kind, I hurried in and closed the door. Her purse hung from a hook in her locker. That she never locked. I rooted through it until I found her phone. A thud sounded outside the door. I paused. Waited. Peed a little. When no one came in, I woke it up and thanked the heavens she didn’t have it code locked.

  Finding her pictures was easy. They were inside an icon titled PICTURES. I thumbed through picture after picture, each one more hideous than the next. The departed woman was in every one. Creepy as ever-lovin’ fuck. Her white eyes glowed, and her toothless scream showed off a gray tongue and blood-soaked gums.

  I pressed the button to end the agony. I’d seen enough. But why was the woman following them around? From what I understood, Erin’s babies had passed away in two different houses. One was her mother’s, and one was the house she and her husband lived in before buying the one they had now. They’d moved out of each one following the heart-wrenching deaths.

  I simply couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through. How she’d survived.

  The room began to spin with the thought. The senseless loss of life sparked a familiar feeling for the second time in as many days, and before I could stop it, panic slammed into me. Stole my breath. Ripped at my throat.

  I looked down at my hands. At my arms. They were empty. They shouldn’t have been. I could feel the weight of that emptiness like a boulder in my stomach. It pulled me farther down below the surface. It suffocated. I had something once, but I forgot where I put it.

  I forgot. I forgot. I forgot.

  It was so small. So fragile. Yet it held such power, this tiny thing that I’d promised to protect. It was like a single atom that would someday split and spark a nuclear reaction. It would set the world on fire. It would free the mentally ill. It would ignite the fires of revolution like nothing the human race had ever seen. And I’d misplaced it. I’d lost it.

  I scratched at the linoleum floor. It had to be here somewhere. It couldn’t have gone far.

  No. Wait. It was a dream. I was simply dreaming again. I blinked. Tried to focus on the present. Tried to get a firm grip on my sense of time and place.

  When I finally kicked my way back to the surface, I shook uncontrollably. Nausea took hold, and bile scalded the back of my throat. I tried to swallow it down but choked on it instead, doubling over as it racked my body.

  “Janey?”

  I shook out my agony at the sound of Cookie’s voice.

  “Crap,” I said as she rushed in and knelt beside me.

  “What happened?” she asked, frantic.

  “Nothing. I dropped a bottle of mustard.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She wrapped her arms around me, and I remembered that she was psychic. She probably saw me coming from a mile away. Luckily, she didn’t run in the opposite direction.

  “I’m okay. Thanks.”

  When we walked out, Francie was sitting across from Reyes in the booth he’d taken. She was doing her darnedest to flirt, but he seemed preoccupied. His head down. His mouth a firm line. Until I walked past.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice harsh.

  His question surprised me, but his tone surprised me more. “Nothing. Why?”

  Francie looked back and forth between us, trying to gather as much intel as possible, to assess if I was a real threat or not.

  “So, anyway,” she said, apparently coming to a conclusion, “he calls me Red. Right? Like he had the right to call me Red. It’s natural, by the way.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off me, and I wanted to melt into him.

  “Don’t you think?” Francie asked, but I had no idea what direction she’d taken in her thrilling tales of Francie in Wonderland. Then I realized she wasn’t talking to me. Sadly, the one she was talking to completely ignored her.

  She bit her bottom lip and stood up. “I better get back to work.”

  I felt bad for her. Or I did before she tried to turn me into a pillar of salt with her caustic glare. Holy crap and damn. Now they both hated me.

  At least Cookie still liked me.

  “I hate you,” Cookie said as she checked her phone. “Just so you know.”

  For fuck’s sake. “What’d I do?” I asked, tearing my gaze off Reyes and following her to the front register.

  “This.” She held out a hundred. “Someone left a hundred-dollar tip on your table.”

  “No way.” I brightened, snatched it out of her hands, then held it up to the light to make sure it was legit. Because it would be my luck… “I’m rich. I can get a phone.”

  “You can take me to a movie,” she countered.

  “Deal.”

  “Or that mansion you want to see.”

  “Oooo,” I said, grinning from ear to ear. “The Rockefeller Mansion. I’ve been dying to see it.”

  “We should go today.
Right after our pedicures.”

  “We’re getting pedicures?”

  “We are now.”

  I laughed as we changed out our tips, the metal kind, for real money, the paper kind. Cookie finished before I did. Mostly because I couldn’t keep my recalcitrant gaze from wandering in Reyes’s direction every few seconds.

  “You should invite him,” Cookie said.

  “To get a pedicure with us?”

  She giggled. “Men like that stuff, too, right?”

  “Then why don’t you invite Bobert?”

  “Point taken. I have to get my jacket.”

  And I had to get Reyes’s, but first I had to finish counting my tips. I was so bad at counting.

  I was standing there wondering if I’d counted ten quarters or only nine when a guy walked into the café, strode straight up to me, and jammed a gun into my side.

  Oh, for the love of crab cakes. I forgot we were doing this today.

  “Open it. Now.” He rammed the gun into my ribs again a little too aggressively.

  I glared over my shoulder. We said to make it look real. Not feel real. I leaned close and whispered to him. “Chill. We have to wait for Lewis to get up here.”

  I looked over the sea of tables to where Lewis stood bussing a table nearby. Then I looked around for Francie. She was just walking out of the storeroom and toward us. I gave Lewis a secret thumbs-up, which was basically a thumbs-up with enthusiastic eyebrow arching thrown in.

  This was it. Lewis’s big day. But he shook his head at me.

  Was he backing out? Now?

  “I won’t say it again, bitch. Open the fucking drawer.”

  Lewis looked shocked. And confused. And more than a little concerned. Holy crap, he was good.

  He tried to mouth something to me. “He’s not… I didn’t…”

  I had no idea what he was saying, but I did know that he needed to give up on his dream of becoming a rock star and become an actor, because he was totally convincing.

  Maybe a little too convincing.

  When Lewis stayed frozen to the spot and his cousin shoved me a little harder than was necessary into the register, I realized something had gone horridly awry. Either the man holding a gun at my back wasn’t Lewis’s cousin or Lewis’s cousin was a scene-stealing asshole. I was leaning toward the former. And wondering how I let myself get talked into these things. Though I couldn’t remember any particular circumstance in which I got suckered into a ridiculous situation, the scenario did seem oddly familiar to me. Like an old sweater or a favorite pair of sweats.