The Curse of Tenth Grave

  “Buy us time.”

  The direness of the situation had me light-headed. “You got Beep out of there before you needed them, though?”

  He nodded again. “She’s at a new safe house with the Loehrs and most of the Sentry.”

  That’s what we were calling Beep’s army. The Sentry. “Most?”

  Osh dropped his gaze. “Your man, Donovan. He stayed behind to keep an eye on the area. To let us know if any more bodies showed up.”

  I blinked, astonished, and so grateful that he would do such a thing that a lump formed in my throat. “Is he still there?”

  The beautiful kid before me, who was actually older than Reyes by a couple of centuries yet looked like he was in his late teens, nodded, his mouth a grim line. “He’s trying to get ahead of it. To track it down and figure out its next move.”

  I shot to my feet. “By himself?”

  “He insisted the other two go with the Sentry.”

  “Osh, he’s only human.” I stepped closer to him, and Reyes stood as well. Took hold of my arm in warning. I shook it off. “What’s he supposed to do if he does find it?”

  “Call,” Reyes said, taking my arm again.

  “Call?” I asked, appalled. “And would that be before or after the god hijacks his body?” When no one answered, I said, “I need to go to him.”

  “And do what?” Reyes asked, his ire pulsing through the room like a bass drum. “Be the guiding beacon that leads him straight to your friend?”

  “You must not like him very much,” Osh teased.

  They were right. I would only get him killed faster. As would Reyes. His darkness was very much like my light. I’d found that out when I learned to shift between planes. He was like a great void in the landscape. A dark chasm. Just as I was a portal to heaven, he was a portal to hell. And any supernatural being could see it from a thousand miles away.

  “Can I ask, what makes you think there’s only one god in the area?”

  “That’s how they work,” Reyes said. “They split up until one finds its prey, then the other two join it.”

  Reyes really had no idea he was one of the three gods of Uzan. That there were only two out there.

  “If this were any other world, they would’ve just destroyed it.”

  “What’s stopping them?” Cookie asked.

  Osh answered her. “The God Jehovah. It’s part respect and part self-preservation.”

  “The last thing they want is a war with another god.”

  “So, they’re cowards as well as mass murderers.”

  “Pretty much,” Osh said.

  But my husband was the furthest thing from a coward. He was truly nothing like his brothers at all. “What can I do?” I asked first Reyes then Osh.

  “Go back to work,” Osh said.

  Reyes agreed. “Go about your day as normally as you can. They could have spies.”

  “Spies?” Cookie said, paling even more than she had.

  “They could be trying to smoke us out,” Osh explained. “If you panic and start checking on Beep and the Loehrs, trying to track them down to make sure they’re okay, the spies could lock on to their location.”

  “We would be doing all the legwork for them.”

  “So, I’m just supposed to go about my day, knowing—”

  “Knowing Beep is okay,” Osh insisted. He stepped to me and brushed his fingers under my chin. “I promise. We’ve already moved them to a secure location.”

  “Secure for now,” I said.

  Unable to argue, he offered another nod and then started to head out. He stopped at the door and added, “I almost forgot to tell you. I killed another emissary.”

  Reyes, who until only recently saw Osh as a lowly Daeva, an entity beneath him that was more foe than friend, walked over to him and gripped his forearm. Osh took Reyes’s in turn, solidifying the brotherhood that shared a common goal: protect and serve, at all cost, Elwyn Alexandra Loehr, the girl who would battle the pestilence of the world. The girl who would save humanity.

  I hadn’t told Reyes that Osh was also destined to fall in love with our daughter. No need to rock that boat just yet.

  I pushed my hand inside my jeans pocket and wrapped my fingers around the god glass. It was our only hope against the two gods of Uzan. The only one that I knew of, anyway. Should I tell Reyes?

  In order to trap a god, or any spiritual entity, in the hell dimension, one had to know its name. Its true name. But I didn’t know the gods’ true names, much less Reyes’s. Not his godly name. If I told him about the god glass, would he use that against me when he found out his true origins?

  It had only been a week. I’d known he was a god for a week. I could hold on to that tidbit for a while longer. Just until I had more information. Just until I knew for sure that I could trust the godly part of my husband. The part that was supposedly as evil as they come. Which sucked.

  9

  When I was a kid …

  No, wait, I still do that.

  —T-SHIRT

  I wondered when I left how many of the bad twelve, the emissaries sent from Satan himself, were left. If I was counting correctly, I guessed nine, but there was no way to be certain without calling them all in for a roll call. That could work, actually. We could do a sting and tell them they’d won a TV like they do with criminals who jumped bail. If only I had their addresses. How could I send them a letter announcing their wins if I didn’t have their addresses? And did demons even watch TV?

  Beep was safe. I forced myself to say it over and over in my head, Beep was safe, while Cookie and I pretended our day was going beautifully. We began looking into Emery Adams’s background as well as Lyle Fiske’s.

  While Cookie pulled up Emery’s credit report and phone records in a feat that I slid into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” category, I met with Mrs. Abelson and told her what her husband was up to, trying to push the superhero angle on her.

  She didn’t buy it, and my heart went out to the guy. He was about to have a very bad day. I think it was the pot thing that sent her over the edge. What would her church group say?

  I couldn’t help but wonder why the church group would say anything unless she told them, but there was no arguing with her. Not that I was in the mood, anyway. So, I sat there and let her jump to her own conclusions. Listened to her rant and rave about how she’d been betrayed. About how unfair he was being by hanging with a bunch of kids and relaxing.

  I was doing really well with the whole thing, staying calm and collected despite the odd looks we were getting in the Frontier, one of my favorite restaurants on this crazy rock. But then she started in on her husband, and I lost it. I told her how lucky she had it to have a husband who could enjoy himself despite her incessant nagging and high-maintenance marriage plan.

  She sat livid for a solid minute after I’d finished, then walked out, her face a bright scarlet, her back ramrod straight. There was just no way to dislodge the stick up her ass. Her husband was cursed.

  After the meeting, I scratched Mrs. Abelson’s name off my Possible Repeat Customers list and hustled back to the office with a to-go pint of salsa verde. Quite frankly, we’d be lucky to get paid on this one.

  Way to go, Davidson.

  Wait, no, Davidson-Farrow. Hmmmm … it was growing on me.

  But the case was over, and that called for a celebration of salsa verde and tequila. Of course, the latter would have to wait until tonight, but salsa verde, much like salsa dancing, could be enjoyed anytime. Not, however, before I went to pay my old friend Rocket a visit.

  I hadn’t seen Rocket since I got back, but I was still completely intrigued by the bombshell Strawberry had dropped while invading the air space in my living room. The names that he wrote on the walls were meant for Beep? They were chosen specifically for her?

  First, how?

  Second, why?

  And third, come again?

  It boggled my mind, but getting information from Rocket was even harder than getting info
rmation from Strawberry. Rocket was like an overgrown child who’d died in a mental asylum in the fifties. He was a savant of sorts, and if he’d had his gifts while he was alive, I could only imagine how they treated him. Electroshock therapy came to mind. Anything to control him.

  I pulled up to the abandoned asylum I now owned, thanks to my sugar daddy. Not that I had any idea what my husband’s net worth was. And not that I wanted to. I had zero interest in looking at his will. Ever. I figured I’d go first, anyway. I seemed to have been born with a flashing hazard sign duct-taped to my back.

  After trying several combinations on the keypad, I finally found one that worked.

  The combination didn’t work on the front entrance, however. I wondered if the keypad needed a battery or something. It had worked before.

  No big. I would just do what I did before Reyes bought the building. I’d sneak in.

  I walked around the east side and found my usual entrance, a basement window, but a vicious Rottweiler tackled me to the ground before I could get inside.

  Artemis must have been hanging out at her old stomping grounds. Though the house where Donovan and the gang used to live had been torn down, that apparently didn’t keep her from seeking out a familiar environment.

  I let her lick my face, her stubby tail wagging at the speed of light, for several minutes before I realized we had an audience. A little boy was watching me try to wrestle the ninety-five-pound dog, to get the upper hand and bury my face in the folds of her neck.

  But Artemis was incorporeal. She was my very own personal guardian, and while that was all well and good, to the little boy watching me, I was basically wrestling air.

  I cleared my throat and waved to him. “New exercise routine. It’s going to take the world by storm. Mark my words. It’s called … Grassercise,” I said as I picked dried grass out of my hair.

  Then, with an air of nonchalance, I stood and walked to the basement window.

  “Rocket!” I said, calling out to my old friend as I wiggled inside.

  Stuffing my ass through a tiny window used to be easier. When I toppled over the sill and landed headfirst on a table that I hoped had already been broken, I called out again.

  “Rocket! You here?”

  I took the flashlight out of my jacket pocket and shined it toward the stairs leading from the basement.

  Nothing had changed in all the months I’d been away. The area was still strewn in trash and debris. A decrepit, three-wheeled gurney sat in one corner of the basement and an old rusted bathtub decorated another.

  I loved this place. Creepy things gave me a sense of nostalgia. I blamed my upbringing. And my stepmother. She hadn’t been so much creepy as a bona fide creep, but still. It warmed the cockles of my heart. If I’d ever taken art, I would draw stuff like this. The stuff of my dreams. The stuff of others’ nightmares, if the plethora of horror movies set in abandoned asylums and hospitals was any indication.

  Still receiving no answer from Rocket, I headed upstairs. I ran my fingers along the hundreds and hundreds of names he’d carved into the walls. What had Strawberry said? That the names were meant for Beep? How? What did she mean?

  Maybe it was simply her nine-year-old imagination taking hold, but somehow I doubted it. Why would she come up with anything like that?

  Just to test out a theory, I decided to see the names from a different vantage. I stopped in one particularly graphitized area and shifted. My celestial vision instantly picked up on things my human vision simply could not. The storms that plagued the intangible world raged around me, whipping my hair into a frenzy, scorching my skin.

  The walls of this building were still there, but I was straddling both worlds. Both planes. I had yet to shift completely. Not consciously, anyway. I was terrified of getting lost in the other realm. Of being unable to find my way back to this one. So when I shifted, I did so hesitantly. Cautiously.

  But it was enough to see something I’d never seen. The names Rocket carved fairly glowed in the burning edges of this world. As though they were on fire. As though his writing them set them on fire. Was he assigning the names? Or was he simply writing the names already destined to … what? What did the names mean? What did they have to do with my daughter?

  The chicken-and-egg conundrum would get me nowhere. I needed to talk to Rocket. And I would just as soon as he stopped crushing me and put me down. One minute I’m standing there, minding my own business, and the next I’m being lifted off the ground by an ox. A strong one.

  “Rocket,” I said through the sound of my ribs cracking. I’d snapped back to the tangible world the moment he picked me up, so the names had stopped glowing. But his bright, bald head hadn’t. It was as pale and shiny as ever.

  I hugged his head and kissed it while he got the pleasantries out of his system.

  “Miss Charlotte,” he said, his words muffled by my girls, Danger and Will Robinson. I had a feeling he was doing more than just greeting me.

  “Rocket,” I said, kicking out to loosen his grip. “Are you molesting me?”

  He still held me high, but he looked up, his eyes shimmering with elation. “I missed you, Miss Charlotte.”

  I hugged him to me again. Thankfully, he didn’t need to breathe. “I missed you, too.”

  We stood like that a long moment. Me with the hugging. Rocket with the accosting. At least he didn’t motorboat me. I didn’t know how Danger and Will would take to being manhandled in such a way.

  Who was I kidding? They’d love it.

  When he finally dropped me—literally—I peeled myself off the trash-strewn floor and gave him a loving punch on the arm. “How have you been, handsome?”

  He still wore the hospital attire that he’d died in: dingy slippers and grayish-blue pajamas that resembled scrubs.

  “Where have you been, Miss Charlotte? Everyone is very upset.”

  “Really? Because I’ve been gone for so long?” That was so sweet.

  “You’ve been gone?” he asked. He looked up in thought.

  “Not that long,” I amended. “But if not for that, why is everyone upset?” I wondered who “everyone” was, but I didn’t want to stump him this early in the game.

  “Everyone, everyone,” he said, throwing his arms up, utterly exasperated with me.

  I had that effect on people.

  Then he leaned in, his round face full of intrigue. “Can I see it?” he whispered.

  “Of course,” I said, hoping he didn’t want to see anything X-rated. No way was I playing doctor with him. “What would you like to see?”

  “It,” he said. “The gate.”

  “Okay,” I said, looking around. The only gate I could think of was at the front entrance. “You mean the gate out front?”

  “It’s outside?” he asked, appalled. “Where anyone can see it?”

  “Well, yeah, I mean, it’s a gate.”

  “No, no, no, no, Miss Charlotte. You have to hide it. No one can just see it for no reason just ’cause. Everyone is very upset.”

  I got the feeling we were talking about two different gates. Then it hit me. The god glass. The portal to the hell dimension I had sitting pretty in the pocket of my jeans.

  “Rocket, who is everyone, and why are they upset? Is it about the god glass?”

  He clasped his fingers together over his mouth like a child hiding his excitement, his irises dancing with glee.

  “They are very upset,” he said, almost giggling. Which was odd. Normally, if the supernatural world was upset, Rocket was upset.

  “I know, I know. I broke the rules.”

  “You didn’t break the rules,” he said, shaking his head, suddenly serious. “You broke the rule.”

  Figured. I was always breaking some celestial being’s rules. They could bite my ass. Every last one of them. I was doing the best I could with what they gave me. If they wanted me to do better, they should have graced me with the Girl’s Guide to Grim Reaperism. Instead, I somehow ended up with Harry Potter’s map, where I
had to solemnly swear I was up to no good before it would show me anything. And I couldn’t lie about it, so I had to constantly be up to no good. It was exhausting.

  “Whatever,” I said, ignoring his scandalized gasp. “If I show you the god glass, the gate, will you tell me what these names mean?”

  His brows cinched together in confusion. “You know what they mean. They are those of good spirit who have passed.”

  “Yes, you’ve told me that. But what else do they mean? Are they somehow connected with my daughter?”

  He gasped again. “That is another rule you broke, Miss Charlotte. They’ll tie you to your bed.”

  I’d forgotten that whole banging of Mr. Farrow and the pregnancy that followed seemed to have caused quite the uproar in the floor one level up. Another thing they could all bite me over. “The only person who’s going to tie me to my bed is Reyes.”

  At the mention of Reyes’s name, Rocket turned his back to me. “You should stay away from him.”

  “We’re married, hon. That would be difficult.”

  “The sun can’t marry the moon. It makes no sense. The heavens will fall.” He turned back and pleaded with me. “Everything will fall, Miss Charlotte.”

  I reached up and put a hand on his pale gray cheek. “Nothing is going to fall, hon, except maybe this building if you don’t stop carving into the walls like this.”

  He glanced around. “I have to write the names or they burn my brain. I have to get them out when it’s time.”

  “You have to write them when the person dies?”

  He nodded as he studied his works of art.

  “But why these particular names? What do they mean?”

  “They’re in the waiting room, and their names have to be written down before they can be called. Otherwise, the doctor will never see them.”

  “And how do you know who is who? Can you read them?” He’d led me to particular names before. He had to have been reading them.

  “I don’t have to read them, Miss Charlotte. They tell me who they are when I ask.”

  I’d known it would be a long shot before I came, but I’d hoped for at least a little more. An inkling of what Strawberry had told me. In fact …