Graveminder

  The young boy seemed to be the one who had been awake the longest: he clearly wanted out of his prison. The couple came to their feet as Rebekkah walked by. With arms outstretched over their heads as if they were reaching for handholds, they both leaned on the air that formed a boundary around them. The old man simply stared at her. He didn’t move, but he tracked her.

  “Bek?”

  She turned. “She did this. This is what she did to Daisha, to Troy.”

  Tears were slipping down Rebekkah’s cheeks; she felt them with the objective awareness that she was crying. In the presence of the dead she hadn’t been able to protect, she was lost. They were hers , and she’d been unaware of their passing.

  Because Cissy killed them.

  “We won’t let her do this to anyone else.” Byron stood by her side, gazing at the dead, neither flinching from, nor oblivious to, their suffering.

  “I need to get them out of here.” Rebekkah couldn’t touch or console them. Not here. She could take them to the land of the dead, however; she could break each salt circle, and one by one, she could lead them to where they would be themselves again. “I’m going to free them. I can take them ... not Teresa. She needs to be buried. You can take her and—”

  “And when Cissy comes back, she’ll know she’s been exposed. Think, Bek.”

  “I can’t leave them like this.” Rebekkah stepped toward the last circle, where her cousin Teresa lay. “Teresa’s recently dead. I will mind her grave, and she’ll never have to suffer, never know . The others ... I need to take them home.”

  “Not yet.” Behind her, Byron stood. He didn’t touch her, but he was near enough to stop her if she tried to enter the salt circles.

  Instead of looking at Byron, Rebekkah turned her attention to the old man. “He’s recently awakened. It might still be possible to give him what he needs; he might not need to walk through the tunnel. I can take him to the house, give him food and drink.”

  Byron put a hand on her shoulder and spun her to face him. “And if we do that, Cissy will run. If you take Teresa’s body, if you take Mr. Sheckly, Cissy will know. Do you want to tell me that you’re willing to save these at the expense of those she’ll kill next?”

  “No.” Rebekkah forced herself not to argue, but instinct vied with logic. The dead were trapped, and she needed to get them to their rightful places.

  Byron’s voice was firm as he said, “We can’t free them yet.”

  She nodded and took his hand in hers as she looked at them. My dead. Mine to protect. The salt circles blocked the threads that should be calling her to them, and them to her, but she’d found them nonetheless. She whispered, “Tonight you’ll go home. This is almost over for you.”

  Byron squeezed her hand, and together they went into the house.

  Knowing the dead were here— suffering —and she couldn’t help them yet made her feel physically ill. The threads that she should be feeling toward them were blocked by the salt, but seeing them and not being able to feel them hurt her in a way she couldn’t express. She needed to get away, to step outside, where she couldn’t see them, to put some distance between herself and them so she wouldn’t ignore the logic in Byron’s words.

  She looked at Byron and asked, “Can you stay with Daisha? I’ll be back inside, but I need a minute first.”

  “Do you want—”

  “Stay with her, please.” Rebekkah begged, and then she fled out the back door before she rushed forward and pushed away the salt that kept her from feeling her connection to the dead.

  Chapter 52

  D AISHA HEARD THE VEHICLE IN THE DISTANCE. WITH HIS LIVING HUMAN hearing, the Undertaker had no idea that Cissy was approaching. Daisha, on the other hand, heard the engine stop, knew that the woman was getting closer. She was walking toward the house, presumably because she had seen their truck.

  “Are you listening?” Byron asked.

  “I am. Rebekkah needs a minute, so I stay with you,” Daisha said. She considered and rejected the idea of telling him that she heard Cissy walking toward the house. Give her a minute. Rebekkah hadn’t gone out to confront Cissy, but she had the right to do so. Like the dead inside the garage, like Daisha, like Troy, and like Maylene, Rebekkah had the right to confront the monster who had stolen so much from so many. She is the Graveminder. Daisha would give Rebekkah her chance to talk to the woman, and then she’d go outside and do what she’d come here to do.

  Daisha tried to keep her features placid, not to reveal what she could hear outside, to let Cissy approach. Buy the Graveminder some time. The Undertaker wasn’t a bad sort, not really. She couldn’t blame him for his reaction to her. His job was to care for the grieving living and the truly dead. Unlike Rebekkah. The Graveminder cared for the truly dead and the Hungry Dead.

  Byron narrowed his eyes and stared at her. “What gives?”

  “Nothing. I wish Rebekkah hadn’t seen that.” Daisha motioned toward the garage. “The woman is cruel, and I wish Rebekkah hadn’t been hurt.”

  Byron gave her a puzzled glance. “Why?”

  “She cares for the dead. Like the last one. She would protect us from the woman. From you. From everything.”

  “I don’t trust you,” he said. “When this is over, you need to go to the land—”

  “That, Undertaker, is not yours to decide.”

  Chapter 53

  B ECKY.” CISSY STILL HAD HER HAND INSIDE HER HANDBAG, BUT SHE lifted her gaze to Rebekkah. “What a lovely surprise. Did you come to tell me that you’ve decided to give me my inheritance? Leave the house and everything else to the rightful heirs?”

  “No.” Rebekkah stepped closer. “How could you do this? Your own daughter, your mother ... You killed them.”

  Cissy pulled a black semiautomatic pistol out of her handbag. “Do you think you’ll come back different? I’ve wondered what would happen if a Graveminder became one of the Hungry Dead.”

  For a moment, Rebekkah paused. She’d hoped that there was some explanation, some truth, to lessen the ugliness of the things that Cissy had done. “Why?”

  “The Graveminder is supposed to be a Barrow woman . You are not.” Cissy leveled the gun at her. “You’re not a part of my family, yet here you are, the next Graveminder.”

  “You’re going to kill me because I’m not Jimmy’s biological daughter?” Rebekkah gaped at her. “Would you have killed Ella?”

  “Ella took care of that herself.” Cissy’s arm didn’t waver. “It should’ve been me. She decided I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t handle the dead. Look at them.”

  “You didn’t handle them. You used them.”

  Cissy snorted. “They aren’t people now. What difference does it make?”

  Rebekkah knew she wasn’t fast enough to outrun a bullet. She didn’t know how to pick the next Graveminder. All she knew for certain was that Cissy shouldn’t be it.

  Is thinking it enough?

  Rebekkah could imagine only one person she’d pick: Amity Blue. She whispered the name in case it had to be spoken. “Amity Blue. Amity Blue is the next Graveminder should I die here.”

  “What are you muttering?” Cissy took a step forward.

  Amity Blue. I want Amity Blue to take this task.

  “Becky? I asked you a question.” Cissy aimed her gun at Rebekkah’s leg.

  “You won’t ever be the Graveminder,” Rebekkah vowed.

  Cissy pulled the trigger.

  There was no telltale sound as it happened, and it wasn’t that Rebekkah saw the shot, even processed that it had happened. She simply crumpled. Her leg felt like it had been skewered by a hot poker. She put her hand on her thigh in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. Blood slipped out around her fingers.

  “I tried to talk to Mama, but”—Cissy crouched down beside Rebekkah—“all she could see was you. Rebekkah. Precious Rebekkah . After you and your mother ran away, I thought Mama would pick me or one of my girls ... but do you know what she said?”

  Rebekkah put her other
hand on her leg, too, pinching the skin together. The pain of doing so made her vision blur. She swallowed twice before she could speak. “What?”

  “That even if you died, she wouldn’t lay the burden on my girls.” Cissy stood up. She extended the hand with her gun in it again. The barrel brushed over Rebekkah’s cheek. “I guess it was okay to burden you. Maybe she didn’t love you after all, Becky.”

  Rebekkah reached up to grab the gun, but Cissy yanked it away.

  “I’m not a murderer, Becky,” she said. “I killed once, but now I just have them kill each other. I don’t intend to go before my maker with those sorts of sins on my soul.”

  “Still on your soul,” Rebekkah muttered, vaguely aware that Cissy was watching her. She struggled to get her shirt off. Every movement hurt, far worse than the shot that had grazed her in the land of the dead. Shot twice in two days. As she swallowed against the bitter taste in her mouth, she realized that she’d bitten her lip enough that the bitterness she was tasting was her own blood. None to spare. Blinking against the pain, she tied her shirt around her leg. It was a crude solution, but maybe it would stanch the blood.

  “No. ‘The sins of the dead rest on the Graveminder, for if she had done her duty, the dead would not be free to do harm.’ I read the journals a long time ago, but when she died, I took them. Since you don’t have Mama’s journals, I wanted to let you know that part. These deaths? Every injury since Mama died, they are yours to carry. How fitting that you will go to your end with those stains.”

  Rebekkah looked up. Even in the haze of her pain, the tug in her chest told her that someone, that the Hungry Dead, stood nearby.

  At the doorway, Daisha stood. She looked at the two women, but Rebekkah couldn’t read her expression. She didn’t want to call out, to alert Cissy. She glanced again at Daisha’s expressionless face. Is she attracted to blood? Will she kill me as she killed Maylene?

  Daisha vanished.

  Cissy jerked to her feet and half pulled, half dragged Rebekkah toward the house. “I didn’t intend to feed them yet, but plans change. Soon as you’re dead, Liz will be the next Graveminder. She’s the only one left. Teresa will become clearheaded and strong.”

  Cissy opened the door and shoved Rebekkah into the house.

  “Why?” Rebekkah repeated. “You killed your daughter.”

  “Teresa understood. She’ll be my warrior in this world, and Liz will be able to take me to the other.” Cissy’s smile was that of a zealot, of a woman whose beliefs were everything to her, and that sort of true believer was a terrifying thing. “The others weren’t thinking. All these years, they worked for him— servants to Mr D ... I read all about it when I was younger. I spent hours reading all those journals. We serve him, yet what do we get?”

  Between the pain in her leg and her own doubts, Rebekkah had no answer to this question, but Cissy wasn’t looking for one.

  She continued. “All that power. Two worlds , Becky. Yet here we are trapped in a few miles of land. He has an entire world. Woman after woman is his servant. Barrow women. We’ve died because of his choices. No more. I’m not some dead man’s servant.”

  “You aren’t the Graveminder.” Rebekkah forced the words out around the pain. She leaned against the wall and tried to stare at her aunt, but her eyes had lost their focus. The desire to close them warred with the fear that if she did so, she’d never be able to open them back up.

  Behind them, Daisha reappeared and said, “Hello, Miz Barrow.”

  Cissy turned. “What are you doing here?”

  Daisha sniffed. “I found the Graveminder. That’s what I was supposed to do. I remember that ... and now I have her.”

  “I don’t want you in my house.” Cissy didn’t back away, but her posture was tense as she tried to surreptitiously look around the kitchen. “How did you get in?”

  “There’s no barrier around your house now. You pulled her over it.” Daisha’s voice was very matter-of-fact.

  Rebekkah blinked. She wasn’t sure whether her gun-waving aunt or the dead girl who’d murdered Maylene was the bigger threat. Given the choice, though, she’d put her faith in the dead. She took a step toward Daisha and stumbled. Her eyes drifted shut. “You ...” she started.

  In less time than it took Rebekkah to force herself to open her eyes, Daisha stepped forward and lifted Rebekkah in her arms. She held her aloft like she was a small child. “Is she for me?”

  “I was going to give her to the others, but”—Cissy backed away—“you can have her. You seem alert. That’s the consequence of eating. I’d rather they aren’t alert yet.”

  The door to the garage opened then, and Byron stepped over the salt separating the house from the garage. He left the door open. The dead were no longer contained by salt circles. They stood waiting on the other side of the line of salt at the threshold. Byron was bloodied, but still standing.

  Cissy’s eyes widened. “What have you done?”

  Byron didn’t spare her a glance. He stepped up to Daisha. “Are you sure?”

  “Take her out of here.” Daisha handed Rebekkah to him. As soon as she released Rebekkah, she grabbed Cissy. The movements were so quick as to seem virtually simultaneous.

  Byron walked into the living room and set Rebekkah on the sofa. He lifted a clear plastic container that looked like it should be filled with rice or cereal. Then he poured its contents on the threshold between the kitchen and the living room.

  “Daisha!” Rebekkah struggled to her feet.

  Byron walked over and stopped her. “No. She’s staying a bit longer.”

  “You can’t. She helped me.” Rebekkah squirmed to get up.

  “This is her choice. In a moment, I’ll let her out. Trust me.”

  When she nodded, he stepped over the salt line and back into the kitchen. “We can do this another way,” he said.

  “This is the price of my help, Undertaker,” Daisha said.

  As Rebekkah watched, Daisha nodded toward the salt that kept the rest of the dead from entering the kitchen and directed, “Remove it.”

  “Montgomery! You can’t listen to her.” Cissy sounded terrified, but her present fear could do nothing to undo the horrible things she’d done.

  “Byron?” Rebekkah called. He glanced at her, and she said softly, “Please do as Daisha asks.”

  For a moment, he hesitated. Then, without looking away from her, he scraped his foot over the line, removing the salt barrier, and letting four more Hungry Dead into the kitchen.

  As he did so, Daisha shoved Cissy at the dead and put herself between them and Byron. “Go.”

  He didn’t waste any time; he ran into the living room. He bent down to pick Rebekkah up off the couch, but she put out a hand to stop him and then glanced back into the kitchen.

  “Not yet. I need to”—she made herself look at him—“bear witness.”

  “You don’t.” He tore his gaze from her eyes to the wound in her leg. “You were shot . Let me get you to the truck and then—”

  “Not yet,” she repeated. She looked past him to the kitchen, where the dead were consuming a pleading and screaming Cissy. “ This is where I need to be.”

  If they were going to sentence someone to die, she’d not hide from that death. The sight of it, the shrieks as Cissy was pulled from one dead hand to another, wouldn’t be anything she’d soon forget, but she watched nonetheless.

  This was justice: the dead deserved recompense.

  Chapter 54

  I T ONLY TOOK A FEW MINUTES. AFTERWARD, DAISHA CALLED OUT, “UNdertaker?”

  On the sofa, Rebekkah closed her eyes. Her wound needed tending, but Daisha didn’t know how to help the Graveminder. All she knew was that she would do whatever she could so the Graveminder could get medical attention, get well, and survive.

  “Let me out of here so we can get her to the doctor.” Daisha pointed at the salt line.

  Silently, Byron grabbed the container of salt that he’d carried into the living room. He held it poised. ??
?On the count of three. One, two”—he brushed away a salt line—“three.”

  She ran forward, and he immediately replaced the line before the others could cross.

  Byron stared into Daisha’s eyes and said, “Rebekkah might forget that you’re a monster, but I don’t. You’re still dead even if you aren’t like them,” he muttered, motioning toward the kitchen. “You’re a killer.”

  “I am, but she needs to forgive us. It’s who she is.” Daisha lowered her voice. “And you ... I don’t think you are supposed to forgive.”

  “I don’t really give a fuck about what we’re supposed to do,” he ground out.

  She grinned. “Yeah? Me either ... because I suspect I’m not supposed to want to help either of you, but I do.”

  His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Help her up, Undertaker. We have a few dead folk that need taken to that abyss under your home.” Daisha frowned and then walked away. After a quick examination of the mostly barren bathroom, she grabbed a large towel, which she ripped into strips as she walked back to the sofa. She held the improvised bandage out to Byron. “Here.”

  He said nothing as he accepted it and gently bound Rebekkah’s leg. Rebekkah, however, caught Daisha’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.

  To that, Daisha had no words, so she nodded and watched the Undertaker. After a moment, she realized that she was still holding on to the Graveminder’s hand and immediately dropped it.

  “Will you help me for a few more minutes?” Rebekkah asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I need to get them to safety before I can do anything else.” Rebekkah pointed to the kitchen, where the dead were waiting. They mostly watched Rebekkah the way lions in a zoo watch small children, as if she were a meal they would consume if only they had a chance. The old man was different. He hadn’t participated in the attack on Cissy either.