Seventh Grave and No Body

  Reyes knelt beside me, and the elfling took a wary step back. When I looked over at him, he nodded toward the tree line, where another little girl stood in the shadows, hidden almost completely behind a pine. If not for her pale striped shirt and turquoise shorts, I would not have spotted her.

  I gestured toward Kit, and he agreed with another nod.

  “Can I see the file again?” I asked her.

  She handed it to me as Reyes stood. With space between them, the elfling relaxed visibly. She raised a hand in the air and laughed softly at something I couldn’t make out. Her grin was infectious. Reyes and I each wore one quite similar.

  “Would you like to see the crime scene?” Kit asked me, beginning to wonder what I was doing.

  It was the perfect segue. “Sure. Can you show it to Reyes first? I’ll be there in a sec.”

  Kit looked from me to Reyes and then back, not sure what to think. Then, with a shrug, she led him off to the cabins.

  The main one, probably the meeting lodge, was the only one with slight remnants of police tape on it. The tattered strips swayed loosely in the soft breeze, stirring the dirt and debris below them. Most of the windows had been broken, and the roof sat slightly askew. Neglect had a way of aging a place.

  Free to talk privately, I sobered and winked at the little girl in front of me, who was so utterly fascinated with my light. Before I could get down to business, Jessica materialized beside me. She looked out over the girls. They had stopped what they were doing and were now watching us. Most were merely curious. A couple seemed to withdraw. Those would probably disappear before I could ask them anything.

  “What happened?” Jessica asked, astonished.

  “We aren’t sure,” I said. “But we’re working on it.”

  Another girl, perhaps nine or ten and wearing a seersucker jumpsuit, joined the elfling as she danced and played. Looking as though they were running through sprinklers on a summer afternoon, they laughed and tried to catch particles of my light in their hands, clasping them together midair, then bringing them close to their eyes and peeking inside. Then they would burst into a fit of giggles. While I couldn’t help but laugh with them, Jessica stood confused. Mortified.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her brows drawn in concern. “What happened to them?”

  “I don’t know, Jessica.” I thumbed through the file until I came to a news article that included a picture of the homeless man who had frequented the area. The police were taking him in for questioning and someone had snapped a shot. “We’re trying to find that out.” I held the file open to the girls. “Can you answer a few questions for me?” I asked them.

  The older one crept forward first. The elfling followed suit.

  After pointing out the suspect, I asked, “Is this the man who brought you here? Did he kill you?” It was a horrible thing to say, to have to say, but there was simply no delicate way of putting it. One thing I’d found to be a truth 99 percent of the time was that the departed handled their deaths better than the living did.

  The older one leaned in, squinted, then shook her head. But the elfling nodded vigorously.

  “That’s not him,” the older one said.

  “Is so. Look.” The elfling pointed, but when she did, her finger traced over the news column until it came to a figure in the background. It was a cop or a deputy of some sort, and he was standing off to the side and talking to a woman, possibly a reporter. The photographer had snapped the shot just as the man looked over his shoulder toward the camera.

  “Oh,” the older one said. “That is him. He came to my house after school before my mom got home. He said she was in an accident and I had to go with him to the hospital, but we didn’t go to the hospital.”

  The elfling bowed her head. “I was at a party and tried to walk home by myself because Cindy Crane threw up. Then I didn’t feel good, so I left. But I got lost. He said he would help me find my mom.” When she glanced up at me with those huge green eyes, my heart constricted. “He was so nice at first.”

  I slammed my lids shut. I just didn’t get it. Why was there so much evil in the world? What had any of these precious girls done to deserve such a horrifying fate? I couldn’t help but think of my own daughter, of what she would have to deal with. To face. It was not a pleasant thought.

  Forcing myself to keep calm, I took in a deep breath, then continued. “Do you know about the people who were killed here? They were setting up for a summer camp when they were attacked.”

  The elfling pointed toward the cabin. “There. They were killed there.”

  “Do you know by whom?” I asked.

  She pointed to the picture again. To the deputy.

  “He brought Vanessa out here,” the older one said. “They saw him.”

  Ah, they’d caught him burying one of his victims, so he killed them all. “Do you know where you are buried?”

  “Of course,” the elfling said. She pointed to the tree line surrounding the retreat. “We’re over there by that big rock.”

  At least I could tell Kit where to look. She would, of course, question everything I told her, but she knew enough about me to follow through anyway. Each one of these girls deserved a proper burial, and their families deserved closure.

  “Except for Lydia,” the older one said.

  I thumbed through the file again. “Lydia Weeks?” I asked, scanning the notes. “The girl from the camp? They never found her.” I looked up at them.

  “Yeah, he took her off somewhere else. She’s not with us. She sticks to the trees mostly.”

  That time, they pointed in the opposite direction, at the girl in the turquoise shorts.

  “That’s her?” I asked, standing.

  “That’s her.”

  I bent to the girls. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  They nodded before trying to catch particles of light again, like dust motes in the sun.

  Though Jessica seemed totally distraught, I asked her for a favor. “Would you mind watching them until I get back?”

  “What? Me?” She acted as though I’d asked her to shave her head. “I – I can’t – I mean, I don’t know anything about children.”

  I winked at her. “Join the club.”

  Before heading toward Lydia, I glanced at the cabins. Kit was explaining something to Reyes in front of the main lodge, her back to me. Accepting that as my cue, I took off in a dead sprint, barely catching the glare on Reyes’s face as I put even more distance between us.

  Lydia sank farther into the shadows as I neared. At eleven, she was actually a bit older than the other girls in the area. Her brows formed a hard line. She looked part Asian with dark, almond-shaped eyes and straight black hair that hung past her shoulders.

  I slowed and eased up to her, afraid she would disappear before I could ask her anything. “Hi, Lydia,” I said. Fighting my already burning lungs and racing heart, I pasted on my best smile and tiptoed closer. “I’m Charley.”

  Without uttering a word, she took off in the opposite direction.

  “Wonderful,” I said, ducking past a branch and hurrying after her. “I suck at tag. I was always It.” My breaths came in quick, shallow bursts as I tripped on a leaf or something. “I contemplated changing my name to It when I was a kid to make playing tag more ironic.”

  She zigzagged past a log for my benefit, then cleared a fallen tree in one graceful leap. I, however, did not. After scraping my shins on the thick bark, I scaled the obstacle instead, huffing and puffing as I jumped over the other side. Before I could rant much more, I caught up to Lydia. She’d stopped running and was staring at the ground. I struggled to get oxygen to my red blood cells as I stumbled forward. When I got closer, I realized there was a distinct impression in the dirt. Leaves and debris had accrued, but on the edge of what looked like a shallow grave were the remains of a small, skeletal hand.

  “I’m so sorry, Lydia,” I said between gasps.

  “I wanted you to see.”

  I knelt down
and wrapped my fingers around the bones of hers before looking back at her. “I’ll make sure they find you.”

  She nodded, tears threatening to spill over her lashes.

  I wanted to tell her she could cross through me, she could be with her parents who’d died that night – but a growl, low and guttural, caught my attention. Alarm raced up my spine and over my skin as my gaze darted from one shadow to the next. “Is that a bear?” I asked. “I hope that’s not a bear.”

  Lydia’s expression had changed. She looked at me worriedly. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to see.”

  I stood. “I know, honey. It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. It was selfish of me.” She lowered her head.

  “Not at all,” I said, my voice stern.

  Her mouth forming a lovely pout, she whispered, “You should know, they were summoned.”

  I put a hand on her arm and leaned closer. “Who, sweetheart? Who was summoned?”

  She cast a worried glance over her shoulder. “The monsters.” The growl grew louder as she spoke. “They were summoned. All twelve of them.”

  I stilled, my thoughts snagging on the word twelve. I straightened and whirled around, looking for the hellhounds, the beasts who’d escaped eternal damnation to frolic on earth. And to rip me limb from limb.

  Before I could ask any more questions, she whispered to me once again. Her words curled around me like dark, ethereal smoke as she said, “You should run.”

  2

  We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours.

  — BUMPER STICKER

  I raced back to the campgrounds so fast, tree limbs and pine needles whipped across my face with cruel intent. I didn’t care. I flew over the fallen log and zigzagged past the trees, the landscape blurring in my periphery as I focused on sound. Not just any sound. A specific sound. A growl. But I had yet to hear it again.

  I felt Reyes near me, incorporeal. His heat encircled me¸ but I didn’t have time to explain. I burst from the forest and sprinted back to the cabins, shouting, “Time to go! Chop, chop!”

  Snapping at a very confused Kit, I scooped up the file I’d laid on the ground and raced toward her SUV. She didn’t argue. She followed behind me, grabbing her keys as she ran.

  “Is there a bear?” she asked as we hustled into her SUV.

  “Something like that,” I said, eyeing Reyes.

  He bit down and examined the area as Kit maneuvered the SUV through a perfect three-point turn, stirring up dirt and clouds of dust.

  I felt bad about leaving the girls behind without so much as a by-your-leave. I’d have to go back for them when this Twelve business was all said and done.

  “Okay,” I said once we were on the road, “there are at least eight girls buried near that big boulder to the east of the cabins, just past the tree line.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “And Lydia Weeks is buried at the opposite end of the camp, in a shallow grave. There is a fallen tree nearby.”

  Kit pulled to the side of the road. Our pause in forward momentum had me nervous again. Had the Twelve seen me? Would they hunt me down? Drag me out of the car for my dismemberment?

  “We should keep going,” I said to her, my hands slick with perspiration. From physical exertion or from nerves, I had no idea.

  “What are you talking about? What girls?”

  “Oh.” I pulled out the file and opened it to the news article. “And this is your killer. He was using the area as a dumpsite. The campers got there on the wrong night. But we really should keep going.”

  She took the file without looking at it. “How do you know all of this?”

  I sighed in helplessness, unable to answer to her satisfaction. “It’s what I do, Kit. You just have to trust me. Say that we were investigating the area and we found a body. I can draw you a map of where to find her.”

  “You can show me.” She started to make a U-turn.

  I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “No, I can’t.”

  We were idling in the middle of the road when a car approached. The driver slowed upon seeing us, unsure of what we were up to.

  After a moment, Kit depressed the gas pedal and continued down the mountain. “I want a map,” she said.

  “You’ll have it.” I pointed to the deputy in the photo again. “Do you recognize this man?”

  She finally took a look. “No. Why?”

  “Was he ever a suspect?”

  “No, but one of the agents on-scene described a confrontation he’d had with a sheriff’s deputy from Los Alamos. Said he was asking all kinds of questions, which is natural, but he just remembered the guy as being dodgy. He’d wanted to know everything that was going on, even though it was well out of his jurisdiction.”

  “He’s your killer.”

  She blinked at me in surprise, then refocused on the road. After navigating a few tight turns, she said, “One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me how you do that.”

  “One of these days,” I said, relieved beyond measure to be alive. And fully limbed.

  Giving up all pretense of normalcy, I turned to Reyes in the backseat. “Are we safe?”

  “For the moment. But we need a plan.”

  “Like what kind of plan? I mean, they’re —” I gave one last fleeting glance toward Kit. She would never look at me the same again. Come to think of it, she might never look at me again, period. “They’re hellhounds,” I said, resigned to the fact that I might lose SAC. “What can we possibly do to them?”

  “First off, I don’t think they’re as sensitive to light as the first ones that escaped onto this plane, but they still can’t go into direct sunlight. Nothing from hell can without insulation.”

  “You mean, without having the advantage of a human host?”

  “Exactly. And I don’t think they can actually possess people.”

  “You aren’t sure?”

  “Not really. I never dealt much with the hounds. But I know who has.”

  It only took me a moment to guess: “The Dealer.”

  The Dealer was our newest acquaintance, a slave who, like Reyes, had escaped from hell and now lived on earth as a human. He was centuries old yet barely looked nineteen.

  “Yes. He was Daeva. He was a slave, and part of their job was to take care of other slaves, like the hounds.”

  “You know, someday you’re going to have to explain to me in great detail exactly what hell is.”

  Kit’s grip was so tight on the steering wheel, her knuckles shone white. I couldn’t help that now.

  “I understand what you meant earlier,” Reyes said.

  I still wanted to know more about hell and the hounds raised there. “Changing the subject will not help your – Wait, what do you mean?”

  “This world,” he said, his jaw working as he gazed out the window at the last of the pine and juniper as we emerged from the mountains and onto flatter land. “Bringing a child into it. What happened to those girls.”

  I wrapped my arms over my chest. “I guess it doesn’t matter now, but still, it kind of breaks my heart. Especially knowing what our daughter is going to face.”

  Without looking at me, he said, “It breaks mine, too.”

  Hoping Kit couldn’t give me a ticket for not wearing my seat belt, I unbuckled it and crawled into the backseat with my affianced. He took my hand in his, lacing our fingers together, his heat soft and stirring.

  As we got closer to town, I called Cook to fill her in, as promised.

  “How’d it go?” she asked in lieu of a salutation.

  “Well,” I told her, “we not only figured out who committed the murders ten years ago but also IDed a serial killer.”

  “Another one? We seem to have a lot of those around here.”

  “We do, don’t we?” I’d never thought of it that way, but we really did seem to attract our share of crazies. I explained about the little girls. I shouldn’t have. Cookie sank into that
same deep, dark depression I’d been experiencing, but her depression was much more noble. Mine was just kind of whiny.

  After a moment where Reyes studied the hand he was still holding, running his fingertips along my lifeline, Cookie asked, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”

  “Calculus, prolly. Why?”

  “Just curious. What if you could create the perfect murder? Like literally? Who would you kill?”

  “Well, if I could create the perfect murder – of which there are none – I could probably time travel, too. I’d go back in time and kill Hitler.”

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked. “Whom would you kill?” This was so not a conversation to be having in the back of an FBI agent’s SUV.

  “My ex,” she said.

  “Probably best not to mention that to your lawyer.”

  Her ex, whom I had yet to meet in the three years I’d known Cookie, was giving her a hard time about putting their daughter in danger. Apparently, he’d found out about an attack in my apartment, one Amber had witnessed, only she’d been too sleepy to realize what was happening at the time. Amber must have put two and two together and mentioned the incident to her dad. She would never have said anything if she knew what kind of strife it would cause her mother. Amber didn’t know her dad as well as Cookie did.

  “But if you’re shopping, I know a guy who knows a guy.”

  “Nah,” she said, dropping the idea, which was probably for the best. “But thanks. Still, if I could get away with murder, I’d hunt down serial killers and take them out one by one. I’d be a serial killer serial killer. Like Dexter, only with curves.”

  “I get that. Hey, I could be your assistant! I’d be an Assistant Serial Killer Serial Killer. I’d be an ASS. Or do I need the Ks in there? Because that wouldn’t sound nearly as cool.”

  She chuckled. “So, what’s with this note you left on my desk?”

  “It’s a list of words.”

  “Yes, which is why I’m confused. Are these words significant in some way?”