Eighth Grave After Dark

  He looked at me as though I were on the low end of the IQ totem pole. “Nurse Hobbs.”

  “Okay, and when Nurse Hobbs gave you these rules, what was she talking about?”

  “Everything,” he said, throwing his arms out wide. “But mostly pudding.”

  I had to ask. “Why pudding?”

  “Because of that one time I tried to explain to her that the pudding disappeared yesterday and that Rubin took it, but she gave me the rules: Not when. Not who. Just if.”

  This conversation was not turning out as I’d imagined. “If?”

  “If I took it.”

  I gaped at him. For, like, ten minutes. Was he kidding? After all this time, the rules weren’t even about the departed or how he knew the names of everyone who’d ever passed, but about pudding? After absorbing that little nugget of gold, I said, “Rocket, I don’t think those rules apply here.”

  A loud gasp echoed around me. “Miss Charlotte,” he said, chastising me, “the rules apply everywhere. I told you. It wasn’t just the pudding, but the corn bread, the honey, the turtle named Blossom—but that was only that one time—and the Thorazine.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. All this time, I’d thought Rocket’s rules came from some celestial manual or guideline or flowchart, something official—but all along, they were from a nurse at the mental asylum where he’d lived most of his life? Visions of the charge nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came to mind. She was scary.

  “Rocket, Nurse Hobbs was not talking about people who have passed away. You can tell me anything about them you want to.”

  “No breaking rules. You already broke all the rules.”

  He was scolding me for using my supernatural mojo to heal a little boy—and a few other people—in the hospital a few months back. He felt that using my gift to heal people was breaking the rules, but I saved people all the time. I found murderers and missing children and solved cases incessantly. How was that any different from healing a sick kid?

  “Rocket, so I saved that little boy by touching him. So I saved a few sick people. How is that any different from what I do every day? I save people using my supernatural connections every other day. How is one breaking the rules and one not?”

  “You probably shouldn’t yell at him,” Strawberry said, petting her doll’s head.

  I ignored her. “And I know darned good and well, Nurse Hobbs did not give you any rules regarding me, since I wouldn’t be born for decades when you knew her.”

  “Nurse Hobbs was very smart,” he countered as he scratched a K into the wall.

  I decided to give it one more shot. “Okay, if. You can tell me if. So, if Faris Waters is going to pass away soon, where will it happen?”

  “Not where. Only—”

  “That’s it!” I said, blowing up. “The next time you mention the rules to me, I’m going to take those rules, crumple them in my fists, and set them on fire with my laser vision.” I didn’t really have laser vision, but it would rock if I did.

  Rocket gasped. “Miss Charlotte, you can’t do that.”

  “Oh, I can. Just you wait and see.” I rolled onto my tiptoes until we were nose to nose. “Just you wait and see.”

  He dissipated before me, his eyes saucers.

  “You so don’t have laser vision,” Strawberry said.

  “I might. I’m a god, in case you haven’t heard.”

  She didn’t buy it for a second. “Unless you’re Superman, you don’t have laser vision.”

  Before I could argue further, she followed Rocket’s lead and left me standing alone in a dusty attic.

  I looked up at the name he’d been carving into the wall and stilled. Earl James Walker. The man—the monster—who’d raised Reyes. He was currently living out the rest of his days drinking his meals through a straw in a nursing home. Reyes severed his spine when he’d tortured and tried to kill me a few months back, and now Walker was going to die.

  I stood in shock a few seconds, wondering why the man was about to kick, before I realized it was rude to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  * * *

  The first thing I did when I got back to the bedroom was call Kit. She needed to know that her FedEx’s niece was still alive. But I felt obligated to tell her that while we had some time, we didn’t have much. We needed a break in the case soon.

  They didn’t have any more information, and all the leads they did have led to a dead end. They were going to question her classmates again, just to make sure they didn’t miss anything.

  “Charley,” Kit said before we hung up, “you have to do your thing. We have to find her.”

  “I’m working on it. Promise.”

  I fetched my laptop, the file on Faris Waters, and a hot chocolate, and stretched out onto David Beckham to give my back a break. The pain in my abdomen was almost gone, but it was at that moment precisely that Beep decided to try out for the Olympics, showcasing her floor routine for the judges. I patted what I assumed was her bottom as I scanned the case file on Agent Waters’s niece.

  I had the distinct feeling I was being watched, but I’d had that feeling a lot lately, so I pretty much ignored it and kept reading the file. I read through all her texts and highlighted the ones that caught my attention. Cookie was working downstairs in my makeshift office. After a while, my hot chocolate got cold. I needed to check up on Cookie’s progress anyway, so I went downstairs.

  The place was almost good as new. Only a few of the wedding guests remained, and they were all in the kitchen or out back where the grill was. Thankfully, Cookie’s cousin Lucille had gone. I headed toward the office but was cut off by Uncle Bob.

  “Are you free?” he asked.

  “No, but I’m on sale for a dollar ninety-nine.”

  He sighed, adding fuel to the fire.

  “Do you have a minute?”

  I patted my pockets. “Not on me, but I can go through the couch cushions.”

  “Charley.” He pretended to be annoyed, but I felt the emotions tumbling inside him. He was happy. Completely content. It was not an emotion I felt from him often, and if Cookie had been there, I would’ve kissed her on the mouth.

  I had to admit, however, I was a little surprised. I’d ruined his pre-honeymoon honeymoon.

  “I’m sorry about tonight,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it. She’s like you. Won’t give up until she’s got her man.”

  “That’s true. She’s a good egg. But you already knew that, I’m guessing.”

  “I did.”

  “You looked fantastic, by the way,” I said. He’d changed out of the tux, but he’d looked amazing in it.

  “Thank you.” We were venturing onto uncomfortable ground. Compliments weren’t part of our MO. Passive-aggressive insults were. Mild threats. A little nagging here and there. “You looked pretty amazing yourself.”

  My brows shot up. “I’m surprised you noticed, what with that goddess standing next to you.”

  He almost blushed. “You got that right.”

  “I hope the captain enjoyed himself.”

  “I think he did. He’s quite … taken with you.”

  Though he didn’t mean that in an attraction kind of way, I said, “Yeah, just don’t tell the old ball and chain. So, what’s up?”

  “Well, we still haven’t decided exactly where we’re going on our honeymoon, and I thought you might know what she’s thinking. She won’t tell me. She wants me to choose where I want to go, but I want her to choose.”

  “So, you want me to flip a coin? See who chooses?”

  “No, I want you to find out where she really wants to go.”

  I smiled and leaned into him. “See, that’s the funny thing, Uncle Bob. She wants to go anywhere you are. You could book a vacation in Bosnia, and she’d be happy.”

  “You’re no help whatsoever.”

  “Well, I do have one word of advice: Don’t take her to hell. I’ve heard it’s really dry there this time of year.”

&
nbsp; “You’re worse than no help.”

  “I know. I really do. You haven’t heard anything, have you?” He knew what I meant without my having to elaborate.

  “No, hon. I’m sorry. We are working the forensics, waiting for lab results.”

  Unlike on television, real forensic work took weeks or even months. Knowing that didn’t help. My impatience knew no bounds. Still, Ubie would have something new to chew on as soon as Mr. Alaniz sent in that anonymous tip about Vatican Boy. I would kill to be there during questioning. Not anybody important. I might knock off someone who groped women in the subway or talked in the theater.

  I leaned in to give him a hug and whispered into his ear. “Puerto Rico.”

  He gave me a quick squeeze before letting me go with a wink and a grin.

  * * *

  Just as I was about to head toward the office again, I decided to take the opportunity to question my investigator about the recent, and rather disturbing, developments. What on earth could Angel have been talking about with Reyes? And why was Angel defending him? Last I heard, he hated the guy with a fiery passion. He’d never trusted him, so why the sudden camaraderie?

  I summoned him, determined to find out. He appeared before me, his arms crossed at his chest as though I’d interrupted something important. The kid had been dead for decades. How important could his activities be?

  “What are you and my other half up to?”

  A hint of surprise flashed across his face, but he recovered quickly. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Don’t try to play the innocent with me. I saw you and Reyes talking in the field.”

  He lunged forward and pasted his hand over my mouth. “Shhhh,” he said, scanning the area. “How did you see us?”

  I peeled his hand away. “I looked. You were there. Reyes was upset. What’s going on, and why all the secrecy?”

  He cursed softly to himself. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Angel,” I said, stepping closer and giving him my infamous death stare, the one that frightened man and beast alike, “either you tell me what is going on, or I swear by all that is holy—”

  “Please,” he said, giving me a light shove of dismissal. “I’m more scared of him than of you, but only on days that end in Y.”

  “Wait, why are you scared of him? Did he threaten you?”

  “No. He doesn’t have to. Have you seen his angry side? Not something I want to mess with.”

  “Then clearly you haven’t seen mine.”

  He scoffed. “Your angry side is like when Mrs. Cleaver burns the muffins.”

  “That is so offensive. I’ve never made muffins in my life.”

  “Whatever, chiquita. I ain’t spilling, so take your threats and—ow!”

  I’d taken hold of his arm and sank my nails into his flesh. “What?” I asked, forcing him closer. “What was that?”

  “You can torture me. It won’t help. I can’t tell you, but just know everything he’s doing is for you and your baby’s safety.”

  I let go. “For Beep?”

  “Yes,” he said, rubbing his arm.

  “Just give me a hint, then. Angel, if she’s in danger—”

  “If?” he asked, his voice incredulous. “Have you looked around? Of course, she’s in danger. You both are. I’m not sure why that hasn’t sunk in.”

  “It’s sunk in. It’s completely sunken, but—”

  “I ain’t talking. You’ll have to ask Rey’aziel.”

  He disappeared before I had a chance to argue further. Damn it. I hated being left out of the loop. I loved loops. People didn’t understand that about me.

  I heard a loud crash coming from the dining room slash study. While we had assigned a small room past the dining hall to be our office, the dining hall itself had become our study. Reyes, Osh, and Garrett Swopes spent a lot of time in there, scouring over the texts Garrett uncovered, trying to find out how to kill the Twelve. Osh insisted they couldn’t be killed. Only sent back to hell. So now they were trying to figure out how to do that as well. While it would be only a temporary fix, we would take what we could get.

  I hurried there and came upon a very upset Garrett Swopes and a poor, innocent chair on which he’d taken out his frustration. He’d also knocked over a stack of notes, the same stack he’d been slaving over for weeks. He was funny when he was upset, so I almost didn’t intervene. But he saw me anyway and gave me his back, embarrassed.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He was still in the nice button-down he’d worn under his jacket.

  “I thought you had to leave early to work a skip for Javier.”

  “I did, but they picked him up this morning.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good.” I nodded toward the papers. “No luck?”

  He shook his head. “None. There’s nothing in here about how to kill the Twelve.” He’d hired a doctor of linguistics to translate the texts, and although Dr. von Holstein didn’t get through all of them, he’d gone through a good amount. It was all quite fascinating. Much of what this guy named Cleosaurius wrote was about me, aka the Daughter of Light, and Beep, whom he referred to as the Daughter. He did say on one or two notations that she would be a melding of light and darkness, me and Reyes respectively, and he prophesied that Beep, though he never called her that, would be the downfall of Lucifer. That she would destroy him. And while pretty much everything he wrote went against Revelations and the predictions written therein, some of it coincided with the ancient texts. The four horsemen, for example, although Cleo simply called them the bringers of great suffering.

  He also prophesied about the Twelve and said what we’d been hearing over and over: Twelve would be sent and twelve would be summoned. So, then, who did the sending and the summoning? Surely Lucifer had sent the Twelve, the hellhounds patrolling our borders night and day. But who summoned the other Twelve? And how did they play into all of this? And how on earth did we kill them?

  “I’m sorry, Charles,” Garrett said just as Reyes and Osh were walking in. “There’s nothing in the texts to indicate how to kill them. At least not in the texts Dr. V translated. There was a lot he had yet to get to. It would have taken him years to translate it all.”

  “It’s okay. I’m going to give Sister Mary Elizabeth a call later. Maybe she found something.” Sister Mary Elizabeth could hear the angels speak. Like literally. And though she couldn’t interact with them, she did come up with some pretty good intel occasionally.

  I sat on a chair and flipped through a few pages. Reyes sat beside me as Osh stood eating a BBQ sandwich. It smelled amazing and my mouth watered involuntarily.

  “Food’s ready,” Reyes said as he studied me. His heat scalded my skin, and even though he was still wearing the white button-down and his hair had been neatly cut, he now wore a day’s growth along his jaw. And he looked tired. His eyes had that sleepy look and, while incredibly sexy, Reyes just didn’t get sleepy. He had infinite energy. Or that’s how I’d always thought of him.

  I still couldn’t help but wonder what he had going with Angel. He recruited the departed to spy for him. Maybe he was doing something similar with Angel, but why spy on me? It wasn’t like I could go anywhere. We were all stuck.

  Perhaps that was why the air fairly crackled with tension. Why he was so blisteringly hot. Reyes was unused to feeling helpless, and now he was like a cornered wolf, ready to strike at anything that moved. While he was fantastic today, his energy seemed to be ratcheted tight, like he might explode given the smallest reason.

  “Anything you want to tell me?” he asked, jump-starting my heart.

  Did he know about the Loehrs? Or my interrogation of Angel? Or how I was pushed? I didn’t think he’d seen me. On any of those occasions. And I wasn’t about to give him a reason to explode. Not here. Not in front of everyone. I would explain about the Loehrs later, and he could decide what to do then. Besides, he was lying to me, too, in a way. He didn’t let me in on what he and Angel were u
p to. He’d lied about the border, though that could have been Osh. But how was Reyes standing out in a field well beyond where Osh had marked the outskirts of the sacred ground? Was Osh in on it, too? And what was it?

  “Not especially,” I said, offering him my best smile. “Just wanted to make sure the helicopter is all set.” We’d come up with a plan a few months ago. As soon as Beep was born, we were going to pile into a helicopter Reyes had chartered that was going to fly us to an island that had once been a leper colony. The entire island was consecrated, thus no hell hounds. We had no idea if it was going to work, but it was the best plan we’d come up with. And we’d come up with many.

  “It’s set. It’s been set for weeks.”

  “Great.” When he kept his gaze trained on me, I looked down at the documents. “What’s this?” I asked, finding some notes in Garrett’s handwriting.

  “Nothing,” Garrett said. “I’ve been trying my hand at translating the texts myself.”

  I was impressed, but Reyes seemed … blasé about it? It was as though he’d expected as much. Or he was still trying to figure out if I was lying.

  “Is this about me or Beep?” I asked when I started to read.

  “You, I think. Who the hell knows?” He strode back to the table and picked up the notepad. “From what I can tell, it’s talking about the beginning and the end of something. I just don’t know what.”

  “Hopefully not the world. Can you read this out loud?” I asked him, getting a new idea.

  “A little. I don’t know all the vowels, but—”

  “Try it,” I said, wanting to test a theory.

  He picked up one of the documents. We’d had the original texts copied and preserved. They were thousands of years old and locked safely away in storage now, so Garrett was working off copies. After noisily filling his lungs to show his frustration, he stumbled through a couple of lines.

  He stopped and glanced down at me as my mind mulled over his interpretation.

  “One more time,” I said. While I didn’t know how to read every language ever spoken on earth, I knew how to speak them. All of them. Every single language, dead or alive, that had ever been spoken, or signed, on earth.