The Trouble With Twelfth Grave

  “Rocket,” I said, putting my hand on his arm, partly for reassurance and partly because I couldn’t have him disappearing on me. “The priest lived a long time ago and just reentered this plane from another one. I need his name.”

  He tried to step away from me. I didn’t let him.

  “No breaking rules, Miss Charlotte. You know that.”

  I stepped very close to him, ignoring the kids with gaping mouths who watched me talk to invisible people. “I am ordering you to break the rules, Rocket. Just this once.”

  He looked to the side, his expression full of worry. Blue stood beside him. She took his hand and nodded, her short, dark bob swaying with the movement.

  She beckoned him with a tiny index finger, and he knelt down to her. I knelt, too, unwilling to miss this chance. If I lost Rocket, it could take days to find him again. Summoning him only upset his already addled brain, and getting information out of the Rocket Man when he was upset was never easy.

  Rocket leaned toward Blue, and she whispered in his ear. He looked up at me and said, “Father Arneo de Piedrayta.”

  “What? That’s his name?” Stunned, I took out my phone and typed the name in phonetically, no clue how to spell it. “How did you…?”

  Blue smiled and popped back on the carousel with Strawberry.

  Rocket stood and grinned down at me. “Blue said just this once.”

  “Rocket, does Blue always help you keep track of the names?”

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know the names. Only Blue does. She whispers them to me, and I write them down. That’s my job. I write the names on the walls for her.”

  I stood so taken aback, Rocket grew bored and went back to the Whac-A-Mole. But I couldn’t drop it. I walked over to him, annoying a kid who was finally playing the game to Rocket’s delight.

  “I’ve seen you get the names. I’ve seen you search for them in your head.”

  He laughed again. “I don’t search for them in my head. I search for them in Blue’s. Only she knows the names.”

  I’d been communicating with the wrong departed savant the whole time? I glanced over at her. She grinned and pointed to her temple, to her mind, letting me know exactly where all the names were stored.

  “But I’ve never seen her tell you a name I’ve asked for,” I argued. “It’s always just been you.”

  The look on Rocket’s face almost doubled me over. He pressed his lips together, shook his head, and tsked as though I were a pitiful creature. “Miss Charlotte, just because you can’t see someone doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

  He had a point.

  “Thank you, Rocket.” I rolled onto my tiptoes and kissed his cheek, gaining a glare from the kid I bumped into. The kid Rocket was standing in.

  I left the gang to their fun. Outside, I found an older kid, a blond skater with dreads, and offered him a twenty if he’d go inside and use the whole thing playing Whac-A-Mole.

  “Sure,” he said with a shrug.

  If I was lucky, I’d get at least ten bucks out of it. He’d use the rest on other games or pizza, but that was cool, too.

  19

  I try to just take one day at a time,

  but lately several days have attacked me at once.

  —MEME

  With no time to waste, I rushed to Peanut. I needed a place away from other people, just in case anyone in the vicinity was sensitive to the supernatural realm. If someone ended up hurt because of me, because of my summoning the priest, I’d never forgive myself.

  I drove to the old rail yard that housed a series of abandoned warehouses. I’d used them before. Funny how useful abandoned warehouses could be in my line of work.

  If I summoned the priest here, there’d be no one else around. No risk, if it were him. I had to resign myself to the fact that it very well may not be. I’d pretty much run out of suspects unless something else came out of the hell dimension I didn’t know about, but that didn’t mean it actually was the priest. Hopefully, all would be revealed soon.

  After trying for twenty minutes to pick the lock on the gate—I was sorely out of practice—I ended up breaking it with a crowbar instead. I drove inside the yard and cruised around to a familiar warehouse, one I’d recently used to help save a woman’s life. I parked Peanut, busted yet another lock to get inside the warehouse, then strode to the middle of the massive building using the flashlight on my phone.

  Moonlight shone across broken shards of glass on the floor and in the high-set windows overhead. It helped me get a feeling for the expanse that lay before me. Debris and the odd remnant of machinery lay here and there. Homeless people had used the building in the past, but the city had amped up security, so that rarely happened anymore.

  Without further ado, I opened the notes on my phone and summoned the priest by saying his name aloud. “Père Arneo de Piedrayta, se prèsenter. Come forward.”

  When nothing happened, I shifted onto the celestial realm to get a better feel of what was hiding there. The sepia tones laid out a vast desert of harsh winds and violent storms. My hair whipped around my face as I turned in a circle, trying to find the priest.

  Then I spotted something—someone—in the distance. A robed figure, stumbling blindly, trying to shield his face from the winds. I shifted back and demanded he come forward.

  “Père, se prèsenter immédiatement.” Come forward, now.

  He finally began to materialize in front of me. The astonishing fact that I was summoning a priest from the 1400s was not lost on me. If he ended up being cool and not a raging madman murdering people, I was totally taking him for a drive in Peanut. He would freak.

  Parts of the celestial plane came through with him, the wind tossing him about until he settled onto this plane fully. He lay on the ground in a fetal position, spouting prayers in an old version of French, his accent so thick I could barely understand him.

  “Père,” I said to get his attention.

  Once he realized he was no longer in the storms, he raised his head. His robe, tattered and burned around his sandaled feet, lay in tangles around him. His hair, a short bowl cut, was mussed and unkempt. Judging by his features, he was no more than forty. I hadn’t expected someone so young.

  His gaze, wide and wild, darted about in terror. I almost felt sorry for him, but if he truly was the malevolent priest who’d locked all those innocent souls inside the god glass, he didn’t deserve my sympathy.

  I grabbed a handful of his robes so he couldn’t disappear on me, and I knelt to speak to him. Once he realized I was there and he focused on me, he winced and tried to scramble back. I kept a firm hold, but he started to panic.

  “Père,” I said, trying to calm him. I told him as much in his native tongue. “Calm down. I won’t hurt you.”

  I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at me, but he was scared shitless. He shook his head and kicked and clawed at me, managing to land a few punches. Then I realized he wasn’t really looking at me.

  I turned around to see Reyes, or Rey’azikeen, leaning against a beamed pillar, watching the goings-on with mild interest. He glanced down to focus on his manicure, as though bored with our interaction.

  “Père,” I said, trying to draw him back to me. “I need to know if you sent those people into the glass pendant. Was that you?”

  “Good luck with that,” Reyes said, still examining his nails.

  But he glanced at me from underneath his lashes, an exquisite smile playing about his mouth before he pointed and said softly, “Careful. Hot.”

  I turned back just as the priest started screaming. He grabbed at me, clawing and scratching, begging for help as the ground opened up beneath him.

  I fell backwards, stunned, as the father did his best to crawl out of the pit and on top of me. Then I felt the heat rising from it.

  The priest, half on top of me, began hammering at my face and chest, begging me to help him, pleading with me to stop the burning. The fire beneath us became unbearable, but I couldn’t
seem to get away from him. He was all over me, digging his fingers into my skin, using me as an anchor to stay in this world when hell clearly wanted him in theirs.

  I fought and kicked to get him off to no avail until Artemis rose from the ground beside us. She leaped forward and ripped into the priest with a ferocious growl, tearing him off me at last. I scrambled back and watched as the pit surrounding the priest grew larger and the fires grew higher. His screams echoed off the walls, and I clutched my throat, wanting to help but unable.

  It all made sense, though. The scratches and bruises on the victims. The burns. In an attempt to get its man, hell had crossed onto this plane. It had burned innocent people, but the other wounds were caused by the priest. He’d tried to anchor himself to this plane, and the only people he could see were those who could see him. He clutched onto them to keep from going to hell. A place he clearly deserved to be.

  The priest got a firm hold on Artemis, clasping his arms around her as hell tried to pull him under. Syrupy black tentacles twisted around him. Smoke rose in tendrils.

  Artemis yelped. I lunged forward and grabbed hold, but something a few feet away caught my attention. The priest let go of Artemis and was almost sucked under, his arms flailing like a drowning swimmer. But my gaze darted to a figure standing a few feet away. Then another.

  I scanned the area and found no fewer than twenty figures shrouded in tattered gray gauze. Their hands folded at their chests. Their faces not faces at all. They had no eyes. No noses. Only mouths sitting where mouths would normally be, the rest of their faces a total blank. Bone protruded from their heads, encircling them like a crown.

  But their mouths were the scariest thing about them. Their lips, if one could call the cracked lines around their teeth lips, were pulled back from their teeth in an eternal smile. Their teeth blended in with their complete grayness. They were square and blunt and twice the size they should have been.

  Somehow, they watched the priest, their faces focused on the screaming man. And he’d noticed them. His terror multiplied when they came into view.

  And then, so fast I didn’t see them move, they were on him.

  Reyes grabbed hold of my arms and jerked me out of the way as they descended on the priest like savage animals. Tearing into his flesh. Ripping parts of him off to eat.

  The priest’s screams subsided as what was left of him sank into the pit of hell, the gate closing behind him.

  The wraiths ate with vigor, the sounds of them gnawing on flesh and crunching bone sickening me.

  When they were finished, they stood in one liquid movement, as though the move were choreographed. Artemis whimpered beside me, then growled, readying for a fight.

  They turned, pivoting in space, their feet never touching the ground, until they all faced us. I swallowed as their heads bent and tilted slightly, focused on yours truly.

  My lungs seized. Some things I could fight. These things I’d prefer to run from, but I couldn’t move. I had no idea what they were. I’d never seen anything like them. They couldn’t be demons. My light did nothing to them. Then again, if I’d learned anything, it was that there were as many species of demons as there were stars in the universe.

  But these were wraithlike, disembodied gray entities, their robes drifting like gauze in a light breeze.

  Still on the ground, I lay afraid to move, terror seizing my muscles and locking my joints.

  Facing the horde, Reyes straddled me, stepping on either side of my waist, smoke billowing off him as he lowered his head and growled at the wraiths. They looked from Reyes, to me, to Artemis and must’ve decided to save the fight for another day. They inclined their heads, again in one liquid movement, then dissipated and drifted away.

  The warehouse sat empty save for us. Completely normal, as though nothing’d happened. A breeze whispered through the broken panes of glass overhead, causing me to gasp and glance around in fear.

  Reyes switched positions. He turned around and straddled me again. I thought he’d been unaffected by the wraiths. I was wrong. His chest fought to push air in and out of his lungs. His fists clenched at his sides. His biceps bunched into rock hard mounds.

  “Where is it?” he asked for the ten thousandth time.

  I shook my head, astonished. “Reyes, what were those things?”

  He shifted his weight and lowered a booted foot onto my chest, pinning me to the ground. “Where is it?” he asked, his voice low and deadly serious.

  I spoke as calmly as I could. “Get off me.”

  “Where is the ash?” He squeezed his eyes shut, as though trying to remember, then refocused on me. “The ember? Where is it?”

  “I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do!” he yelled. He jerked me off the ground and thrust me against a metal beam. “It’s yours. You must know.”

  “What’s mine?”

  He closed his eyes again as though racking his brain, frustration welding his teeth together. “The ember. No.” He opened his eyes at last, as though it were coming to him in bits and pieces, and the world fell out from under me with his next words. The barest hint of triumph widened his mouth when he said, “The Stardust.”

  I blinked in surprise, then denial, then horror. The book. When two stars collide, they create stardust. It was the author’s way of writing about Beep.

  He was after Beep.

  Artemis growled beside him. He glanced down at her, and in that heartbeat of opportunity, I dematerialized out of his arms and into Garrett’s house.

  He’d been watching Pari and brought her home. She sat in his living room, curled up on his sofa, reading. I heard him in the kitchen and hurried to it.

  “Beep,” I said, suddenly terrified beyond clear thought. “He’s after Beep.”

  Garrett, who’d been standing at his stove scrambling eggs, turned to me in alarm. “What do you mean?”

  Pari walked into the room as well, confused.

  “Rey’azikeen. He’s after Beep, only he called her Stardust, like in the third book. But Reyes knows where she is.” My voice rose as I began to panic. “He knows where the Loehrs are.”

  Garrett stepped to me and put his arms on my shoulders. “No, he doesn’t.”

  I fought for air. Fought the darkening edges of my vision. Fought for coherent thought.

  “Charley,” Garrett said, rustling me with a slight shake. “I moved them the moment you told me what happened.”

  He let that sink in and everything that it entailed. He knew. He’d been prepared. When I realized what he’d done, I threw my arms around him.

  “Oh, my God. Thank you, Garrett,” I said into his T-shirt.

  He wrapped me up and held me tight.

  “Thank you,” I said, tears stinging the backs of my eyes.

  In the next instant, he thrust me away from him. Or at least I thought he did. Instead, Reyes had wrenched him off me. He threw Garrett against a wall, then looked back at me.

  “Your Rey’aziel. He’s hidden the ember away from me. Always so clever. He doesn’t trust me any more than you do. But now I know how to find it.”

  He strode toward Garrett, his steps full of purpose.

  “Reyes,” Garrett said, backing away. He turned and searched for a weapon, anything he could use against him. Spotting a knife on the kitchen counter, he dove for it, but before he even got close, Reyes was on him. He threw him against a wall and pinned him to it, the force shaking the house off its foundation.

  “Where is it?” he asked, forcing his forearm into Garrett’s larynx.

  Struggling for air, Garrett tried to shove him away, but Reyes was simply unmovable. When fighting a human, anyway.

  But as he’d told me repeatedly, I was not human.

  I ran to them, wrapped my arms around Reyes from behind, and shifted us onto the celestial plane. Reyes shifted us right back, but it was enough time for Garrett to scramble out of his hold.

  As triumphant as that moment was, I’d forgotten about the
incredible speed, the astounding agility, my husband possessed. He shoved me into Pari and went after Garrett again. Faster than my mind could comprehend. My only hope would be to slow time, but before I could even form the thought in my head, Reyes reached Garrett, wrapped his hands around his head and twisted, snapping Garrett’s neck.

  The loud crack that followed immobilized me. I had fallen to the floor with Pari and watched in stunned disbelief as Garrett Swopes, one of my closest friends, slumped to the ground, dead.

  20

  The Devil whispered in my ear,

  “You’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.”

  Today I whispered back, “I am the storm.”

  —MEME

  My hands flew over my mouth, and I cried out in horror. Then, without thought, I scrambled to catch Garrett before his head hit the floor, but Reyes knocked me back, the air whooshing out of my lungs.

  Then he stood over Garrett, waiting.

  His actions confused me at first before I realized what he was doing.

  We had two different agendas, Reyes and I. He stood like a sentinel, waiting for Garrett’s soul to leave his body, a soul he could coerce and threaten, while I had to act fast to make sure his soul stayed in his body so I could heal him without breaking my one rule. Without being cast from this plane.

  A few months prior, Reyes had sent Garrett to hell on an unwitting reconnaissance mission. He would do it again. Or at least threaten to. I couldn’t let that happen, because if there was one absolute in this entire scenario, it was the fact that Garrett Swopes would burn in hell before giving up Beep’s location.

  But there was still time. I dove forward, ducked under Reyes’s swing, and grazed my fingertips along Garrett’s arm.

  He jolted awake and clambered to his feet only to face Rey’azikeen’s wrath again. And again, before Garrett could even think about dodging him, the angry god snapped his neck.

  I slowed time, healing Garrett before Rey’azikeen could match my temporal speed. I dragged Garrett, who was now frozen in time, to the side, then turned to face my husband.