Boneyard (The Thaumaturge Series Book 2) (10 page)

“Oh,” I said. “Apparently it went okay?”

“No problems,” he said vaguely and didn’t elaborate.

“Okay,” I said doubtfully. Then, as it occurred to me, “I need to tell you something.”

He shifted. “I need to tell you something, too.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “You go first.”

He studied my face, his eyes searching mine. Funny how even the dim porch light made his eyes glow, all reflective like a cat’s. Funny how human he looked from a distance, how inhumane he looked up close.

“I called someone. To help us get rid of the body. The girl.”

I turned to look at him, noting the lines around his mouth. “Is that... a good thing? Doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

He sighed heavily and slumped against me a little. Despite everything, the affection, the
trust
, in that gesture, thawed me and I pressed back against him. “It’s a terrible idea. But I don’t know what else to do.”

“Can’t we just go bury her in the woods or something?”

“Bodies get found,” he said. “It’s hard to dump a body these days. People are everywhere and there’s cameras and drones and... I guess we could, like, dismember her and burn her or something.” He shifted, a strange, stuttered breath escaping him. “I don’t really know what to do, to tell you the truth.”

“You’re awful at this,” I told him, not unkindly. “Shouldn’t you be, like, a pro at disposing of bodies?”

“No,” he snapped, pulling a face. “Usually, when I kill someone, I just leave. Or you’re with me. I’ve never had to cover up a murder in the place where I
live.”

I shut up real quick, because really? Did he consider Heckerson his home?

“Okay,” I said after a silence that he made no move to fill. “So you called this person for help. Will he—she?—help us?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“And they’ll get rid of Morgan for good? Nothing left behind?”

He looked off into the darkness beyond my little patch of yard. “Things may be a little more complicated than that.”

 “Yeah?” I asked. “Why?”

“Because I have Corvin’s body, too, Ebron.”

“What?” That was the word my brain sent to my mouth, the only word that encapsulated my utter bewilderment. I think I pulled away from him, because suddenly he was all grabby, tugging me closer by the front of my coat.

“Corvin,” he repeated. “The witch. I went back that night. I took the body.”

“Why?” I asked weakly. “Jim and Marcus...” I trailed off, my mind reeling because it occurred to me that I had no idea. I had personally killed him—Corvin—that night, little more than a week ago, and I had no idea what had happened to his body. I had just assumed that Marcus and his coven had taken care of it. Dumped the body or burned it or something.

Not that I wasn’t thinking about it, how killing Corvin had made me feel. How seeing his blood spread out across my clean wooden floors had made my heart twist like a lemon garnish, made my guts clench like they were snagged with a fish hook. I dreamed about him every night, waking up in cold sweat with the smell of his blood in my nose and my trigger finger numb. Corvin hadn’t given me much choice—he’d killed people and would have killed more—but that didn’t sooth the sickness inside, the feeling that I had crossed a line from which I could never return.

 “Come on, let’s go inside,” Leo urged, pulling at me. “It’s too damn cold, c’mon.”

Numbly, I followed him inside, the metal door banging behind us. The heat of the kitchen was a welcome relief. I watched as Leo crossed the room to the stove. He set the kettle on, fussing with some of the better teas I had and while he made me a cup of something steaming and dark-smelling, I stood there in my heavy coat and watched him.

“Take off your coat,” he told me quietly, and I did. I took off my boots too and he pressed the warm cup into my hands and ushered me over to the couch.

“Okay,” I said expectantly. “Let’s talk about this. We haven’t talked about what happened that night.”

  He sat across me from me, perched on the edge of the coffee table, close enough that our knees fit together.  “Okay,” he said, somewhat reluctantly. “I went back that night.”

 “Why would you do that? Marcus said that he would take care of it.”

He snorted loudly. “That guy’s a little bitch, Ebron. Sorry. We left him there in your store, with a one dead body, a fucking insane witch, and two recently resurrected people.”

Corvin. Morgan. Jim and Shaina. The whole coven. The whole fucking gang.

“He had no idea what to do, okay? I went back, and I told that witch, the coven master—”

“Jim.”

“—sure. Whatever. You know how it is after someone gets resurrected—they’re weak, confused.”

“He had enough strength to help me bring back Cody,” I said. “He and Shaina both. They gave me the power-up energize that you’re so crazy about.”

He dipped his head. “Yeah, they did, but you left right after. You didn’t see them stumbling around, trying to make sense of things. I knew that they couldn’t handle it, not right then, so I told Jim that I’d take care of the body. That they should just get the fuck out of Dodge. Your little boyfriend tried to argue with me and everyone was yelling and I just told them all to go.”

“Very politely, I’m sure.”

“Obviously.” He paused, his eyes searching my face. “Like I said, it’s not easy to hide a body. They probably would have just dumped it off the side of the highway. It had to be me.”

“Thanks for taking one for the team,” I snarked. “You really threw yourself on a grenade, there.”

He ignored me.  “Plus, Morgan was giving them a hard time. That witch—Jim—kept telling me they were going to get her help, that they knew a coven in Kansas City that dealt with witches who go all mental.” He stopped, eyeing me. “You know I had to kill her, Ebron. You know I did.”

I turned my face away, taking a long breath. From his pile of blankets by the couch, Johnny gave a low whine, his mournful eyes on me.

“She complicated things. I made them easy. She yelled about how she was going to tell everyone about you, about what you did. About what you can
do
. She would have talked, Ebron. She would have told the coven in Kansas City and then they would have been knocking on your door.”

“And we can’t have that,” I said softly.

He didn’t move. “No. We can’t.”

“So,” I said, squaring my shoulders and facing him again. “You killed her. Jim and Marcus just let you?”

He snorted. “They did... protest.”

“But it’s not like they could stop you,” I said.

“Jim perhaps could have,” Leo said musingly. He lifted his eyes to mine. “If he really didn’t want her dead.”

We regarded each other in silence for a few moments, until I finally dropped my gaze. Christ, my life was
depraved
.

“You weren’t going to tell me about Corvin,” I said. I cupped my knees with my palms. “Marcus lied to me too. He told me that they took care of the body and that Morgan was alive.”

“I told him not to tell you,” Leo confessed. He leaned forward a little more, close enough to touch if he would have reached for me. “You carry enough weight on your shoulders as it is, Ebron. I didn’t want to put more weight on you.”

“Oh, fuck you, Leo,” I snapped, jerking backwards and slumping into the couch. “You don’t get to decide for me. When it comes to things that affect my life, you tell me the truth or you get the fuck out.”

He looked taken aback, his eyes gone wide. I expected him to get angry, to stand up and storm out, but he looked thoughtful for a second and then nodded.

“You’re right,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I blew it.”

“You didn’t blow it,” I said with a sigh. I wanted to reach out and smooth that look off of his face, but instead I just took a sip from my tea. “This is all fixable,” I added. “Maybe. So you haven’t dumped Corvin. We have two bodies instead of one. No problem, right?”

He smiled weakly. “Hopefully not.”

I studied him. “But why did you just dump her, Leo? You’re the one always telling me not to call attention to myself. You threw her in a dumpster.”

“I’m not proud of that, okay, Ebron?” He looked away, his face flushing.
“I just panicked.”

 I calmly took another sip of tea. Like we were talking about a foreign news bulletin, vaguely distasteful but ultimately uninteresting. My hands didn’t shake.

“I put them both in the trunk of the car—”

“What car? You don’t have a car.”

He shrugged. “I needed one. I borrowed one.”

“Borrowed?”

“Yes. I returned it.”

I waited, wrapping my hands around the mug to ward off some of the bone deep chill.

“I was going to take them east, more towards Butte—”

“And dump them on the side of the road? So amateur, Leo.”

“I didn’t know what to do!” he cried. “I’ve never had to deal with this before! I ran out of time. The car was low on gas, and I stopped to fill it. The sun was coming up and I just panicked. I didn’t want the bodies with me. I didn’t want them tied to you. I threw Morgan in the dumpster and I meant to toss Corvin too, but there wasn’t room and the sun as coming up and... I panicked. I drove off.”

“Why didn’t you just leave them both in the trunk?” I asked, a little more sharply than I meant to. How was I having this conversation? How was I chastising someone for their poor body-disposal skills?

“There wasn’t time! I couldn’t think! I had to return the car.”

“To who? Whose car was it?”

He winced and I held my breath. He glanced up and our eyes locked.

“Your mom’s,” he said.

Chapter 7

I stared at him. “Ah, Leo,” I groaned. “Please tell me that you haven’t stashed a corpse in the trunk of my mother’s car.”

He gritted his teeth, his jaw working. “I may have.”

“Leo! Fucking hell!” I raked my hands through my hair and jerked away from him. He held up his hands, all now-wait-just-a-second, and frowned hard at me. “This is like a Tarantino movie,” I moaned. “A bad one.”

“It’s not the one she drives! I put him in the Oldsmobile that’s parked in the garage. She never drives that one.”

I couldn’t even reply. I just glared at him, shaking my head like I could will it all away.

“I didn’t know what else to do!” He threw his hands out defensively, his voice going a little shrill.

“Okay,” I said, rubbing my temples. “So you took both the bodies. You intended to drive them out of town—with no real concrete plan in place—”

He made a growling noise, but didn’t protest.

“You ‘panicked’—” I made air quotes. “Dumped Morgan, thus necessitating our eventual need to steal her fucking body from the morgue and hide her in my place of business. Your idea, I might add.”

“Again, the other option was your shed.”

 I talked over him. “Then, because you hadn’t had enough fun yet, you stashed Corvin’s corpse in the trunk of my
mother’s
car. But it’s okay because it’s just the Oldsmobile.”

“Look,” Leo snapped. “Regardless. One body or two, it doesn’t matter. The locations of those bodies don’t matter. The details of how they ended up in those locations don’t matter,
Ebron
. I’m fixing this, okay? Just don’t freak out and—”

“A man came into my shop yesterday,” I interrupted and Leo stopped mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open. Then his eyes narrowed.

“What man?”

“That’s what I needed to tell you. A lawyer came in. He was looking for Corvin.”

“A
lawyer
was looking for Corvin?” Leo stood up suddenly, gripping the sides of the table with enough force that I heard the Formica creak.

“Yeah. He was kind of a dick, but he didn’t seem suspicious or anything. Leo?”

Leo moaned, a weird, distressed noise that made me get to my feet too.

“What?” I asked, alarmed. Clearly, I was missing something. “Leo,
what
?”

“This is very bad,” he told me softly. His eyes went stony, his face slack. The quiet declaration sent a cold finger down my spine.

“What?” I begged. “Who is he?”

“I’ll have to go tonight,” Leo said, speaking as though to himself. “We can’t wait any longer. I’ll leave right now and get help and we’ll take care of the bodies and... “

“And what?” I asked.

“And hopefully we’ll both make it through this alive,” Leo said.

I swallowed hard. “Oh, my God, Leo. And you’re telling
me
not to freak out? What the fuck?”

“Call your mom,” he said, sinking back into the couch. “We need to move the corpse to your shop. Then I’ll go and plead our case.”

“Leo,” I tried again.

He gave me a firm nod. “C’mon, babe. Pick up the phone. Let’s fix this.”

He watched me pace the living room, my phone wedged between my shoulder and my ear. I kept shooting him nervous glances, but he gazed at me passively, his fingers steepled under his chin.

“Hello?”

“Hi Mom,” I said into the phone.

“Hi honey. What’s up?”

“Oh nothing. How are you?”
La de da. Have you got a corpse in your car? Can you believe this weather?

I listened to her tell me about her day, her voice punctuated by her chronic smoker's cough that made me deeply regret the half pack I had just smoked. The pleasant buzz had faded and now there was just a cottony feeling in my lungs that meant I would be huffing a little bit the next time I went for a hike. I wedged my socked toe into a tear in the carpet and waited for her to stop talking about ordering new checks from her online bank.

“You should get a debit card,” I said and Leo made a complicated sequence of movements with his eyebrows that indicated I should move the conversation forward.

“Mom,” I said abruptly, interrupting her mid-rant. “I need to borrow your car.”

“Why?” she said. She grumbled, clearing her throat in stops and starts.

“Um, my truck is acting up.”

“Where are you going?” That was a valid question. There was really no place in Heckerson that I couldn’t walk to; it was that small.

“Butte?” I said, which was the nearest town of any decent size. Once it popped in my head, I ran with it. “Yeah, I need to get some stuff from the Wal-Mart there.”