Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel (15 page)

He tucked the crystal and the scrap of silk back into his pocket, and, rather than walking in the new direction it had tried to point him, he picked his way over the uneven lawn of the nearby house, the thigh-high grass
shush
ing against his legs like a librarian demanding quiet.

The backyard was just as much a mess as the front. The bones of an old swingset rusted off to one side. The slide had a crimp in it, as if a vandal had taken a hammer, struck once, and gotten bored. One swing had been wrapped around and around the pole, so it hung only a few inches from the top. The other dangled forlornly by one chain.

On the sagging deck, he found a dog bowl full of rainwater and a plastic patio set turned brittle from freezing winters and scorching summer sun. He set the bowl atop the table and lowered himself gingerly onto the chair. It held his weight.

When the water had stilled, Cavale stared into it. He got right down close, so his breath made tiny ripples on the surface. The simplest way to attract a ghost was to sit quietly and open yourself up to the interactions. He’d seen those shows where a passel of tough guys ran around abandoned asylums and jails, hollering macho taunts at the spirits. There was a reason they rarely found any useful evidence or got more than a banging door for their troubles: ghosts didn’t answer to shitheels.

So Cavale sat, silent and respectful, and waited. Now that he was no longer rushing to and fro, the cold settled into his bones. He tucked his hands into his armpits and tried not to think about how warm his house would be right now. If there were ghosts around, they’d most likely twigged onto his presence; he wasn’t exactly being subtle. It was a matter of patience, and seeing if any of them wanted to talk.

He heard the rattle of chains and the rusty creak of groaning metal.

The swing that had been half hanging down had been reattached. It twisted as though moved by a breeze, but the air was still.

Cavale held still, too, and after a moment, he saw her. She was thirteen, fourteen maybe, dressed in jeans and a too-big sweatshirt. Her scuffed sneakers toed the bald patch beneath the swings, carved there by years of children’s feet. The tall, dry, dead grass was gone, replaced by a carpet of freshly mown lawn. Cavale smelled it now, the bright green of cut grass.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “He doesn’t want you interfering.”

“Udrai?”

“No.” She gripped the chains and spun herself around, twisting them tighter and tighter. Then she lifted her feet up and leaned back, spinning around and around. Her hair flew out around her as the chains unwound. “The thief.”

He thought of the tarot card, lying on his floor like an accusation.

“What did he steal?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Come swing.”

He was too big for the swingset, but if he declined, she might fade away. The other swing hung at its regular length, unwound from the top bar. An invitation. Cavale came down from the porch and paused in front of it.

“It’ll hold you.”

He sat as carefully as he had on the deck chair, and once more the plastic held. He didn’t so much swing as rock back and forth; his legs were far too long to get any height without dragging the ground. It seemed good enough for her, though. She nodded and went back to her twisting. Cavale tried to find a delicate way to ask the question foremost in his mind, but he couldn’t find one. The ghost girl reminded him of Elly at that age: the hand-me-down clothes, the way she watched him warily even though she seemed to be playing. Elly wouldn’t appreciate him dancing around the subject, so he decided not to with this girl, either. “Did he bring you back?”

She paused and rolled her eyes. “No. I’ve been here a long time. Longer than him. He’s not the boss of me.”

“But he’s the boss of other ghosts?”

“Some of them.”

“How does he do it, do you know? How does he pick who he’s bringing back?”

She stopped her twisting to scowl at him. “I have no idea. I stay
away
from him.” The
duh
was unspoken.

“That sounds like you know where he is. Can you tell me?”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t stay in the same place for long. I think he’s afraid someone’s coming to find him.”

“Me?”

She laughed, dry and husky. “No. You don’t scare him; you piss him off. You and the girl.”

“Fair enough. Can you tell me what he looks like, then? So I’d know him if I see him?”

She opened her mouth to speak, and at first Cavale thought she was gathering her thoughts. Then he heard it. Static, so soft at first it sounded like the wind through the dead grass. Then it grew louder, and louder. Cavale went cold as he realized it was coming from
her
.

Her eyes bulged with sudden fear. She let go of the chains, and stood, her hair whipping as she cast terrified glances around the yard. “Have to go,” she gasped. “He sees us.”

“Where—” he started, but he was alone again, the grass thigh high once more, the swingset gone to rust.

That watched feeling from earlier returned. He forced himself to take deep breaths and turn in a smooth, careful circle, looking for anything at all.

There.

Furtive movement at the corner of the house, someone ducking back around the corner.

Got you now.

He didn’t bother shouting. Best not to bring the whole neighborhood’s attention to this if he didn’t have to. He took off toward where the figure had been, leaving a flattened swath through the overgrowth in his wake.

He wished he’d brought a weapon, something more substantial than his keys and the multipurpose knife that lived in his pocket. No forgotten garden tools leaned against the house for him to grab on his way past; not even a broken bottle lay discarded on the ground. All he had was his momentum and his fists.

Turned out they were enough.

The spy didn’t have Cavale’s grace. Halfway to the street, his feet had tangled in the tall grass and sent him sprawling. As Cavale came tearing around the corner, his prey was just gaining his feet and taking off again. Closing the distance was easy, half a dozen steps and the kind of tackle that’d make a football coach proud. The other guy kissed the ground for the second time in less than a minute, this time with Cavale atop him.

“Fuck,” the guy sputtered. “
Fuck
, come on, hey, there’s no need for th—
Ow.
” That last from Cavale’s knee meeting his kidney.

“Who are you?” Cavale considered the merits of using the pendant’s chain as a garrote, but so far the guy didn’t seem keen on fighting him. In fact, he’d gone limp under Cavale’s weight, his hands laced behind his head like the cops asked you to do during an arrest.

“No one,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m no one. We saw you wandering back and forth earlier and it looked weird so I came out to see if you were all right. Okay? Can we be cool?”

He’s not the necromancer.
If he were, Cavale ought to have been jumped by ghouls, or found himself besieged by poltergeists, or any number of other magical protections he’d expected the man to have in place. The other night, with the cards in his own kitchen, hadn’t been a fluke. “Shit, I’m sorry.” He eased off the guy, still wary of a last-second deception, but none of the instincts he’d developed from his years of fighting were pinging. He stayed crouched nearby, ready to bring his new companion down again if he had to.

The guy lay there another moment before he took his hands from behind his head and—slowly, as though he expected a blow from a baton or a Taser shock—pushed himself up onto his elbows. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“Sure felt like it.” He was Cavale’s age, maybe a year or two younger. A mop of dark curls hung down to the collar of his sweatshirt, which was all he had on to keep out the cold.

One of the squatter kids.
That explained the wariness lining his thin face. “I promise I’m not. I thought you were someone else.” And how goddamned hollow did
that
sound?

But he barked a laugh. “You thought I was the drifter?”

“I . . . guess so?”

“Look, I’ll tell you what I know, but can we stand up? The ground’s fucking cold.”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry. Sure.” Cavale rose and helped him up. The kid’s callused hand was freezing in his grip.

“Mike,” he said, turning the clasp into a handshake.

“Cavale.” With a pang, he realized he hadn’t gotten the ghost girl’s name.
Better that way. If the necromancer was listening, he might have used it.
It didn’t make him feel much better.

“I recognize you now. You live up the top of the hill.”

“I do.”

“You should go back there, Cavale. Shit’s been fucked around here recently. Since this new guy came to town.”

“Fucked how?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Maybe I would. Try me.”

He sighed. “Weird noises, sometimes even in the houses we’re in. We’ve seen lights in others that no one’s staying at. Couple of the guys I’m sharing space with, they’ve seen people who just can’t be there. And when they go looking, whoever they saw disappears.”

“Ghosts,” said Cavale. He kept his voice neutral. Sound too skeptical and Mike would clam up; sound too eager and he’d do the same, only with the added bonus of thinking Cavale was a crackpot.

“I know. No such thing. But these guys . . . You’re probably standing there thinking we’re high, but we’re not. We’re clean. Number one rule of our house: no drugs. Not even pot. Maybe someone comes home with a bottle of whiskey or a twelvie of beer on payday, but we’re not getting blackout drunk. I swear.”

“I believe you. And you think it’s this drifter doing it?”

“I think it’s awfully coincidental that we never saw any of it before he came along.”

“Which house is he in? Do you know?”

“Is that why you were running back and forth earlier? Trying to find him? We saw you holding something. T said maybe it was a GPS tracker.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Well, T’s right about another thing, then. It’s broken. Far as we know, he hasn’t been in any of those houses. But he doesn’t stay in them for very long anyway.” Mike pointed at a stubby saltbox six houses down. “He was in that one awhile, but he left. Vacates, I dunno, every few days at least, pops up nearby.”

“So where is he now?”

“There’s the funny thing. We never know which one he’s in until he’s leaving it. No lights, no sounds. T tried following him last time and lost track. I don’t know how you lose track of someone walking down an empty street, but T managed. So he’s gone again. Probably see him moving out in a couple days.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Couldn’t say. He’s short. It’s all I got. He keeps his face hidden when he does go out—baseball cap, jacket with a hood, you know. This time of year, no one’s going to think anything of it.”

Damn.
“Okay, well, it’s a start. If anyone sees where he’s living, will you have them come knock on my door and tell me? I don’t have much in the way of reward, but I can figure something out.”

Mike nodded. “This guy owe you money?”

“No. He’s trouble, though. Caused a disturbance a couple doors down from me.”

That
got Mike’s attention. His house rule might’ve been
no drugs
, but the community as a whole operated on
you don’t shit where you eat
. Break into one of the homes on the other side of the hill, give the residents a hard time, and the police could end up poking around over on this side, turning everyone out. They took their sweet-ass time responding, sure, but they’d get around to a B&E complaint eventually. It didn’t matter that most of the people here weren’t doing a damned thing wrong; one asshole could ruin it for all of them.

“We’ll keep an eye out,” said Mike. “I’ll spread the word. That shit’s not cool.”

“Thanks,” said Cavale. He decided to leave out the details of the disturbance. Mike didn’t need his burgeoning belief in ghosts confirmed quite yet. “Hey, wait. There used to be a guy who lived down here. About my height, had an AC/DC sweatshirt he wore a lot?”

“Sounds like Ryan.”

“Do you know him?”

“Only in passing. He lived in one of the other houses, by himself. Came by a month or two ago and said he had a lead on a job. If it worked out, and they were hiring more people, he was going to come tell us, help us out.” Mike shrugged. “He hasn’t been back around. Why? Have you seen him?”

“No,” Cavale lied. What was he going to say?
Sorry to tell you, but he’s dead. My vampire friend and I buried him this morning after the drifter used his corpse as a graverobber?
Nope. Best to steer clear of that. “I just realized it’s been a while since I’ve noticed him in the mornings.” And it
had
been. Weeks, at least. He added that next to not getting the ghost girl’s name on his guilt pile.

They parted ways outside the house Mike and his friends had claimed. The kid had brushed off Cavale’s offer of compensation with a pride Cavale understood, and found incredibly familiar. At the top of the hill, he stood looking back at the houses, willing the necromancer to show himself. He stood there until his teeth chattered and his knees knocked from the cold, and finally went inside, defeated.

13

S
UNNY AND
L
IA
loved Halloween. The first year he met them, Chaz had expressed surprise they weren’t out on the town doing . . . demon-y things the night monsters were supposed to run amok. They’d laughed at him. Sunny’d handed him a mug of hot, bourbon-spiked apple cider and told him the most evil thing they did was slip the shyest trick-or-treaters an extra piece of candy.

His first year with Val, she’d given him all kinds of warnings leading up to the end of October, lessons on what to expect from the supernatural side. The veil between worlds was thin on Halloween, she said, and described any number of weird-ass things she’d witnessed since her turning. Then they’d spent the night at the bookstore, handing out candy to Edgewood kids in their costumes, and gone back to Val’s house after closing to watch slasher flicks.

Chaz had long suspected that the weird shit Val saw on Halloweens past was more about her being turned in the seventies than anything else. Probably drank the blood of someone who’d dropped acid.

The succubi had about the same level of mundane going at the parties he’d been to, but at least theirs involved booze and good music. They held a bash every year, one that had a mandatory costume rule. Anyone who showed up in their everyday clothes claiming they were a banker or a professor or a
person who forgot their costume
was handed a basket full of accessories: bunny ears, pig noses, fox tails you clipped to the back of your pants. There wasn’t a room downstairs in their house without cobwebs, or orange and black fairy lights, or candles shaped like black cats and ghosts and pumpkins. Lia made a killer blood orange sangria; Sunny spent weeks planning the menu.

The guests were always interesting—Sunny’s colleagues from her practice, Lia’s cohorts from the college’s phys ed department—and the women knew who to introduce to whom, which ones to steer apart, the likeliest candidates to get up and do the Time Warp with them. They were also utterly, completely, human. Val and the ladies, supernatural population: three. Chaz got why they hadn’t ever invited the
Stregoi
down from Boston. Those guys were dicks. But no other succubi mixing and mingling with the mortals? No low-level demons? Not even someone with vague claims to demon blood six generations back on their mom’s side?

Nope, nope, and nope.

Like he’d done the last couple of years, Chaz had wrangled the schedule so he and Val could cut out of Night Owls early. They were on hand for the little kids, the munchkins whose parents brought them storefront to storefront on Main Street (or, quite often, who gossiped over mulled cider in Hill O’Beans while their children were set free to swarm the clerks). After nine thirty, though, the younger kids had been herded home to collapse into sugar-crash sleep. By ten, the teens who showed up with pillowcases and hastily done costumes had come and gone.

By ten thirty, the store was deserted. Up at the campus, the Epsilons held their joint Halloween galas. The girls of Gamma Rho Ep turned the football field into a haunted hayride. Once you were scared shitless, you went to the rec center for the Beta Ep boys’ masquerade mixer. It was as dead as Night Owls got, and was the one night a year Chaz told the closing shift to hang out on the couches, do their homework or stare into space or whatever, and close at midnight if they wanted.

He drove over to Casa de McTeague to pick up Val and Justin. Val had gone full-out with the cowgirl outfit, brown suede chaps covering a pair of stitched leather boots. Silver spurs clinked as she walked. She had a cap gun in a holster, peeking out where her long duster was open at the waist. A red bandana hung around her neck, and her red hair spilled down from beneath the requisite ten-gallon hat.

Chaz applauded as she got in the car. She’d never admit it, but she liked Halloween almost as much as Sunny and Lia. Justin, on the other hand, looked like a man trudging to the gallows. He’d dressed for the occasion, too: black jeans, black button-down shirt over a black tee shirt. Even his eyes were rimmed in kohl. He’d slicked back his hair to show his widow’s peak, and that was when his costume dawned on Chaz. “You aren’t.”

His morose expression veered toward sheepish. “Val talked me out of the cape.”

“And the fangs,” she said.

“You were going to be a vampire for Halloween.” Chaz stared between the two as Justin clambered into the backseat. Val covered a smirk.

“It just seemed easiest. I hadn’t exactly planned anything.” He eyed Chaz in return. “And where’s your costume?”

“As long as no one’s claimed the deely-bobbers, I’m going to be an alien. Otherwise, bunnycow.”

“Bunny . . .”

“Bunny ears, cow tail. Or the other way around.”

“Chaz is lazy,” said Val, but there was no malice in it, only old affection.

They hadn’t talked much since last night. She’d emerged from the rare books room frustrated and exhausted, and he’d decided it wasn’t the right time to air his grievances. Which, in other, more honest words, meant he was chickenshit and had dodged the conversation. She was in a good mood now, though, and so was he. And he didn’t want to argue in front of Justin again, not if they could avoid it. “Damn right I am. Buckle up, kids, this bunnycow is thirsty.”

Late as they were, he had to park out on the street when they arrived at Sunny and Lia’s. Plenty of the cars sported Edgewood College bumper stickers. The others, presumably Sunny’s peers, were varying degrees of ludicrously expensive: Jags and Benzes, Porsches and Fiats. If it weren’t for the promise of drinks and decadent noms inside, Chaz would’ve been happy out here by himself, drooling over cars he’d never be able to afford. He patted the Mustang’s dash as he killed the ignition. “It’s okay, baby. I’ll always love you best.”

He ignored Val’s snort from the front seat and Justin’s awkward shuffling in the back. The kid was probably thinking about last night’s confession time, but fuck it. One thing he was going to have to figure out: Chaz honest-to-dog wasn’t pining or mooning, and he sure as shit didn’t load his statements with the same.

The only other shitbox on the street was Cavale’s. Chaz considered giving Justin a ribbing about Elly, but decided against it. Better to sit back and watch the two of them shuffle around each other without getting the kid preemptively paranoid.

Sunny opened the door as the three of them came strolling up. Tonight, she was Lynda Carter–era Wonder Woman: star-spangled boy shorts, golden lasso, and all. Of course, hosting a party that was ninety percent normal people meant she was Sunny-as-Lynda-Carter, rather than wearing the actress’ face.

“Whoa,” said Justin. “Did you make those bracers?”

“I did!” She held an arm out so he could see. The basket of miscellaneous costume pieces was looped over it, and she gave Chaz an exasperated once-over while Justin cooed. “One of these years—” she said, then actually got a load of Justin. “Tell me you’re not a vampire.”

“Um. I was going to be? But—”

He didn’t get to finish the thought. She dug a pair of bunny ears out of the basket and slipped them on his head. “There. Now you’re a vampire bunny. Much better.” When Justin raised a hand to paw at them, her stern look stopped him. You didn’t fuck with a five-foot-tall Amazon princess. Especially not one who could kick your ass for real.

“Damn it,” said Chaz. “There goes half my costume.”

Sunny found the cottontail and handed it to Chaz. “Tie that on. I expect you to shake your skinny bunny ass when ‘Thriller’ comes on.”

“You got it,” he said. She looked a pointed question between himself and Val, but Chaz pretended not to see it. “So where’s the other lady of the house? Did she save me any of that sangria?” He snagged the cow ears from the basket and headed down the hall, fastening them on as he attempted to lose himself in the crowd.

Creepy Halloween decorations did a lot to hide the changes in the house. The missing furniture left room to dance, as evidenced by several of the guests shaking their groove things in front of the sliding doors. Even those, in their boarded-up state, had been made into part of the scenery. What had been a plain plywood surface the day before had been transformed into a spooky mural, rife with ghosts and graveyards and trees with spidery branches. A witch’s silhouette crossed the moon, and Chaz thought it looked a bit like Lia in profile, which made Sunny the likely artist: she loved drawing Lia.

The woman in question was in the living room, holding court as the Statue of Liberty.
She
wasn’t above a bit of cheaterfacing when it came to costumes; Chaz was pretty sure the green tinge to her skin wasn’t just expertly applied stage makeup. “Sangria’s in the kitchen,” she said, excusing herself from her friends to come closer to him. “Punch bowl on the island. And speaking of punches . . .” She touched his cheek, and the bruise that covered it. It was fading already, but it wasn’t actually what she was going for. “How’s the patient?” she asked, her fingers fluttering from his face to his shoulder, skimming down his arm. Warmth spread wherever they landed, as she gauged his soreness from their training session yesterday.

It wasn’t healing magic—that wasn’t in their wheelhouse—but Lia was a succubus. Soothing aching muscles made you feel better, and damn could she do
that
. Better than a long hot bath, or lying on a heating pad all afternoon. “I was going to say creaky, but uh, not anymore?”

“Idiot,” she said, grinning. “I
told
you to do some stretches.”

“Yeah, but that sounded a lot like exercise, so I didn’t.” He craned his neck for a look around the party. “I saw Cavale’s car out there. Where are the wonder twins hiding?”

“Kitchen.”

“Near the sangria?”

“You’re trying to escape questioning, aren’t you?”

“Yup,” Chaz said as Val’s voice drifted down the hall, getting closer. He didn’t want Sunny to get close enough to start needling him about whether he’d filled Val in on the training session. It’d kill the party mood.

“Fine,” said Lia, “go.”

The noise level dropped dramatically as Chaz ducked into the kitchen. A few clusters of people were gathered, some around the punch bowl, others around a dining room table practically groaning from the weight of the dishes laid out on it: a tower of sandwiches, a massive dish of lasagna, more chips and the dips to go with them than Chaz could dream of scarfing down, at least in one night. A sea of desserts, everything from fruit to cat-shaped cookies to cupcakes decorated with spiderweb frosting. Chaz nodded to the guests he recognized from past years, ladled himself a cup of sangria, and made a beeline for the buffet.

Where, of course, he found Cavale being chatted up by the Edgewood girls’ soccer coach. Chaz had been so intent on his rumbling belly that at first he hadn’t noticed the other half of Team Hiding-the-Bodies-Tee-Hee standing there, possibly because he’d donned a green and gold Mardi Gras mask and a half cape. Elly stood at his side in her everyday clothes, a pair of black cat ears peeking out from her mousy brown hair. Her knuckles were white on her glass; she looked like she wanted to jump out the window and escape. In fact, Chaz saw her eyes flick toward the nearest one as the woman put her hand on Cavale’s arm and laughed at whatever witticism he’d just spewed.

Or maybe Elly was contemplating pitching the woman through it. Or Cavale. Or both. Chaz sauntered the rest of the way over to see if she needed help, snagging a scallop wrapped in bacon along the way. “Hey, you two,” he said around his mouthful. “Gina.”

Gina the soccer coach had come dressed as—wait for it—a soccer coach. She did it every year, but Basket Keeper Sunny allowed it because she always came as one of Edgewood’s
rivals’
coaches. Whoever they were neck and neck with that season, somehow she always got her hands on that coach’s uniform. Chaz pictured her training her players to sneak about silently in their cleats and break into the other team’s locker room. Val said she probably just asked to borrow it. But Gina never said, and the local coaches kept mum, so it remained one of Edgewood’s great mysteries.

“Chaz.” Gina leaned in for an air-kiss. “How’s the bookstore?”