Eighth Grave After Dark (6 page)

I'd rather walk into a den of hellhounds.

“You mean if we don't have a long heart-to-heart, issues that have gone unresolved for decades will continue to be unresolved?” I asked, feigning horror at the thought before lifting one shoulder in an apathetic shrug. “Works for me.” I turned and climbed the stairs, effectively ending the conversation.

I heard Gemma release a sad sigh.

 

3

CREMATION OF THE BODY IS FINAL.

—SIGN IN FUNERAL HOME

I decided to finish getting dressed in the bathroom while Cookie and Amber put on their final touches in the bedroom. Walking down the narrow hall, I felt the history of the place leach out of the walls. The wood slats creaked beneath my weight, and I could just imagine what it would have been like being a nun here two hundred years ago. Well, not a nun, but a person, interacting with the Native Americans, watching their children play, growing food in the gardens below. What a rewarding life they must have led. And they were brave, the women of the frontier, whether a nun, a native, or a homesteader.

Yet their lives must have been so hard, especially without cell reception. I balked at the challenge of having only one bathroom on the entire floor. Every room had a sink and mirror, but when you had to go, you had to go. Thankfully, Reyes had added central heat and cooling, but I feared him changing the tone of the place, its historical feel, so we hadn't upgraded too much. We kept the rooms upstairs small and sparse, with stoves in each one. Even though they were no longer used, they still worked and could heat the tiny rooms quite nicely. We also kept the downstairs almost all original, patching the walls here and there and fixing the flooring. The former convent would make a great restaurant and B and B for the right owner, but it needed to be registered with the Historical Society to preserve its richness.

Another small renovation we did was add a working bathtub and separate shower in each of the two bathrooms, one upstairs and one down. Though not so fancy as George—that is, the stone shower in Reyes's apartment—the bathrooms had really come along, compared to the originals. While they'd been updated back in the 1940s, plumbing had improved by leaps and bounds since then.

I knocked softly on the bathroom door and, receiving no answer, opened it. A burst of steam hit me in the face, and I could only pray the glitter wouldn't melt off my face. Or melt my face off. Either way. I swiped at the steam and walked in on a half-naked slave demon as he was wrapping a towel at his waist.

“Osh,” I said, covering my eyes. “I knocked. What the hell?”

A wicked grin spread across his handsome face. I knew this only because my fingers were accidentally open. It wasn't my fault I could see him in the almost-buff. While he looked nineteen, he was centuries old. Older than Reyes, actually. But somehow that knowledge didn't make me feel less perverted every time I took in his slim, muscular form. Created a slave in hell—or a Daeva, as they were called—he had lived a hard life. I couldn't imagine what he'd gone through. To be a slave was one thing. To be in hell was one thing. But to be a slave in hell? The concept boggled my mind.

Why did they need slaves in hell anyway? What exactly did they do? The only inkling of their duties I had was that some of them were, for lack of a better phrase, pressed into service, forced to fight in the demon army. I first met Osh while he was trying to win souls in a card game. He'd won one from a client, which I wanted him to return. But that's what he did. He supped on human souls. Fortunately, I'd convinced him to sup only on the souls of humans who did not deserve them, like murderers, drug dealers, child molesters, and lobbyists.

But that's where I'd first learned that Osh, or Osh'ekiel as he was called down under, escaped from hell centuries before Reyes did. In fact, he was the only Daeva to escape from hell, and though Reyes didn't trust him at first as much as I did, he'd grown to depend on him for Beep's sake. The demon did seem to have Beep's best interest at heart.

Reyes had once told me that the major difference between Osh in hell and Osh on earth was that his scars were not visible in his human form.

It made my heart ache for him. Normally. Not today, though.

Osh looked me up and down, a wolfish grin softening his youthful face. “I heard you. I was just getting kind of lonely. Figured I could use some company in here.”

After giving up the pretense of purity, I lowered my hand and rolled my eyes. “Please. Like you could handle this.” I hitched a thumb over my shoulder. “Scoot. I need to finish getting ready.”

“I need to shave,” he volleyed.

“You can shave in your room.”

“My room is the size of a broom closet.”

“So is mine. You didn't have to move out here, you know. You could've stayed in your posh house in the city.” We'd secretly put him in a broom closet, but what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

“And leave you guys to fend off the hounds of hell without me? No way. But, yeah,” he said, giving his head a shake, “this place is weird.” Water droplets flew off his shoulder-length black hair and onto my face.

I pursed my lips as though that would faze him. “I agree. It's a good thing I was never a nun in the 1800s.”

His grin reappeared in full force. “Somehow I don't think, even if you'd been born in the 1800s, you would've become a nun.”

He had a point. I shooed him out and turned to the mirror to freshen my makeup, but as the steam cleared out of the room, I saw something unexpected. Names carved into the walls behind me.

Horrified, I looked up as though I could see into the attic. “Rocket!” I shouted, stomping my bare foot.

He appeared instantly. Rocket had died sometime in the 1950s. He was big, over six feet, and cuddly. He always reminded me of a giant bear I'd had as a child.

“What are you doing? I told you, you can't write the names on the walls anywhere but in the attic.” Reyes and I had added extra Sheetrock up there so Rocket didn't damage the original structure.

“But, Miss Charlotte, I'm running out of room up there.”

“Well, you're just going to have to go over the names that you already have. Think layers. Like you did at the asylum.”

“Fine, Miss Charlotte, but I'm going to scratch through the paper. Nurse Hobbs doesn't like it when I do that.”

Nurse Hobbs must have been a nurse at the asylum where Rocket had grown up. From what I could gather over the years, which wasn't much, Rocket had been committed to an asylum when he was very young. He'd probably had his gift even when he was alive. He knew the names of every human ever to exist who'd passed away, and he made it his personal goal to document them all. I couldn't imagine what his parents must have thought when he was a kid as he wrote name after name of those who'd passed on anything he could find. Back then, having him institutionalized would have been the norm.

I grinned at his analogy. Anyone who thought of walls as paper needed to get out more. “We'll get new paper. It's okay.”

Rocket had moved in shortly after we did. He'd had something to tell me one day that was apparently of vital importance. It involved a kitten that had wandered onto the property and got stuck in the asylum. It had likely been abandoned by its mother and Blue, his five-year-old sister whom I rarely saw, was very worried about it. So part of Cookie's job for a couple of days was to go search for the kitten at the asylum and bring it to the convent, because by then Rocket had moved in. He said Blue had moved in, too, but I had yet to see her here. Of course, in all the years I'd been going to visit Rocket in the asylum, I'd seen her only three times. She was painfully shy. But I also knew that where Rocket went, Blue was sure to follow.

Unfortunately, so was a sassy little girl named Strawberry. I called her that because she'd drowned when she was nine in Strawberry Shortcake pajamas. She had long blond hair and bright blue eyes and a bluish tint to her pouty mouth, evidence of her cause of death.

She appeared in front of me, hands on hips, glare firmly in place. “Why are you yelling at Rocket? You're scaring Blue.”

“Rocket is writing names where he shouldn't. It's against the rules. No breaking rules—right, Rocket?”

He hung his head in utter shame. “No breaking rules. Right, Miss Charlotte.”

“Okay, no more names except in the attic. Is that a deal?”

“Deal.”

Rocket disappeared, but Strawberry unfortunately did not. I'd gotten to know Strawberry through a mutual acquaintance. She was the departed sister of a cop I knew: Officer Taft. I'd told him that Strawberry moved in with us some time back, so he'd come to the convent a few times to visit her. Not that he could see her, but I was a decent interpreter.

After Strawberry got the glare out of her system, she looked at my face and did a 180. Her huge eyes rounded in awe. “You're sparkling,” she said, reaching up.

I kneeled down to let her touch my face, her hand icy against my skin as she patted my cheek.

“You're like a fairy princess.”

Utterly flattered, I said, “Thank you.”

“You're not as pretty as one or anything. And you're really fat. But you sparkle like one.”

I forced my smile to remain steady in the heat of battle. Never retreat. Never surrender. “Thank you again,” I said through clenched teeth.

“You're welcome.”

“Hey, is Jessica back?” Jessica was my former BFF from high school who'd decided to make my life a living hell by moving in with me when Rocket, Blue, and Strawberry did. But I hadn't seen much of her lately.

“No, she's been staying with her sister a lot.”

“Oh. I hope everything is okay.”

“It is. I think she's scared of the dogs outside.”

“Right. Can't blame her there.”

“Okay, well, Blue and I are going to play with Sheets.”

“Awesome. Are you going to drape them over you and play ghost? It's really appropriate.”

“No,
Sheets,
” she said, her indignation over my ignorance exasperating her. “The kitten.”

“Oh, of course. Sounds like a plan.” Then, before she could disappear on me, I asked, “Why ‘Sheets'? He's black.”

“Because he's shiny and black, like David's sheets.”

Ah, her brother, David—aka Officer Taft—had shiny black sheets. That was so much more information than I needed today. “Gotcha. Well, have fun.”

“Okay.” She popped back out, leaving me to my own devices. Probably not a good idea. After all, I had glitter on my face.

*   *   *

Guests started arriving soon after Amber and I finished getting dressed. Amber looked adorable, her hair piled high on her head and sprinkled with tiny bronze butterflies. She was also over the moon that Uncle Bob had showed up. Not because he showed up to marry her mother, but because he'd brought Quentin—
the
Quentin—with him.

Quentin Rutherford was a kid we essentially adopted when he'd been possessed by a demon. He'd been possessed because he could see into the supernatural realm, and at the time, the demon was after me. It had used Quentin as a guide, following my light, the light he could see. Once we'd rid him of said demon, we found out he'd been born deaf. Because he had no family to speak of, we, along with the Sisters of the Immaculate Cross, had adopted Quentin. And it didn't take long for Amber to appreciate that fact. According to the extremely detailed report she gave us, he was dressed to the nines. I was excited to see him myself.

We changed into our dresses while Hildie finished Cookie's hair. I ran to get our bouquets and check on everything while strategically managing to avoid my stepmother. The guests were in the back, where we'd set up several rows of white chairs. But knowing my sister, the whole affair would be absolutely lovely. At least she got to plan one wedding, since mine didn't turn out quite as expected. It became an impromptu thing in a hospital room, and all Gemma's hard work had been for naught. Now she got to start from scratch with a brand-new venue and a fresh set of victims.

When I got back to the room, Amber and I watched as guests got out of their cars. Gemma's former client and current boyfriend, Wyatt, pulled up, as well as Ubie's boss, Captain Eckert, a few detectives I'd seen around and Strawberry's brother, Officer Taft. Garrett Swopes, a colleague, showed next, looking rather delicious in a charcoal coat and tie. Amador, Bianca, and the kids showed up. They'd been coming out on a regular basis to see Reyes, and we'd had several amazing cookouts as a result. In the process, Cookie had grown quite fond of them, inviting them to the wedding. Their seven-year-old daughter, Ashley, would be the flower girl and five-year-old Stephen the ring bearer. I watched as a few other people I didn't recognize got out and walked around back to the makeshift chapel. Several were young girls between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three. Cookie said she had several second cousins. With the stunning array of men who were to attend the wedding, the cousins were sure to have fun.

I relayed to Cookie all the information I could about the guests showing up to set her at ease. She was nervous enough as it was. I'd assumed her knowing that people were showing up would calm her nerves. Instead it made her even more nervous. Go figure.

“Well,” she said at last, standing behind me.

I turned and was stunned speechless. Cookie looked incredible. Her short, dark locks had been swept back and made to look like she had an intricate French braid. Just like Amber and me, she, too, wore tiny bronze butterflies in her hair to match our cinnamon dresses. But her dress was a creamy ivory wrap sprinkled with pearls. Her makeup was simple yet dramatic. She was breathtaking.

“Cookie,” I said, unable to tear my gaze away from her. “You look magnificent. You look like a movie star from the '40s. You are utterly elegant.”