Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel (10 page)

In the kitchen, in reality, Sunny’s hand was still warm on Chaz’ wrist, even though he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t even see
himself
, but thinking about that would lead to freaking the fuck out, so he didn’t. In the vision, Val shone. Every line of her face was limned with worry, even as she upheld her end of the conversation.

Then her cell phone rang.

Chaz? Where the hell are you?
He heard it twice over, as Lia donned Val’s voice and said the words with her. The relief that had coursed through her as she answered the phone turned to cold dread. Chaz felt it in the pit of his own stomach.
Thank you, Mrs. Hagerty, I’ll come move it,
she said. This was the call from her neighbor, the one who found Chaz’ car running without him inside.

Anger as she hung up, boiling quickly into fury.

What is it?
The ghost of Lia’s voice, muffled as if she were talking through a thick quilt.

He never even left my street. Katya took him.

Val had been wrong about that, but it was a logical enough guess at the time—Katya and Ivanov had been there when Cavale called to say the Jackals were coming. What better time for the woman who’d taken him once before to try stealing him away from Val again?

The other shadows in the room got moving—Elly and Cavale springing up to flank her, offering themselves up for the rescue mission. Justin tried to stand, but Sunny wouldn’t let him leave the couch. Lia strode over to Val, a hand out to offer comfort, but Val shook it off. Lia’s shadow snatched her hand back as if she’d touched a hot pan.

Chaz could understand why. It wasn’t only rage driving Val, as her suspicion settled in. It was guilt and sorrow, too, and threaded through all of it, fear. Chaz didn’t know how Val was even still upright—sitting here, safe in Sunny and Lia’s kitchen, feeling only the echoes of what she went through (and, powerful and real as the succubi’s abilities made it feel, he knew it wasn’t the whole fucking gamut of what Val went through), he wanted to crawl under the table and hide.

Sunny let him go. The vision faded. When Chaz’ sight came back to him, the world settling back into its rightful place, he was relieved to see that Lia had reverted to her usual self.

He didn’t think he could handle Val—even a fake Val—looking back at him right now.

“She’s afraid for me.”

“She’s
terrified
for you,” said Lia. “It was an awful thing to feel.” Sunny scooted her chair over so she could put an arm around her partner. Chaz realized Lia was shaking.

He felt bad that she had to experience it not once, but twice, but it only served to prove his point. “If I can fight, she won’t have to be that scared anymore. I’d be harder to catch, harder to hurt.”

“And you’d be right out on whatever passes for the front lines. So you’d be a million times easier to kill than if you weren’t in the fight at all.”

“I wasn’t in the fight that happened here, was I? And this?” He pointed at his cheek. “Last night? I was
cataloging books
. It’s not like I went to the local monster bar and told some vampire its mother was a remora. She can’t protect me from everything. I’m sorry, but she can’t. And that’s a conversation Val and I need to have. But in the meantime, I need this. Please?”

“We said we would,” said Sunny. “Just . . . we want to make sure you know she’s not doing it because she thinks you’re incapable. She’s protecting herself as much as she’s protecting you.” Sunny let out a sigh and twisted a lock of Lia’s hair around her finger. “I can’t say I blame her.”

They gave each other one of those looks that had Chaz thinking they might want a few minutes’ privacy, but Lia settled for catching Sunny’s hand and brushing her lips across her knuckles. “All right,” she said, thumping the table a tad too heartily. “Come help me move furniture in the living room. Sunny’s patient isn’t due for a couple hours. I figure I can teach you some throws to start.”

*   *   *

I
T WAS WHEN
he was lying on his back an hour later, staring up at the ceiling and pretending he wasn’t utterly fucking winded, that he saw the new wards. Usually, he never even noticed them in Sunny and Lia’s house—Val had explained that they were demonic in origin, so most of them weren’t even visible to human eyes. In some places, they’d added more mundane ones, if there even was such a thing. Cavale had come by and added more when he first met them, to keep them off monster hunters’ radar.

Others, they’d worked into the decor—the pretty pattern on that vase? Actually a protection spell. The swirling design on the border Lia had painted in the bathroom? A big ol’
nothing to see here
. He suspected there were others, things he had no idea to even look for, but this one was definitely there and hadn’t been before.

They’d repainted the ceiling after the attack, using some kind of paint effects to make it look all stuccoed. They weren’t so obvious as to write the whole thing large with the paint brush or scraper or whatever-the-fuck tool you used to do fancy shit to your ceiling, but in between the lines, in those vinyl-record-looking grooves, he saw the characters.

He couldn’t read them, of course. Chaz could dredge high school French up from memory if he had to, and knew the good swears in a couple other languages (he always ordered new titles in the
Go **** Yourself
series for the store—how could he resist guide books that taught you how to mouth off in foreign countries?). But these, he was pretty sure, were written in a tongue that had been dead for millennia, if they’d ever made an appearance on this plane at all.

“What do those ones do?” he asked as Lia loomed above him, offering a hand up.

“Those are my boobs, Chaz. I think you know the answer to that one.”

“No, I . . . Damn it.” He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t ever taken a gander at the girls, but he liked to think he was more subtle about it than
that
.

She snickered and hauled him to his feet. “What does what do?”

“The stuff on the ceiling. I don’t remember those from before.”

“Because you spend so much time looking up there.” Something about the way she folded her arms and hunched her shoulders in gave him pause. The woman who’d spent the last sixty minutes tossing him around like a rag doll was suddenly defensive.

“Look, uh, if it’s a Thing, no big deal. Pretend I never asked.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s . . .”

“Just a few extra protection wards,” said Sunny. She delivered the line smoothly enough that Chaz almost bought it, except for the way her eyes flicked to Lia.

Which meant Chaz couldn’t leave it alone. “Is something threatening you guys? Someone?”

“No.” For a tiny woman, Sunny could sound stern as a drill sergeant with one syllable. She softened immediately, though, as if she’d bruised Chaz’ ego. “We figured, with all that went down here last month, people might come sniffing around. Been there, done that, you know?”

He did. They’d met Cavale through the succubi, when some asshole came into Edgewood looking for demon trophies to stick on his mantelpiece. The dude hadn’t been a capital-
H
Hunter like Val used to be, but there were people out there who styled themselves as modern-day Van Helsings and went looking for trouble. That guy could have ruined the life Sunny and Lia had built so carefully. With Jackals causing a ruckus—and brawling with vampires on Edgewood’s main street—it made sense for the ladies to be extra cautious. Far as any of them knew, that fight hadn’t had any witnesses. But you never could be too careful.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Makes sense.” He dropped it for the time being, but something tweaked at the back of his mind. It was the way Sunny’d hesitated when she said “people,” as though whoever might come looking didn’t actually deserve the term. He tucked it away to ask Val about later, and got ready for another one of Lia’s throws.

9

E
VEN THOUGH HE’D
been awake for nearly a day, Cavale found himself too keyed up to sleep. After they’d ghoul-proofed the Clearwater house, he and Elly had headed home. He’d told her about his strange results with her ghost’s ectoplasm, and they’d compared and rehashed notes for a while before the last of Elly’s caffeine kick wore off. When she couldn’t hold the yawns in any longer, he’d sent her off to bed and got back to researching.

He’d built up a modest library since striking off on his own. With Father Value, books were precious, fleeting possessions. They were bulky and heavy, hard to carry too many with you if you had to pack up and go in a hurry. When a new one fell into his lap, he’d pore over it and mark the places he wanted Elly and Cavale to pay close attention to. They memorized entries in arcane encyclopedias the way kids at Sunday school learned Bible verses. Except, for Father Value’s children, every day was Sunday. Once they could parrot passages back to his satisfaction, the book would soon disappear. Cavale wondered where they’d gone, sometimes; he’d found none of them at the Clearwaters’, though Henry often had similar editions. In all likelihood Value had sold them off to collectors. Cavale didn’t have the eye for rare books that Val and Chaz did, but he was fairly certain at least a few of them would have brought in some decent coin.

Much as he hated looking back on those years or that man with anything but contempt, Cavale had to admit that Father Value had never let himself and Elly go cold or hungry if he could help it. Selling those books probably put food in their mouths.

The bookshelf in the corner of Cavale’s living room held more books than he’d once thought it possible to own. He’d found the shelves abandoned a couple blocks over, left behind by a family who couldn’t afford to stay even in this broken-down neighborhood, and spent the better part of an afternoon pushing it carefully end over end back to his house. The dings and scratches it had incurred along the way were covered up with wood putty and a coat of paint. The moment the piece was in its final spot, when he’d finally placed his then-meager armload of books on the middle shelf, it was as though a floodgate had opened. He had
shelves
. He could fill them. He could get
more shelves
when he filled the first.

His collection was decent now—certainly nothing near as broad as the Clearwaters’, nor even on the level of Night Owls’ rare books room—but it was his. He drank most of a pot of coffee leafing through books of sigils and symbolism, rune dictionaries and the published memoirs of (legitimate) mediums and psychics. He had no patience for charlatans.

The sun was streaming through the windows by the time he found it. It was a last-resort book, one of the few purchases he’d made on a whim. He’d been drawn in by the scuffed leather cover, maybe, or the way its weight felt good in his hand. Or he’d found something useful on a casual flip-through and since forgotten what exactly that was. Perhaps he’d liked the title:
The Book of Forgotten Names
. Or it could have been the occasional illustrations, pen-and-ink sketches that gave faces to the unknown. He’d bought it and brought it home, and there it had sat, unused, unread, ever since.

Cavale almost didn’t see it. He was drowsing more and more, his eyes finally slipping closed after a day without sleep. In fact, his hand kept turning pages while his brain caught up and suggested that maybe, if he took another look, he hadn’t dreamed what he’d seen.

He snapped awake and paged back, scanning frantically as if the ink might twist itself into another shape if he didn’t find it fast enough.

There.

The dagger Elly had drawn for him, the one he’d seen raised on the flesh of the younger, more recently dead ghoul, drawn alongside an entry midway down the page.
Udrai
, it read.
In service to Ereshkigal.

That one, he knew. She was the Mesopotamian goddess of the underworld, a counterpart to—or perhaps the inspiration for—Persephone in the Greek pantheon. Both represented the change of seasons; both had come to their positions by being dragged away from their lives in the world above. Though for Ereshkigal, that was only one version of the story, an older one. Many others had the goddess as the sole ruler for a long time, until she was forced to share the throne with a god of war and plague and took him, eventually, as her husband.

Elly had always chafed at that story, at the goddess being forced to share her power.

He couldn’t remember a servant or a godling by the name of Udrai, though, which was only fair if he was reading it in a book of forgotten names.

More research, then, but here was where his collection tapped out. It might be worth another trip to the Clearwaters’, but he didn’t want to go alone. The wards they’d set this morning would work just fine, but that didn’t mean he was going to tweak fate’s nose and tell it to test them out while no one was there to watch his back. Night Owls was out for now, too, at least until the sun set. Chaz would let him into the back if he asked, but Cavale was way too damned tired to deal with Mr. Sarcasm.

That left one other place, if he wanted information right away. He’d have to go in to work today, after all.

*   *   *

H
E CATNAPPED FIRST,
half an hour on the couch to recharge, followed by a travel mug of the highest-octane coffee he could brew. It was one step down from chewing the grounds, but it did the job. Over the years, his body had acclimated to his inconsistent sleep schedule. Val called it
being in your twenties
, and warned him he’d probably pay for it in a decade or two, every part of his body going
fuck this
all at once, but for now, Cavale was able to function on a few hours’ sleep when he needed to and make up for it in long bouts later.

They weren’t terribly surprised to see him when he strolled into the occult shop. With Halloween encroaching, there was plenty of business to be had. Gage, the manager, kept several card readers on the schedule, adding extra shifts in October as the season of spooks and spirits drew extra customers in. Although it was technically Cavale’s day off, he wouldn’t be turned away if he commandeered one of the privacy booths and slapped his nameplate up on the magnetic strip. Reducing the wait time for walk-ins was good business.

And oh, were there plenty of walk-ins. Hecate’s Cabinet was nestled in between a florist and a consignment shop on a busy stretch of mom-and-pop stores in Granville, on the other side of Edgewood from Crow’s Neck. Three local routes converged in the middle of town, and Granville’s public planners had taken good advantage of the fact. Not only did travelers passing through get an eyeful of all the cheery storefronts as they drove along at a stately twenty-five miles per hour; they saw ample free parking and wide sidewalks.
Stretch your legs,
the message went,
grab a bite, take a stroll.

Spend your money here.

It worked on locals, too, not just out-of-towners. Most of Cavale’s frequent clients were from Granville itself, or Edgewood, or other surrounding towns. He saw some familiar faces browsing the shelves, hefting healing crystals, sniffing incense sticks, reading the labels on different aromatherapy oils.

Gage was at the front, appointment book open before him. He was in his early fifties, his hair gone a salt-and-pepper that he refused to dye back to black. It was the only place his age actually showed, though. His medium brown skin had no wrinkles, not even crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. He glanced up as Cavale approached, a smile lighting his face. “Cavale! Clocking in some extra hours today?”

“If you don’t mind,” he said. He couldn’t help but feel a little weak-kneed around Gage. Twice his age or no, the man was easy on the eyes.

“Sure thing. I’ll send someone back to you in a few.” He slid a second logbook out from beneath the register and passed it over. When the card readers were scheduled, they received hourly pay in addition to a percentage of the reading price and tips. If you came in unscheduled, Gage considered it as freelance work—the house took a cut for providing you with reading space and customers, but it stayed off the books. Or went on them in a different way. Cavale had never asked about the accounting.

He signed in, took his name card, and headed to the back of the store. On his way, he paused in the book section and grabbed a few volumes that touched upon Mesopotamian mythology. Research between readings.

Before it was Hecate’s Cabinet, the space had been a clothing store. The old dressing rooms were the perfect size to be turned into reading booths. Take out the hooks and corner benches, add some soundproof padding, a few coats of paint, a bistro table and chairs, and voilà—a space intimate enough to read tea leaves or tarot cards without feeling cramped.

Once he was settled in, there wasn’t much time for research. Gage sent a steady stream of clients back to him, leaving only five or ten minutes between readings to flip through the books. By two o’clock, he realized he needed to get home, get some sleep, and plan to stay in that night to study uninterrupted. Gage had worked a break in for him, and he was ready to head up front and say he was done for the day when a woman tapped at the door and stuck her head inside.

“Cavale? Gage said maybe you were free for one more?”

“Trina, hey!” His plan to sneak out evaporated. Trina was a regular. She’d been coming to him monthly since he’d started here at Hecate’s. Other times, he might have pawned her off on one of the other readers, but she’d lost her husband over the summer and he couldn’t in good conscience send her packing. Not with the still-haunted look in her eyes. “For you, I’ll always have time. Come on in.”

She sat down, shrugging off a jacket that was far too big for her. It took him a minute to realize the snaps and fasteners were on the wrong side for a piece of women’s clothing.
It’s probably her husband’s.
James’ death had been sudden, a hit-and-run accident that killed him instantly. Trina had said she was glad he hadn’t spent days hanging on, that she couldn’t have taken it. He was forty-five, leaving Trina a widow at forty. She was handling it as well as Cavale imagined anyone could; she had friends who stuck by her, men and women who popped up in her readings so often that Cavale felt like he knew some of them.

“How are you doing?” he asked. This was one of those times he really felt the lack of normal socialization he and Elly had grown up without. They’d never made long-term friends. The funerals they’d attended had been more about making sure the deceased stayed in the coffin than being there to support the bereaved. So he didn’t know exactly what to say to Trina.

Then again, he was fairly certain
no one
knew the right words for a woman who’d suffered a loss like that.

“All right,” she said. “Better, I guess. I hear it’s a relative term.”

He nodded and reached across the table to hold her hand. Her skin was cool and smooth, the kind of soft you got with a regular application of hand cream. She’d had her nails done, orange, with black cats and white ghosts on alternating fingers. She followed his gaze to them. “Oh those. Jill took me out for a girls’ day yesterday. I couldn’t say no.” She hesitated. “Is it too soon, do you think? Too . . . bright?”

“No. It’s not the eighteen hundreds, Trina. You don’t have to go around for a year wearing mourning clothes.”

She nodded, relieved. “I like them. And James would have, too.”

“There you go, then.” He pushed the cards over to her. “Go ahead and shuffle for me, and tell me what we’re asking about today.”

She took them. As she shuffled, the dim light caught the orange polish. “General outlook, I guess. My finances coming up. Lots of bills are kind of in the air right now.” When she was done, she handed the pile back and rested her chin on her hands. Cavale liked doing readings for her, the intense way she watched him flip the cards, the questions she asked.

He laid them out in the Celtic Cross pattern, a spread that told a good story and looked at issues from several angles. He saw what he expected in the first few turns—she was hurting, on the cusp of starting to rebuild her life but not quite sure she was ready. James came up in the card representing the past—the Knight of Cups. It didn’t surprise Cavale to see him there now. The insurance payments would come in; the bills would get paid. It was a decent reading, for a woman in mourning.