Read Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel Online
Authors: Lauren M. Roy
She couldn’t ignore a call from the
Stregoi
.
“I have to take this, I’m sorry.” She clambered off Justin’s lap and staggered out of the car to answer.
Katya sounded hushed and boxed in, as though she’d ducked into a closet or beneath a desk to make the call. In the background Elly heard snarls and tears, breaking glass, more than a few swears in Russian.
And screaming. There was that, too.
“
Myshka.
We need you. Now.”
For the last few hours, she’d been happy. Her lips felt puffy from all the kissing; she’d been contemplating resting her head on Justin’s shoulder and drowsing off for a while, safe and sound and content. That all drained out of her now, replaced with the cold calculation that Father Value had ingrained into her as she grew up. “Where are you? The bar?”
“No.” Katya gave her an address, one Elly’s tactical brain approved of: a place unlikely to attract human interference.
“I’m on the way,” she said. She held still a moment, phone pressed to her ear even after Katya hung up, considering her options. Justin was a good fighter; he’d have her back if she brought him with. But he’d only been a vampire a month, and even though some of the
Oisín
were newer, he’d never been in a real, honest-to-god fight.
But I trained him. Val and me both. That’s a leg up.
He’d go with her if she asked.
And that makes him part of the turf war.
As convoluted as vampire politics could be, that aspect was clear-cut. If Justin came with, that put him more firmly on Ivanov’s radar. Good for him if he went into Boston if the
Stregoi
won, but if any of their opponents survived, Justin became a target for vengeance. Him and Val both.
And Ivanov wouldn’t bother sending protection down here for them.
He waved at her from the backseat, and Elly made up her mind. She put on the most casual face she could and hoped he couldn’t see through it as she returned to the car. Or sniff through it. “I have to go into town,” she said. “Everything’s all right, but I have to leave right now. Or, after I drive you home.”
He scuttled across the seat and pulled her down for another kiss. “It’s okay. I can run from here.”
“It’s kind of a long way.”
“Vampire.” He stood and nipped at her neck—no teeth; she might still stake him. “I’m kind of wired after, uh. What we, uh.” He blushed, and Elly smiled.
Leaving him behind’s the right decision.
“I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
“God, yes.” One last kiss and he stepped away from her. Then he turned and sprinted away, human-speed for now, but once he turned off the road, she figured, he’d open the hell up.
Before she pulled out of the parking space she texted Cavale. She was still raw about the fight and his attempt at talking her out of doing her job, but the lingering effects of her good mood made her check in. She left out the details. He didn’t need to worry, and she didn’t want the
I told you so
. Short and sweet:
Going into Boston. We’ll talk when I get home.
He texted her back a few minutes later, but she was already headed for 95 North and couldn’t look. She was perfectly sanguine about fighting a nest of Creeps, or jumping into the middle of a vampire turf war, but Elly would never be so reckless as to text and drive.
C
AVALE WAS IN
the parlor, contemplating summoning a death god, when the headlights splashed across the room. He rushed to the window that looked out over the lawn, but the angle and the porch beams didn’t let him see who it was.
Elly,
he thought.
Has to be
. So he stayed where he was, a bit back from the window so she wouldn’t see him peering out like a worried parent, and waited for the rattle of her keys in the locks.
Only the footsteps that clumped up onto the porch were too heavy to be Elly’s. And she’d have no reason to knock; she
lived
here.
Any number of possibilities ran through his mind in the half second it took him to lean over and peer out the window: Chaz come back for another awkward round of coffee and commiseration; Justin looking for a lesson before daybreak; Mike, from down the hill, with information; the necromancer showing his face at last, looking to throw down. Worst was the fear it was a police officer, knocking to say Elly’d been in an accident, and they were so, so sorry.
When he twitched the curtain to see, he was wrong on all counts.
Lia turned from the door to look straight at him. She smiled a tight, nervous smile, accompanied by a terse wave.
It had been ages since she or Sunny had been here, and he’d never had one visit without the other. Which was why, when he undid the locks and let her in, he couldn’t help sticking his head outside to see if maybe Sunny was waiting in the car.
“I’m alone,” Lia said. “She’ll be furious if she wakes up and realizes I’m not there, but I had to come.”
He led her into the parlor, which, despite the rug rolled up to reveal the ritual circle, was less cluttered than the kitchen or small office he used as the actual living room on the other side of the house. Lia—with her blond hair styled even at four thirty in the morning, her perfect manicure, her outfit ready for a fashion magazine photo shoot—should have looked out of place here, among Cavale’s shabby secondhand furniture and pressboard bookcases. But she sank down onto the couch and clutched a throw pillow to her chest like she’d been curling up on it for years.
“What’s going on?” asked Cavale.
“Sunny’s terrified. I am too, but this . . . She didn’t go to work today. When I told her I was headed to the college, she freaked. We . . . We had a fight about it.”
He thought of his own argument with Elly and winced. He knew how Sunny felt. “Are you guys okay?”
She plucked at a loose thread. “Yeah. We worked it out. But I don’t want her to be scared anymore. It’s only been a day since we found out Udrai might be around somewhere, but we’ve been afraid of an incident like this since we came here. If it’s not him that finds us out, it’ll be someone else down the road. We can’t shove our heads in the sand and hope you can make it go away every time. That’s not the kind of life either of us wants.”
He couldn’t deny her that. It would put him firmly on Sunny’s shit list, but Cavale was tired of dead ends. Aside from being a friend, Lia was a damned good resource, if she knew Udrai. “What do you want to do?”
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “Show me what you’ve found.”
That wasn’t a step he’d imagined she’d suggest. His mental list of books they could pore over or rituals she could walk him through fell apart. “Isn’t that kind of a big risk to take?”
“If it’s a devotee of his, they won’t have any idea what or who I am. And if that’s the case, we can go down to yellow alert instead of red. Maybe be able to help you out a bit more overtly.”
“And if Udrai’s with him, giving orders?”
“He doesn’t know this face.” Lia got up and went over to the dresser Cavale used to store his ritual tools in. Bottles of oils and pigments covered the top, along with a set of paintbrushes of varying widths and the mortar and pestle he used for mixing various magical concoctions. “I want you to put a spell on me. The one you do that makes people look the other way.”
“Lia, that’s for things. Places. If you give me the day I can find one for people, but—”
“I’m not people,” she said, and for a moment there were two of her: pretty blond Lia, phys ed teacher and fashion plate; and her true self, towering, deadly, beautiful
and
terrible together—Galadriel, had she taken the Ring. That second Lia faded, and she smiled up at Cavale from her human face. “I can change it a little. Enough to hide . . . that. If I mix my magic with yours, bury it underneath, he won’t feel it. Shouldn’t.”
The problem with arguing with a succubus was, they had an answer for everything. He’d once asked how they knew what faces to wear for people, in their former lives. Sunny’d called it instinct mixed with mind reading and a dash of precognition. They couldn’t suss out your actual thoughts, but they got the gist of your
feelings
and acted accordingly. They molded their appearance faster than the eye could follow, tweaking as they went until they settled on the perfect face for whomever they were with. It worked with conversations, too, tipped them off to what topics to bring up, which to avoid.
They usually didn’t use it on their friends, they’d assured him.
Usually.
In this instance, he could forgive it. Lia needed to convince him, and he
wanted
to be convinced. It worked out.
He drew the don’t-see-me symbols on her forehead and the backs of her hands, and while her appearance didn’t change, his
sense
of her did. You worked with magic long enough, you could start to sniff it out nearby. He’d always felt a low buzz around Sunny and Lia, humming away at the edge of his conscious like a muted television: a sound you forgot about until it stopped. It stopped now, and Lia beamed. “You’re a genius,” she said. “Let’s go.”
On their way down the hill, his phone buzzed. Elly at last:
Going into Boston. We’ll talk when I get home.
Lia wasn’t subtle; she craned her neck to read the text. “Whoa. You just went all tense. What’s going on?”
He sighed, not sure what to say in response—to Lia
or
to Elly. “We had a fight, too.” Unable to look at Lia and see the sympathy on her face, he tapped out a reply:
Stay safe. Here if you need.
Then, much as it galled him to do so, he sent a follow-up:
Call Chaz. He has info for you on necro & woman from Brotherhood.
He wanted to call her, to say
I’m sorry. Come home. Please.
But that would only make her drive north faster.
Lia waited until he slipped the phone back into his pocket, then took his arm in hers. “You’ll be all right. You and Elly have a lot to work through still. Sunny’d probably have technical terms for it all, but truth is, it’s only been a month. You’re going to butt heads now and then.”
“This is different.”
She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. Of all the people they knew, Lia and Sunny would have the best advice, but this was too raw, too personal. It was the old need to circle the wagons speaking, Father Value’s insistence that they could handle anything the world threw at them, that others weren’t to be trusted. Cavale knew better by now, that the old man’s adages were—when it came to non-monster subjects—shit, but he also knew Elly. And knew himself. They had to try fixing it themselves first, or it wouldn’t work, period. Because Value’s ghost hung over them both, no necromancer needed.
He didn’t articulate any of that to Lia. Didn’t need to, really. Either her succubus instincts told her, or his body language, or several years of the things he’d left unsaid about his past let her make the leap. She put her head on his shoulder for a few steps, slipped her arm about his waist, and he felt a little less alone.
At the bottom of the hill, though, he started feeling crowded. Trina hadn’t called him since they’d parted the day before, but here was her car, pulled up to the curb a few houses down, at a quarter to five in the morning. Trina herself was nowhere to be seen.
“Shit,” said Cavale. “Lia, this is your last chance to go back home and let us handle things.”
She pulled away from him, into a wary fight-or-flight stance. “What is it?”
“The woman who owns this car, her husband died a few months ago. The necromancer’s offered her a chance to see him again. I’d warned her off, but . . .”
“But someone’s seen
Ghost
a few too many times?”
“Pretty much. If she’s here, it means he’s active.”
“Well then,” said Lia. “Lay on, Macduff.”
* * *
T
HE HOUSE WAS
full of ghosts.
They’d come in through the back, Cavale jimmying the lock and leading Lia into the darkened kitchen. Light from the front room threw long shadows down the hall, and at first he thought their movement was simply that of dancing flames.
Then his eyes adjusted, and they resolved into shapes.
Human
shapes, six of them queued up at the threshold like customers waiting for the next teller at the bank. Old and young, male and female, waiting listlessly for . . . what?
Lia clutched his arm. “I can feel it,” she whispered. “Udrai’s power.”
“Is it him?”
She held still, listening. For a second, he felt the low tingle at the edge of his perception that was her magic. Then it faded, and Lia frowned. “No. I don’t think so. But it’s . . . strange. It’s too strong
not
to be him, but it feels wrong.” She jerked in surprise, then stared around, her jaw dropping. “Cavale, they’re . . . everywhere.”
He tried following her gaze, but all he could see were himself and Lia, and the lined-up ghosts. “What are?”
“Spirits. All of them just . . . waiting.”
He couldn’t see them, not without performing a spell that might tip the necromancer off to their presence. Yet now that she’d called attention to them, he discovered he could feel them, brushing at the edges of his thoughts. Cavale wasn’t clairvoyant; all his readings at work were based on what the cards or the tea leaves told him, but they were there nonetheless.
“He’s drawing them,” said Lia. “They don’t want to be here.”
“Then let’s see if we can’t send them home.” He scuttled forward, down the hall alongside the corporeal ghosts. On some of them, Udrai’s mark peeked out from beneath shirtsleeves or crawled up their necks. They didn’t turn to regard Cavale and Lia as they skulked past, bent low to avoid being seen. The ghosts merely stood, listless and silent, held there by the necromancer’s will.
Low murmurs came from the front room. Cavale recognized Trina’s voice but couldn’t make out the words. He got down, close to the ground, hoping the necromancer would attribute any stray movement to a ghost shuffling, or the candlelight making the shadows flicker. He peeked around the door frame.
The room was mostly bare: a couch, a chair, an end table. Battery-powered hurricane lamps and cookie sheets covered in candles lit the room, illuminating Trina in harsh white light on one side and soft yellow on the other. She sat on the couch, in the arms of the man they’d seen in the street the day before: her husband, James. Trina’d been crying. Her hands fluttered over James’ face, his arms, his back, as though proving to herself he was truly there.
In the armchair, leaned back, legs crossed, watching them, was the necromancer.
“Son of a bitch,” Cavale breathed. Last he’d seen the guy, he’d been loitering outside of Hecate’s Cabinet, passing out business cards to the shop’s customers. He’d shed the coat and hat but still had his scarf bundled around his neck. It might have been the hurricane light, but he looked sickly: skin grey, bags beneath his eyes. He brought up his arm to cough into his elbow, the way he’d done outside the shop. Cavale moved back, away from the doorway so the necromancer wouldn’t see or hear him.
“You know him?” Lia was close, but out of sight.
“I’ve seen him before.”
Damn it. If I’d been paying attention I could have had him two days ago.
But what would he have done? Assaulted the man in broad daylight and be the one to get arrested? Even if he
had
realized who he was dealing with at the time, there wasn’t much he could have done. Cavale moved out of the way so she could get a quick peek herself.