Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel by Lauren M. Roy Read Free Book Online

mahogany box upstairs. The serpentine blades had come out when they’d fought the jackal-headed Creeps, their silver lengths smoking with each kill. Elly knew they were sacred, maybe even imbued with some kind of spirits. She would have loved to try them out, feel their weight in her own hands, but she got twitchy if anyone else handled the silver spike that was her own preferred weapon; she could only imagine how
wrong
it would feel to Sunny and Lia if someone else touched their knives.
    “How long ago was this?”
    “Years and years,” said Lia, with a significance Elly thought might mean
centuries
instead.
Millennia, maybe.
In the kitchen, the timer beeped. “Oops. Second batch is done, excuse me a moment.” She headed for the kitchen, looking relieved at the interruption.
    Sunny gave Elly a wan smile. “I’m going to see if she needs help,” she said, and hurried along in Lia’s wake.
    Elly watched them go, then returned to her makeshift scaffold. Sunny and Lia had welcomed her as family this last month. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve that, but she knew one thing: you defended family with your life.
    *   *   *
    E LLY’S CAR WAS in the driveway when Cavale got home from work. They’d realized pretty quickly, with him having a day job and her spending a few nights a week prowling the streets of South Boston for Ivanov, that they needed to be a two-car family after all. He’d taken a couple thousand dollars of his savings and (over Elly’s insistence that she’d take the bus until she could save up on her own) bought her something used but sturdy.
    Chaz had taken one look at it and named it a shitbox, but from the way he whistled through his teeth and spent the next weekend with his head stuck under its hood, it was a
good
shitbox. Most days, Cavale couldn’t get a read on Val’s Renfield; that was a prime example. For a twig of a guy, Chaz loved to let his mouth run. Sometimes it seemed like he
wanted
Cavale to take a swing, even, and one of these days, Cavale just might. But the day they’d bought it, Cavale had mentioned the car in front of him and he’d volunteered to take a look. No prompting from Val, not an eyelash batted by Sunny. Not even a trace of his usual smarminess when he showed up at their house.
    Probably because it was for Elly. If it’d been my car, he’d have filled the vents with spider eggs.
    Chaz had gone over every inch of that vehicle and made the damned thing not just run but
purr
. Elly’d been driving it ever since without a problem, which Cavale had to sheepishly admit made him feel the tiniest bit better about her taking the job with the
Stregoi
. He hadn’t been able to talk her out of taking it, and he wasn’t there to watch her back while she wandered Boston looking for trouble of the bloodsucker variety, but at least he knew she wasn’t going to break down somewhere along 95.
    He lugged the groceries inside,
Cooking for Beginners
tucked under his arm. He’d dog-eared a page that looked promising and stopped on the way home for ingredients, determined to have something ready for her when she got back from Southie. Full dark had fallen while he agonized over whether there was a noticeable difference between yellow onions and Spanish ones; he’d expected Elly would be on the road by now, but catching her here was a nice surprise. Maybe he’d be able to feed her
before
she left, if he could figure this stuff out.
    “Elly? El?” he called as he bumped his way through the front hall.
    “In the kitchen.” She sat at the table, head bent over one of the half-dozen books open in front of her. A legal pad with a sigil of some sort drawn on it lay atop one of them, notes in Elly’s cramped handwriting surrounding it. Her dark hair was getting longer, he noticed, as she tucked a lock behind her ear and looked up at him. The ragged edges were softening as they grew past her chin. A smear of paint had dried on the back of her hand; she must have spent