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

part of the afternoon at Sunny and Lia’s.
    It was still a surprise, seeing her here in his house. He kept expecting to wake up one morning to a letter of farewell, the idea of staying in one place too much for her after all. Or maybe not even a letter, just a call from somewhere on the road, her breathing
Sorry
into the receiver before hanging up.
    He hadn’t even done that much for her, when he’d left her with Father Value.
    “What’s that?” He pointed at her research.
    She eyed the shopping bags warily. “You first.”
    “I, uh. Heh.” He cast about for a place to put the bags down. The table was out: the counters were covered in drying herbs, spell components, and an assortment of stakes in various stages of sharpening. The chairs were draped with drying laundry. He settled the bags on the floor and showed her the cookbook. “I figured you’d have been on your way in to Boston. I was going to perfect one of these and have it ready when you got home. But I can make it now, if you’re hungry.”
    She shifted one of the books over to reveal the open box of Girl Scout cookies it had been hiding. “I’ve sort of eaten.”
    “That’s not dinner.”
    “Says the man who considers Pop-Tarts a food group.”
    “Fair point.” He abandoned the groceries for the time being, plunking down in a chair beside her. He perched on the edge of it, so his back wouldn’t get soaked from the wet jeans behind him. “So what is all this? And where did you get a box of those at this time of year? I didn’t think they came out until the spring.”
    “I know a guy.” She passed him a cookie and watched him nibble around its minty chocolate edge. It was a practice they’d both picked up with Father Value. Treats were few and far between; you ate them slowly, so they lasted as long as possible. Elly’s quirked brow told him she’d noticed it without her calling him on it. Conversations about their childhood were full of land mines. “Actually, I know a girl. Do you know the Palmers? They live a couple doors over, down the hill.”
    The name was familiar, but he didn’t make a habit of talking to his neighbors. “Should I?”
    “Probably not. But I met their daughter today. Cinda. She came here looking to hire us.”
    He stopped nibbling. “Hire us to . . . ?”
    “She had a ghost in her house. I got rid of it for her, no charge, but she insisted I take a box of those from her freezer.” She passed him the legal pad with its blue-inked sigil. “I saw this on the ghost’s arm. I don’t think that it was a tattoo he had when he died, but I can’t prove that it was fresh. I don’t know.” She sighed, squinching up her face, looking for the right words. “It seemed like the most
real
thing about him. Besides the gunshot wound that kept opening up and leaking all over the place, that is. But this was newer.”
    Cavale spun it around to get a better look. He was good with runes, was familiar with enough languages to recognize their characters on sight even if he couldn’t translate them. This one had the wedge-shaped style of cuneiform, but it wasn’t a symbol he recognized. It reminded him of a dagger, with its dominant line sweeping down into a point, and the shorter line at the top cutting through it like a quillon. But then, in his line of work, what
didn’t
remind him of weapons?
    Elly kept talking as he studied it. “Not that knocking stuff over and blaming it on the kid wasn’t real. Just . . . I think someone put it there, after his death. When I tried exorcising him, it felt like something was fighting me. Not the ghost. Someone else. I tried sending him off easy, but . . . obsidian dust hurt him. Have you ever seen that happen?”
    “Not that I can remember.” Most of the exorcisms he’d performed had been fairly routine: purify the area where the ghost most often appeared, set wards against its return, collect a paycheck. Now and again he’d had to figure out what was keeping crotchety