The Forever Drug by Lisa Smedman Read Free Book Online Page B

high wrought-iron fence topped with ornate spikes. The main entrance is on Barrington, but the gate there is rusted shut. The graves are so old that nobody comes to visit them anymore, and the gate hadn't been opened in a century or more.
    The cemetery is one part of the city that's always deserted at night. It had a reputation of being haunted all along, but only after the Awakening of 2011, when magic returned to the world, did those stories prove true. The ghosts that manifested in the graveyard packed a one-two punch against those who intruded on their final resting place, first paralyzing with their chilling touch and then filling their victims with a magical fear. More than one fresh corpse, dead of a heart attack or stroke, had been found in the Old Burial Grounds when dawn broke.
    I climbed up and over the wrought iron fence, thanking the spirits that I wasn't allergic to iron, then leaped down inside the grounds. The huge oak trees inside the cemetery sighed and rustled overhead—a quiet contrast to the bedlam of the Public Gardens.
    I walked through a grim forest of leaning headstones and larger, more ornate monuments topped with cherubs. There were also a number of slate grave markers, but their inscriptions were long gone; the outermost layers of slate had sloughed off like dead skin, centuries ago. The place seemed to have the reek of death, but it was probably just my imagination. When I took a good sniff, all I could smell was tree sap and the rich loam of well-fertilized soil.
    I didn't see any sign of a drug dealer, and was starting to think Stud had given me a false lead. I couldn't see anyone else moving around in the cemetery, and there didn't seem to be any of the markers dealers leave to clue buyers in to the stashes they've left behind for them.
    Then I saw the fresh flowers. They were sitting in a cut-glass vase that looked as if it had been made more than a century ago, but which was clean and filled with fresh water. The vase held a spray of pink roses and was sitting on the ground in front of a granite headstone. The flowers were still fresh; I could smell their perfume. The name chiselled into the mottled gray tombstone was no longer legible, but I could just make out the latter part of the date. Whoever was buried here had died in the 1870s.
    I heard a faint click and looked up. A few meters away, a woman was seated on a bench under an oak tree, facing me. She was sitting completely still and was downwind of me, which was why I hadn't noticed her earlier. Her hands were in her lap, holding something, and she was looking down at it. I changed my position so she was silhouetted by the lights in the street behind her, trying to get a better look ...
    "Jane!" I exclaimed.
    She looked up. From her startled expression, I could tell she didn't recognize me. I moved into the light.
    "Who are you?" she asked.
    For just a moment, I thought I had the wrong woman. But it was my Jane Doe all right. I'd know those eyes anywhere.
    "It's me, Romulus," I said. "Remember? We met on Georges Island and you came back to the police station with me in a hover."
    "We have never met before," she said in a voice as certain as death.
    "We have," I assured her. "You just don't remember. Your memory is ... damaged."
    She raised the object she held in her hands: the necklace. Silver glinted at her throat as she fastened it behind her neck.
    "Why are you here, Jane?" I asked.
    "I came here to meet...." Her voice trailed off, uncertain.
    My hackles rose. Had Jane come here to meet a Halo dealer? Was it a corpselight that had frigged up her memory? But that didn't make sense; the troll seemed to have retained all of his mental faculties after "using" Halo. And Jane didn't have the yearning, fearful look I'd seen in the troll's eyes.
    "I gave you the address of the Barrington Shelter this morning?" I said to her. "Did you go there?"
    "I don't know. I woke up, and ... started walking around the city. I came here to visit my