Dead and Gone (Grave Talker Book 2) Read online

  But Mariana wasn’t done. Oh, no. She had more to say.

  “I have already spoken to your captain. You are being leant to us for the time being. Though, he thinks we’re the FBI and this is a fabulous opportunity for you.”

  I highly doubted that. Uncle Dave probably flipped off whomever he spoke to when they couldn’t see. He hated the FBI almost as much as I hated the ABI, and he’d hate them too if he knew they existed.

  “I will be keeping an eye on you while you complete this assignment. So, whatever you’re planning in that little head of yours, stop it.”

  I actually hadn’t been planning anything. I’d been practically tuning out her words while I studied her body language. People often lied with their lips, but their bodies didn’t.

  Everyone has a tell. Everyone.

  Mariana’s? She fought off a smile when she was exerting her power. She enjoyed being the big dog. Loved making sure people knew their place. She didn’t need me to solve cases that were old enough to drink.

  She wanted me under her thumb, spinning my wheels until I fell in line.

  The fuck I would. I wouldn’t be falling for that shit. Not ever.

  My silence stretched longer and wider, my feigned indifference irking her more than if I’d spat in her face. Silence was my weapon of choice in several situations: it made criminals spill, it irked feds, it broke boyfriends. Now that I knew it pissed her off, it made my zipped lips that much sweeter.

  Mariana let out a faint growl under her breath. “Contact Agent Kenzari about your access to our archives. You’ll need them for these cases. I expect progress within twenty-four hours.” Her smile grew wide. “Good luck.”

  With that, she stood and strode to the door. Before she crossed the threshold, she slipped a necklace over her head. With a wave of her fingers, the dark pendant glowed for a moment, and then Mariana’s form melted away.

  In her place was a short, mousey-looking woman with dishwater-blonde hair and horn-rimmed glasses. I’d scarcely wondered how she was going to “keep an eye on me.” Especially in a town the size of Haunted Peak when she was supposed to be planted in the local cemetery. I now had my answer.

  Fucking glamours.

  “Oh, and Darby?” Mariana called like I wasn’t staring right at her. “Stay away from Bishop La Roux. We wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him, now would we?”

  With her parting shot, she strode right out my front door, slamming it behind her.

  Mothers were the fucking worst.

  4

  I slammed back my cocktail in a single swallow. I hadn’t been contemplating Mariana’s demise, exactly. Maybe a punch to the face or perhaps an accidental immolation… But now? Oh, yeah, now I was out-and-out planning it. Not only did she need to go, but she needed to be launched into the surface of the sun at my earliest convenience.

  I wondered if Shiloh St. James would help me with that. I was pretty sure if I told the Knoxville coven leader about what my mother had threatened, her whole coven would make sure Mariana had an “accident” and was never heard from again.

  That gave me a small measure of happiness for about a solid minute before I started poking holes into the plan.

  Who knew what Mariana had up her sleeve? This wasn’t the woman from my childhood. This wasn’t the sweet mom who bandaged my boo-boos and played hopscotch with me. She wasn’t kind or soft. And I couldn’t figure out if the woman from my past was real, or if I’d just made her up in the way kids did for an idolized parent.

  I supposed I could ask my dad. If this was who my mother was now, I could see why he’d hidden her. Who wanted to crush their daughter’s memories into dust? I knew I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I had been in his shoes.

  The sound of my back door opening had me reaching for a gun that most definitely was not on my hip. I was about to reach for a knife in the butcher block when J’s voice hissed down the hall. “Is the coast clear?”

  I let out a little bleat of laughter. “Yeah.”

  Frazzled-looking and more than a little pale, my partner, best friend, and closest confidant, Jeremiah Cooper raced into my kitchen. He didn’t even say hi. Instead, he swiped the bottle of vodka and took a healthy swig.

  J hadn’t drunk vodka since the last bonfire party of our senior year of high school. That night he’d ended up fooling around with Greg Powell and lassoing himself a stage-five clinger who was so far in the closet, it might as well have been Narnia. J had sworn off all vodka drinks for the last decade because of that party. He was the sole reason I kept a bottle of gin right next to my vodka in the freezer.

  “Well, hello to you, too,” I muttered, my worry mounting after he took another pull of vodka. I snatched it away from him before he could drink any more, setting the bottle down on the counter and capping it.

  J wiped his face before bracing himself against the counter like he might fall over. “I will happily get into the ‘welcome backs’ and all that shit in a minute, but only after you tell me why your grandfather is haunting my house. I about pissed myself this morning when he just popped up in my living room, and he hasn’t made it easy to leave, either. What the fuck?”

  Oh, shit. That totally explained why J looked like he was ready and willing to launch himself off a cliff.

  “I may have told him he was no longer welcome in my house this morning,” I mumbled with a wince.

  “Say what now?” J’s tone was way less frazzled as he moved for the vodka again.

  I yanked it back out of his reach. “When I got out of ABI prison, he showed up acting like he wasn’t the freaking reason I was there. So I socked him in the nose, and told him I didn’t want to see him again.”

  J’s face went from white to beet-red in an instant. “Prison? That’s where you’ve been this whole time. Fucking prison? Your mother put you in jail?”

  I flicked off the cap of the vodka bottle and dumped some into my empty glass. “You’ve met my mother, J. The woman we grew up with is long gone. And it wasn’t just prison. I also got poked and prodded and tested within an inch of my fucking life. Look,” I muttered before taking a gulp of straight vodka. “You need to know that I have to work for her now. I don’t know how long this is going to go on, but…”

  J’s pale-blue eyes went practically flinty. “She threatened us all, right? That’s what Hildy said she’d do. He said a lot of shit, D. You really need to talk to him.”

  I caught myself mid-grumble. Just the thought of talking to Hildy made me want to rage. It was bad enough his daughter was the worst mother on the planet and deserved a painful death. But he was the one who was supposed to be on my side. He was the one who’d been with me day in and day out. He was the one who’d watched me wither away, drained to exhaustion.

  He. Knew. And yet, he’d said nothing.

  It was one thing to abandon me. It was quite another to pretend to be my friend and lie to my face.

  “I don’t want to talk to Hildy.”

  J turned his back to rummage in my freezer for his bottle of gin. At least one of us was thinking clearly. “I think he feels like shit for keeping his promise to her, and I have a feeling he’ll be on our side. Plus, if you could get him out of my house, that would be awesome. I seriously about shit myself this morning, D. How in the high holy hell did you live with him for so long without losing your fucking mind?”

  “Who says I haven’t lost it? You’re still my best friend, aren’t you? I mean, if that doesn’t make me Looney Tunes, I don’t know what does.”

  J shot a withering glance over his shoulder before turning back to reach into my cupboard for a glass. “Get him out of my house, D. I’m not playing.”

  I stuck my tongue out at J behind his back. Childish, sure, but he couldn’t see me.

  “I saw that,” he griped, his back still turned.

  “You didn’t see shit.”

  Groaning, I closed my eyes and called to Hildy in my mind. I imagined his pale hair and eyes, his paisley cravat and top hat, his skull
cane and waistcoat. I pictured him sitting at my counter like he’d done nearly every day since I bought this house. I wondered how much power he’d used to show himself to J. It couldn’t have been easy.

  No, Darby. He lied to you. Don’t go getting all soft now.

  When I opened my eyes, Hildy was sitting exactly where I’d pictured him, a self-satisfied smile on his face.

  “Don’t make me hit you twice, Hildenbrand. Wipe that fucking smile off your face,” I growled, my hands lighting up once again. They only seemed to do that in the presence of family. Go figure.

  Given that my family was chock-full of assholes, it really made sense.

  Hildy’s face went serious. “I’m sorry, lass. It’s just there has been very little joy since you left. I’m pleased to see you, that’s all.”

  I scoffed and sipped my drink, doing my best not to smash it against the stone countertop when I was done. I was not falling for that guilt trip. Shuddering, I remembered the flash of a curved blade raking over my father’s chest. That was pretty much all I’d dreamt about for the better part of a year. Well, that and Tabitha’s malformed soul breaking free of her body.

  Fighting off a full body freak-out, I settled on sarcasm. “What? Your other living family isn’t a ball of sweetness and light? How weird.”

  “No, my sweet girl, they are not. Ya think I did ya a disservice by not telling ya about your powers, but… Ya got to grow up with a conscience and integrity. My children only grew up with the knowledge of power. Some of them died in their thirst for it. Others didn’t. The ones who survived, aren’t exactly the best of people. When ya came into your powers, I swore I would do it different. I’d show ya how to coexist with spirits, how to help them. Not use them for your own benefit.”

  My laugh was hysterical as I poured myself another glass of straight vodka. The room was a little spinny, but fuck it. I took another swig. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton had it right.”

  “Mr. Cooper,” Hildy called, and I looked up to see his form had mostly solidified on my barstool. “Please call for some take away. Darby needs sustenance if she’s going to hear all I have to say.”

  J nearly choked on gin but gave my grandfather a nod. Hildy went see-through again, and it was then that I noticed the haggard quality to his face. He was using too much power.

  “Where’s your cane?” I asked, concern for the backstabber ingrained in my very DNA.

  Hildy’s lips stretched in a soft smile. “Stashed it so your mother couldn’t find it. But that does leave me with not much power of my own.”

  “Then quit using so much, you idiot.” I sighed and threw him a bone. “If you’re going to stick around and help me send that bitch—no offense—packing, I need you to actually be useful.”

  Hildy perked up a bit. “You’re going to let me stay?”

  “Maybe. I’m still thinking about it. But no more secrets, Hildy. I’m serious. If I find out you’re lying, I swear to everything holy, I won’t just send you packing from my life.”

  Hildy’s already-gray face went even paler. It wasn’t an idle threat, and he knew it. Given who my father was, I could make sure Hildy never crossed into this plane again. Or… I was pretty sure I could.

  “I’ll do my best, lass. Living a life like mine, I’ve kept more secrets than I’ve told.”

  And that was as good as I was going to get, I supposed. Hildy had never been a fount of information—not about what I was, at least. Hell, he probably couldn’t keep track of all the lies he’d told me over the years. What was there to do but accept this as my new reality?

  I had a whole host of people in my life that I couldn’t trust. My mother was a bitch in high heels, and my father had kept the fact that she was alive from me. Bishop was in the evil queen’s back pocket, and I was stuck working for the hag.

  My gaze fell on J. Well, I could trust at least one of them. Clearing my throat, I stuffed the ache down.

  “Thai, Italian, or Indian?” I asked, reaching for the takeout menus.

  J stared at the glasses full of booze, pursing his lips in concentration. “Italian. We need all the carbs we can get to soak this shit up.” He raised a glass in the general direction where he’d last seen Hildy. “Okay, Gramps, time to spill it. What is Darby’s ax-wound of a mother up to now?”

  “My best guess? She’s trying to find your siblings.”

  As drunk as I was, I was not, in fact, ready to have my world rocked to that degree. My mom had other kids? I had brothers or sisters? I was ill-prepared for the tears that gathered in my eyes and even less for the burn that smoldered in my chest.

  I must have translated for Hildy because J piped up with a biting question.

  “What? She lose track of all her children?” J asked sarcastically, probably not realizing that my mother was a few centuries old. She could have more kids. She could have fifty kids if she’d wanted to.

  “Not hers,” Hildy murmured, shaking his head. “His.”

  5

  The Angel of Death had more than just one kid. Nope. My brain was not ready to wrap around that mess at all.

  “Dude, you look like you’re going to throw up,” J said, replacing my glass of vodka with water. “Drink this and tell me what he said.”

  I gulped the ice-cold water down and prayed that my stomach decided not to eject what was in it. “She isn’t looking for her own children,” I croaked. “She’s looking for my father’s children.”

  Now it was time to come clean. I hadn’t spoken to J since I’d been dumped in an ABI prison, so he didn’t know what I did. He didn’t know that I was ten times more of a freak than he’d originally signed on for when we were kids.

  “You know what happened at the lake?” I hedged, trying to figure out just how to break the news to my best and only living friend in the world that I was… I was…

  “Yeah.” J’s tone was wary. Perfect.

  “You know the man Tabitha was trying to raise?” I asked, wincing.

  “Are you sure you want to tell him, lass?” Hildy asked. “Knowing the truth isn’t always the best thing for humans.”

  I shot Hildy a glare before J pulled on my shoulder, turning me to look at him.

  “No way. That scary dude is your dad?”

  I let out a hysterical little bleat of laughter. “Just wait. It gets better. This guy—who my mother liked enough to have a baby with—is the literal Angel of Death. So not only is my mother a grave talker and can talk to ghosts, but my father is the one who ferries them to their final resting place.”

  J’s pale eyes popped wide as his jaw went slack.

  Great. I’d broken him.

  His head gave a sharp shake like he was trying to erase an Etch-A-Sketch. “If he’s the one who takes everyone over to the other side, does that mean no one has made it over since he’s been essentially buried under a fucking mountain for a couple of decades?”

  Of course J would ask an intelligent question instead of freaking out. Since the day he’d decided to never let me go without backup, he’d been taking this arcane shit in stride.

  “No. According to Mariana, he just has to be on Earth for people to make it over. I think that’s why they didn’t kill him for what he did. I can’t imagine there being more ghosts cramming onto this tiny planet.”

  I shuddered at the thought. Ghosts who didn’t move on in a timely manner turned bad fast. They lost themselves, got angry, and went from bland accountants and barbers to legit poltergeists. I couldn’t imagine a whole world full of them. That sounded like a fucking nightmare.

  J seemed confused. “What did he do? Why did they bury him?”

  That wasn’t a question I could answer exactly. I know what Mariana had told me he’d done, but the man I’d met didn’t match up with the picture she painted. The man she described was a monster hell-bent on keeping his so-called throne. That didn’t add up to the man who told me to put him back where he belonged. To the man who served Tabitha up to me on a silver platter. The man wh
o had gone willingly back to his prison.

  I’d met murderers and criminals. I saw them every day. I’d known men hardened by the sins on their soul, and no one learned their lesson that fast. Not after what she said he’d done.

  “Mariana said he killed people. Hundreds of them. She said they were his children, and that he’d decided that he didn’t want them anymore, that he regretted them all, and they… and he…” I broke off and took a gulp of water. “She said he killed his kids to keep his place. Not that I understand what that means.”

  “Jesus. You really got the short end of the stick in the parenting department,” J mumbled.

  I couldn’t help but think he was absolutely right.

  After consuming my weight in Spaghetti Carbonara and staying far, far away from the vodka, J and I dug into the case file Mariana had left for me. The information was thin, only the names, birth, and death dates, and the causes of death. No pictures, no leads, nothing else to give me even a measure of something to go on.

  Fabulous.

  “This isn’t just thin evidence, this is practically anorexic. How in the blue fuck does she expect you to get anywhere with this?” J asked, exasperated at the sheer lack of investigative care anyone had taken on these cases.

  “I’m supposed to contact Sarina to get into the archives, but other than this flimsy shit, I have nothing.” I looked to Hildy. “Do you think these people are still around? Like, could I call for them?”

  Even as I asked the question, I knew it was a long shot. Ghosts without a purpose didn’t tend to stick around. Hildy had family to haunt, others had unfinished business. Plus, I didn’t even have a picture to go on to call them in my mind. I could search the DMV databases to see if anyone showed up, but some of these birthdates were several hundred years ago. It wasn’t like I could just go look them up with that.

  Hildy gave me a little hand waggle, meaning it would be a hard, if not impossible task. Ugh.