Graveyard Waltz by Jessie Thomas
5
Late afternoon had madeitself cozy by the time I dragged my chronically sleep-deprived ass up the front steps of the boarding house the next day. Mr. Trevino had moved his designated nap spot for the season and now snoozed on the porch in an Aloha shirt and khaki shorts, his sunglasses askew from the angle he’d listed to the right. The hard plastic Adirondack chairs had faded after a few summers of being carted out onto the lawn and into the driveway. Wind chimes jangled softly in a lazy breeze. The scent of hot pavement mingled with freshly mown grass and the rose bushes Mrs. Trevino kept in the modest garden behind the house.
A loud, droning lawn mower two houses down and the shrieking of neighborhood kids—were they, like, killing each other or having fun?—had become the soundtrack to a summer in full swing. Sounded like the trio of tailgate frat boys were having a party in the backyard from the sporadic, masculine yelling that suggested some sport or drinking game was currently in progress. Knowing them, there was a blurry line between the two.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Trevino.”
There was a chance he might’ve heard me because his snoring reached a crescendo between a snort and an incoherent grumble, but he didn’t wake. Shifting on the creaky plastic, Mr. Trevino’s sunglasses slid off the bridge of his nose and clattered to the painted floorboards.
“Oops,” I whispered, though he was too much of a heavy sleeper to care. “Here, let me just…get that…”
I’d just put them on the table next to a glass of half-finished iced tea that had sweated condensation onto a soggy napkin when one of the frat boys ran down the driveway.
He yelped when his bare feet slapped against the steamy blacktop. One of his buddies cranked up the radio, flooding the yard with a nineties hip-hop song that had too much static for me to parse out what it was.
“Sera! Come play with us!”
I stopped at the edge of the porch, and a weathered floorboard protested under my boots. Frat boy danced on the hot blacktop to keep his feet from burning, shirtless, a backwards Buffalo Bills cap sitting crookedly on his head, while he tossed a blue bean bag back and forth from one hand to the other. Which was really all the confirmation I needed that our backyard was playing host to a rousing Cornhole tournament.
No reason whatsoever for him to shout like that, since we were only a few yards from each other, but I’d learned that these guys had one volume and one volume only.
Was I flattered by the impromptu invite? Kind of. Until right this second I’d assumed that exactly none of those boys knew I lived down the hall from them. And, I’ll be honest, I couldn’t tell you any of their names. I could barely tell them apart when I had more than five hours of good sleep.
“Maybe some other time,” I told him. “I’ve got some work I need to take care of.”
Absolutely dreaded it—understatement of the damn year—but it had to be done. Couldn’t avoid my client’s fiancé forever.
“Aww, come on. We need another player! It’ll be fun,” he whined, and for some reason it prodded at a high school flashback of a classmate who’d faked niceties to befriend me. Spoiler alert: her ulterior motives had been nefarious and, predictably, it didn’t end well. Part of me wondered if this was a joke. Maybe they were already too buzzed to care that they wanted to pick the boarding house weirdo to be on their team. Or it might’ve been a wrong conclusion I’d jumped to after being screwed over one too many times.
I mean, awkward sixteen year old Sera did not have these gravedigger biceps.
Topaz’s beady eyes sought me out from the front window, and through the slat of sunlight making me squint, I saw my exit.
“Sorry,” I shouted back, already across the porch and turning the front door handle, “I’ve got a hungry fox that needs to be fed or he’ll raid the kitchen cupboards. Ask Mr. Trevino if he’d like to join your team.”
“Yo, Trevs! Look alive, man, we need you!”
Laughing, I forced the door closed with my hip and left them to their raucous, drunken backyard fun. Topaz rushed me the moment I got inside the front hall, which either meant that Ellie wasn’t home to dote on him or she was and for some reason, Paz missed me enough to honor me, a mere mortal, with his presence.
I left the bag of dirty clothes by the stairs so I could lower to a knee for Topaz’s convenience. Actually forcing myself through the motion was more painful than I anticipated. Lucky for me and my sad, sore body, none of the other boarders were around to witness it. Bruises had set in overnight after the panicked adrenaline wore off. I’d tried to ignore the gross aftermath of the supernatural beat down in the shower this morning, moving gingerly around purple-red spots that seemed to change color by the minute.
It’d taken two long showers, five hours of crappy sleep, a couple doses of painkillers, and an expensive brunch Violet had ordered for me and Teddy to get me halfway decent again.
And yet I still felt…off.
Not the same deal that followed a necromantic ritual, but there was this strange, empty, almost carved out feeling in my chest. Like whatever tried to tackle me from the other side had left something there. An ugly little seed planted in my soul. An icky, horrifying thought. Could’ve been paranoia. Could’ve been a lot of things.
Was it Griffin? Did he want to, I don’t know, possess me from the spirit realm? Had someone else found out how to harness that disturbing power?His decayed corpse had been the main character in my nightmares. Those voices replayed endlessly until they’d warped and screamed over each other and echoed, sobbing like a death knell into the night.
Expect me, necromancer. Your time is coming to an end.
Not just any death knell. It was mine.
Without my necromancy, I was completely useless. What good was it if I couldn’t do a damn thing to help? To heal?
Failure tasted like shit. And it wasn’t something I wanted to develop a taste for.
Topaz didn’t care about my internal crisis. The oblivious, greedy, adorable demon. He sniffed circles around my boots, his frizzy tail tickling my nose whenever he passed. Looking for dead things. Expecting me to pull a treat out of thin air to fulfill his neediest whim. I gave Paz the chin scratches he liked, then tugged on his ears lightly while he nuzzled my palm. Patting his side—he was trim despite constantly pleading to the other boarders for scraps; must’ve been those nightly jaunts through downtown—I raked my fingers through his ginger fur before struggling to my feet.
“Sorry, Your Highness, no treats right now.” I bent to swing the bag’s strap onto my shoulder, and that was clearly not the move to be making while bruised all over. I let out some kind of high-pitched squeak that alerted Paz, though his resulting whine was more impatient and disappointed than concerned. “I’ll get you a snack once I’m done. When have I ever let you starve? Hmm? That’s right. Never.” I started up the stairs and he followed, weaving precariously through my legs. One of his paws snagged a bootlace. “If you make me fall and give me more bruises, mister, there’ll be no treats for you. Where’s Ellie? You think she’ll talk to me today? You’re being really clingy.”
The narrow upstairs hall filled with shadows during the daytime in spite of the bright midcentury modern fixtures and metallic damask wallpaper that matched the rest of the bottom floor. It was the cramped nature of the layout, the original mahogany that had survived abandonment and renovations. Paws skittering on the hardwood, Paz went flying down to the darkest end of the hallway. Totally disinterested in me again.
Typical Paz behavior.
I left the bag outside my apartment door and breathed deep to prep myself for the wall of silence.
At least I wouldn’t feel too bad if she wasn’t home.
Something grainy scraped against the bottom of my boot. Wasn’t as course as spilled sugar, but it made my foot skid along the floor a half-step so I almost lost my balance. Recovering quickly, I found clumps of dirt left in the wake of someone’s footsteps. I hadn’t noticed it on the stairs, but they were dark and littered with dust and Paz had been a distraction.
“Mrs. Trevino must’ve been gardening again,” I said aloud, possibly to Paz, but definitely to no one.
My heart lunged for my throat. “Unless.”
I stopped myself before I’d uttered the hypothetical thought aloud, before it took shape on my tongue and transformed into something that could’ve been real. Because I didn’t want it to be. But it insisted anyway.
Ellie’s new coven. They might’ve…
I know, okay? It’s a terrible, awful thought, even if it’s fleeting, to pin the bizarre grave robberies on your sister and her new witchy friends. But I didn’t know anything about them or what Ellie’s emerging powers looked like. What the hell was I supposed to think?
Anything butthat. Instead of not looking before you leap into outrageous conclusions, you could tone it down just a little.Try there.
Innocent trail of dirt. Nothing preternatural or ominous to see here—only that my necromancer instincts had been spooked by last night and even the smallest misplaced detail set off my built-in paranormal trip wire.
Always trust your gut, Seraphina,the voice nagged, and it seemed like a thing Charlie would tell me. But Charlie’d had enough sense to move to Florida after his temporary battle with Death.
My guts weren’t in any shape to interpret omens from some discounted topsoil. Besides, if it wanted to warn me about anything, it’d barked up the wrong side of the witchcraft tree. Divination wasn’t in my line of work.
I gave Rhys’ apartment door an uncertain, quick knock. He was still at the county morgue, having slept in the windowless box he called an office to process the horror from last night’s crime scene. I didn’t expect an answer even if Ellie was home to hear me, but it was always worth the long, quiet minutes I spent standing out here in the hopes that someday it would work.
Knuckles met wood again, louder this time. “Ellie?” I cleared the tired rasp out of my throat.
“Ellie, you home? Look, I know this is all probably futile, but if you’re in there… Rhys told me about the coven. Don’t, like, freak out on him. You know how we are when we’re together. I pestered him into revealing secrets, so it’s not his fault. Anyway…I just…I wanted to know what you’ve been up to, that’s all. It’s good to hear you’re making new friends.”
This was beginning to sound like a pathetic voicemail that would get deleted before anyone listened to it.
“Miss you, Ellie.” I’d dropped to a near whisper, defeated. Again. “Can we talk? Maybe? What would it take for you to not hate me so much?”
Break up with the vamp, she’d say. If I wasn’t, in fact, spilling my feelings to thin air.
I heaved a lengthy exhale. “Don’t know if you’re in there ignoring me, but I’m sure Robert will give you my message either way. Eavesdropping is his favorite, most infuriating hobby.”
That was exclusively for Robert, who’d been avoiding me ever since he’d set off the chain reaction that led us here. I still felt his presence hovering every now and then. And I seriously doubted he’d ever pass on the opportunity to meddle where he wasn’t wanted. The messy coward wouldn’t even manifest in the same room with me. He just loved drama and being the cause of it, then he went on his dandy way with zero shits given about the fallout.
“Ellie,” I called, drawing out what few syllables there were, “I’m not mad at you, okay? I mean, I get it. I really do. You’ve got enough reason to be pissed at me. It’s not a great feeling on my end, I’ll be honest, but whenever you want to come back, you know where to find me. If you…the apartment’s getting lonely. And, you know, whatever you’re learning with this new coven…” Keeping my fingers crossed that it’s not anything dark and gruesome. Please don’t be involved in questionable reanimation spells and bone thievery. “I’m proud of you. Never realized you had an interest in witch—”
Some kind of rhythmic scratching noise I’d been ignoring for a minute had gotten louder, gradually, so I couldn’t tune it out anymore. Twisting around in a circle, it took me a second to figure out the source. Paz was still at the end of the hall cloaked in shadows, his little nails scraping at the door that led to the attic.
“Paz,” I scolded, clearing the distance in a few frantic steps, “don’t do that—hey, stop. This door can’t take any more abuse. You’ve already done enough damage…you’ll get kicked out at this rate.”
Even in the dark, I saw the curlicue shavings from the finish he’d chiseled off and the thin lines like tally marks carved into the wood. He weaseled around my legs once I’d stepped into his path and made a soft, urgent noise.
“What? You want to play with Lily?” Paz blinked up at me owlishly as if I was supposed to read his thoughts. Snout pressed to the gap under the door, he sniffed at the glossy wood flakes and made them flutter.
“All right, fine. We’ll see what she’s up to.” I cast one last look at Rhys’ apartment, and the sting that had rooted in my chest since the argument with Ellie flared again. “No point in standing out here listening to myself talk.”
Topaz had a good nose for dead things. Lily—the little ghost girl who lived in the boarding house attic—liked him, and that feeling happened to be mutual. Had no idea they’d made friends until Paz woke everyone up one night chasing after a ball none of us had seen before, tossed by an invisible hand. I’d known Lily was there when Ellie and I had moved into this place, but she’d always been too shy. Never manifested into a full apparition. Only in shimmers and dust. A silhouette that didn’t form all the way. A long-lost echo of a small soul in sighs and shadows through the house when the sun went down.
Nothing malevolent. Never intrusive.
She spoke to me now whenever she happened to be in a chatty mood—not that often—and I got the feeling she liked being here. It was still her home. Researching her past was an ongoing project. Her memories would drift, she’d get shy and disappear. Wasn’t much at all to work with. We only made progress when she felt safe, and our interactions were always on her terms.
Lately, whenever I was home to sleep in my own bed and found myself hours deep in insomnia with no end in sight, I’d wander up to the attic. Wait there for her to appear in a sliver of ethereal light or a disembodied voice that was far too young to be so lost. Lily’s presence was as pleasant and airy as the summer itself. She helped to drive away the loneliness when the empty apartment got to be too damn much.
But now that I’d unlocked the door, the air was sharp and unreasonably cold, as if a spirit had already passed through me and chilled my body to the core. Like I’d stepped into an underground crypt.
Paz darted up the stairs and into the dark, his bushy ginger tail disappearing around the corner of the banister. The light switch hadn’t worked for as long as I’d been living here. Faulty wiring in an old house that couldn’t be fixed during renovations or something else from the spirits who called it home, too? You decide.
We had one of those trademarked Victorian Haunted House attics—I think you know what I’m talking about—guaranteed to mess with your head on a relatively normal day, so it didn’t improve things once I heard someone’s distraught crying float down the staircase. Anyone else might’ve turned right back around, locked the door, barricaded it for good measure, and hired a priest to cleanse the place. But for me? This was any other Thursday. It’d been a very long time since a run-of-the-mill weepy ghost sent a shiver down my spine, but this wasn’t just any ghost.
She was only a child.
Small clouds of dust rose from the steps as I took them two at a time, pushing beyond the hurt. The stairs had a steep incline and hooked a slight right to the landing. I gripped the wobbly banister to keep from falling backward.
“Lily?” I called into the gloom. You couldn’t tell the difference between day and night up here. A discolored painting drop cloth blocked the feeble sunlight trying to force itself through the single, circular window. Dust caught my nose, made it itch. I’d lost Paz. “It’s me—it’s Sera. You can come out of hiding if you want. I’m not gonna…can you tell me what’s wrong? Lily?”
Her weeping continued, a fragile, sorrowful melody that reached through the chill to seize my heart. That I couldn’t find her, and yet the ghost child’s cries filled the entire attic, caused the hair at the back of my neck prickle with fear. Stringy cobwebs draped across my face from the eaves and I swatted them away.
“Lily,” I tried again. Shapes revealed themselves now that my eyes had half a minute to adjust. The room masqueraded as a flea market, half of it packed away into boxes and crates with furniture under musty bedsheets. Turned into a graveyard for everything former tenants had left behind, which included a few heavy antiques that were once owned by Robert’s family. Maybe Lily’s, too. Some of the floorboards felt loose, a few nails lifted from the wood and bent at crooked angles. One snagged my bootlace. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
A large, full-body mirror in a gilded frame leaned against one wall, a thin, dirty bedsheet spilling over one corner. The layer of dust gave me a fuzzy, warped reflection. A smudge of orange and pale pink and denim blue. But there was something else, something that’d disturbed the dust in the top left corner. The floorboards groaned under a tentative footstep closer. My hand hovered over the mark, a trace of something left behind in what I was maybe a careless rush. Spreading my fingers out, I recognized a partial handprint. A thumb, possibly an index finger. Too big to be Lily. Bigger than my own hand, but probably the size of Robert’s, if he’d been able to leave physical scars of his presence anymore.
Before I could figure out what the residue was—never mind whatever had left it there—Lily manifested behind me in a pearly, luminous shimmer. The abrupt intrusion made my pulse jump, but it evened out by the time Paz scampered over to her side. I whirled around, my fingers still outstretched, reaching for something that wasn’t there. Lily’s small, transparent form huddled between a few boxes.
I hissed out a breath as I knelt to her level. She hugged her knees to her chest, one fist furiously scrubbing at tears that wouldn’t fall. An old habit that couldn’t quite carry over to the physical realm. Her dress pooled around boots with a tidy row of worn buttons along the side, but they kept fading in and out. The energy she used to help her manifest rendered her like an old photograph. It reminded me of the past memories of Teddy’s life I’d accidentally stumbled through. A suggestion of color in the satin bow tied around her waist never stayed long enough for me to tell what it would’ve been.
My fingers continued to reach for her knowing that they’d never make contact. She sniffled, her chest still heaving with sobs. I wanted to settle a hand on her arm, let her grab hold of my fingers, but that was only a dream. A wish.
“Lily,” I whispered. “You can talk to me. You know that, don’t you? Tell me what’s wrong. What’s got you so upset?”
She peered at me through a veil of sweeping, lush curls, and shook her head.
“It’s all right, I can—”
“It’s too scary,” she answered, her voice shaking like one of the wind chimes on the front porch. “I can’t. He told me not to tell.”
The air threatened to choke itself from my lungs.
“I know,” I tried to soothe, thinking of all the times when Ellie would sidle between the sheets next to me after an intrusive ghost had scared the daylights out of her as a child. “But I swear you won’t get into trouble for telling me. I’ve seen a scary thing or two—I can help you. It’s my job, Lily, I told you before, right? Be very brave for me right now, and I’ll help you. Promise. I’ll make the scary thing go away.”
Had the boarding house acquired a nasty poltergeist? Maybe my parents had sent the one I’d left at their house over here for some sweet revenge.
If it was a demon, we were in big trouble.
Lily swiped at her round cheeks. “I can’t.”
“Did he hurt you?” I wanted to know, frowning, a trace of anger creeping in. “Did he hurt you so you wouldn’t tell me?”
“No.” Her eyes closed with her quick head shake. Trying to get rid of the memory, the image of what had terrified her. “Just scary. He looked all wrong.” She let go of her knees to cover her eyes. “I wanted him to go away.”
“Robert?” I guessed. Knew it wasn’t, I just had to be sure. Robert was a pompous ass, but he wouldn’t go that far.
“No, the man,” Lily replied. Slowly, her hands lowered from her face, her small fists closing around her delicate dress. “He was looking for you.”
My fingers went cold and numb. I managed a strangled exhale, the next question on the edge of tongue and unwilling to take form. Dread finally sucked the air out of my lungs.
“Who?” When her lips formed a tight line, I tried again. “Lily, I promise he won’t hurt you. I won’t let him, all right? But I need to know who he is. Please. You’ve gotta tell me.”
Was it Griff, escaped from Rhys’ morgue to strangle me with his bony corpse hands? A nightmarish warlock stalker come to murder me?
So many choices. A rogue’s gallery of truly delightful possibilities.
Another sob broke through her quiet sniffling. Paz whined and offered a paw that only slipped through Lily’s spectral form. He seemed as disappointed as I’d been.
“Lazarus,” she told me, and the name sounded so strange and ominous and menacing in her tiny child’s voice. “He said he was waiting for you.”
That was more than enough to freeze the blood in my veins.