Summoned to Thirteenth Grave (Charley Davidson #13) Read online

  My mouth dropped open. “The LD is the lethal dose. Please tell me you didn’t—”

  He chuckled and dismissed my question with a wave of his hand. “He’ll be fine. Unless the thing inside him ate his brain. Do they do that?”

  “No,” I said with a light chuckle. “Never.”

  His expression morphed into one of concern. “You are the worst liar.”

  “I hear that so often. So, is this what we do?” I asked Reyes. “Do we go to each and every infected and rip the demons out of them?”

  He flipped a three-egg omelet. “How? There’s no way they’ll allow that in the hospital. And I think many are already too far gone. The demon too strong.”

  Eric moaned and rubbed his thick head of dark hair, dislodging the cloth. One long leg was draped over the edge of the sofa. The other dangled off the side.

  Despite the infection not really being an infection, Cookie walked over to him and felt for a fever. He let her, going still until she was finished, then he opened his eyes and tried to focus.

  I sat on the coffee table next to him. “How are you, Eric?”

  He frowned and fought to keep his gaze on me. “How many of you are there supposed to be?”

  “Just one, thank the Maker. How many of you are there supposed to be?”

  “You only wish there were two of me, gorgeous,” he said, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

  “Damn, you caught me.” I knelt next to him and gave his head a hug. “How do you feel?”

  “Fucked up.”

  “That would be the Rohypnol. At least, I hope it’s the Rohypnol.”

  He leaned away from me in shock. “You roofied me?”

  That time I grinned. “You wish. Do you remember anything?”

  “Only that the flu sucks. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

  “You were. In a way. But I’ll let your fearless leader explain.”

  When I tried to stand, he took my hand and held it to his chest. They always were the biggest flirts. “You’re leaving me already?”

  “Making breakfast. Well, I’m watching breakfast being made. Can you eat?”

  He put a hand on his stomach. “You know, I think I can.”

  “That kid could eat a Chevy if he were hungry enough,” Donovan said. “Nothing bothers him.” He looked from me to Reyes and back. “I don’t know how to thank you guys.”

  “I need my laundry done,” I offered.

  He laughed. “Laundry it is.”

  Eric put the back of my hand to his lips, closed his eyes, and whispered, “You were wrong.”

  I leaned closer. “Oh, yeah? About what?”

  “Your light. It did help. It did weaken it.”

  “Eric,” I said, my voice cracking when I realized what he was saying. “You remember?”

  He shook his head. “Only parts. Only you. Your light. It . . . I don’t know . . . it got weaker. The weaker it got, the better I felt.”

  “So you knew something was inside you?”

  “Not at first. But after a while, I could . . . I could hear it breathing. Like it was using my lungs to get air and my eyes to see and my ears to hear.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and I was. I was sorry for every person going through that same thing as we spoke.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, unfortunately, it is.”

  “No. I don’t think it is.” He tried to sit up but gave in and fell back onto the sofa. “It’s all a smoke screen.”

  Reyes walked over. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”

  He rubbed his face with his free hand. “I’m sorry. That’s all I remembered. Something about it being a smoke screen.”

  “You could understand it?” I asked.

  “Its thoughts. I could make out what it was thinking. Just bits and pieces, and I remember something about all of it being a part of a bigger picture.”

  I looked over at Reyes. “This just gets better and better.”

  Frustrated, his free hand curled into a fist. I walked over to him, uncurled it, and laced my fingers through his. His gaze finally met mine, sad and knowing, before he planted a knee-dissolving kiss on me and went back to cooking. So I went back to watching; I just did it from the vantage point of the floor next to Eric as I knelt beside him again.

  “Hey, pumpkin,” I said when Meiko walked in.

  He ignored me and began the jump-for-sparks game.

  “He’s adorable,” Eric said. “Yours?”

  I snorted. “No. Wait.” When I gaped at him, he graced me with a lopsided grin. “You can see him?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t everyone?”

  “No, everyone can’t,” I said, offended. “What the hell?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you aren’t.” I stood up and stomped over to Cookie. “Everyone can see the departed now. Pretty soon, I’m not going to be that special.”

  Cookie reached up and patted my hair. “Don’t you worry, hon. You take special to a whole new level.”

  “Really?” I sank into the chair next to her and put my head on her shoulder. “You aren’t just saying that?”

  “Of course not.”

  I raised my head. “You know I can tell when people are lying.”

  She forced my head back onto her shoulder. “Just go with it, sweetheart.”

  “Okay.” I snuggled closer. “Can you tell me I’m pretty?”

  “You’re very pretty.”

  I sighed, certain my light glowed just a little brighter than it had before, sad that I couldn’t see it for myself.

  * * *

  Eric was up and eating in no time. Garrett, Pari, Amber, and Quentin joined us for breakfast, too. Gemma wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t blame her.

  While Pari talked tattoos with the guys, Garrett showed Reyes and me what he’d found.

  “It’s only one passage, a quatrain, but it talks about a world within a world.”

  I perked up. “That sounds promising.”

  “The problem with prophecies is that they’re much clearer after the fact, when specific events can point to what was written instead of vice versa. So as far as gleaning anything useful from it, I deciphered one section that talks about finding the heart and destroying it.”

  “The heart?” I asked. “The heart of what? A demon?”

  He reread the passage, probably for the hundredth time. I could feel the frustration radiating out of him. “It doesn’t say.”

  “Well, does it say how?”

  “Not that I can tell, but I’ll keep working on it. Sometimes it just takes one word, one connection, to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.”

  “So, that’s it?” I asked, trying not to sound too disappointed.

  “That’s it. That’s all I’ve found so far.”

  I sat back and crossed my arms. “Who writes all these stupid prophecies, anyway? They’re stupid.”

  “This one was written by Nostradamus himself.”

  “Wow. Nostradamus?” I straightened in my chair. “Okay, I feel special again.”

  “And pretty?” Pari asked.

  “And pretty. But only because last night Reyes was doing that thing he does with his tongue—”

  “Charley!” Cookie screeched, her voice discovering new octaves that were as yet unknown to mankind. “There are children present.”

  “What? He can do things with his tongue that most people—”

  “Charley!” she repeated.

  “What? He can make the shape of a clover with his tongue.” I turned to Reyes and ordered him to show her the tongue thing with a point and a nudge.

  He stuck out his tongue and curled the end into a clover.

  Cookie’s face became infused with a bright pink hue.

  I giggled, looked right at her, and said, “Perv.”

  “You did that on purpose.”

  “It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

  The main door opened, and my lying scumbag of an unc
le whom I adored despite the decades of deceit and betrayal walked in.

  I brightened. “Hey, Uncle Bob.”

  “Hey, pumpkin. Honey one and honey two.” He gave both his girls a peck. Amber grinned. Cookie was still busy blushing. “What’d I miss?”

  “We dragged a Shade demon out of Eric, only this time the host survived.”

  “This time?” Eric asked, horrified.

  I dismissed his concern with a wave of my hand.

  “That’s great, pumpkin.” Ubie took out his laptop and opened it. “I knew I’d heard that name before.”

  “Eric?” Amber asked.

  “Meiko. Is he here?”

  She nodded and pointed to the little guy sitting in her lap. Kind of. While the departed were solid to Reyes and me, even though Quentin and Amber could see them, they were still incorporeal. So he was actually just levitating in and around the area of her lap. But he didn’t know that, so it was all good.

  He cleared his throat. “Can you take him to another room, smidgeon?”

  “I guess, but you have to tell me everything when I come back.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  She deadpanned him, then added, “Everything,” the way only a thirteen-year-old girl could. With the skill of a seasoned nanny, she convinced Meiko they should go watch the sunrise.

  “Okay,” Ubie said when they were gone. “A custodian found a boy in a Dumpster at North Valley High last Saturday.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Cookie said, but I had more of a knee-jerk reaction.

  “No! It can’t be Meiko.” I stood and walked around the table to see what he was looking at, which was nothing yet. “He’s still alive. Rocket said.”

  Ubie patted the air. “Let me finish.”

  I eased into a seat beside him.

  “The school had cameras. It’s hard to see, but it caught this guy carrying what could be the boy in a white sheet.”

  We all gathered around his laptop as he played a grainy video. A man, barely visible in the far corner of the camera’s lens, walked past carrying something wrapped in a white sheet. He wore a baseball cap, so it would be impossible to identify him from that footage.

  “We figure maybe this guy thought he was dead when he dumped him? Or maybe he thought he would die. We don’t know for sure.”

  I leaned closer, trying to get a detail, any detail, from the rough footage. “How did the custodian find him?”

  “Taking out the trash. He saw the sheet and immediately suspected something. He jumped into the Dumpster and found the boy.”

  “Wait, how do you know that’s Meiko?”

  “Because it’s an unusual name. It was weaved into a braided bracelet he was wearing.”

  “He is wearing a bracelet,” I said.

  Ubie showed me a picture of an unconscious boy in a hospital gown.

  “That’s him,” Quentin said, pointing to the picture, his soft, deep voice almost pronouncing the words coherently. He didn’t use his voice often, and I loved it when he did.

  Ubie gave him a grateful nod. “Then you’re right, Charley. He is still alive, but he’s in a coma.”

  “A coma?” A vise tightened around my chest.

  Quentin tapped me on the shoulder. I explained, and his face fell.

  “He threw him away like a piece of garbage,” he said, the abruptness of his signs showing his distress. “He’s just a little boy.”

  “I know, hon.” I rubbed his shoulder, then turned to Ubie. “Uncle Bob, we have to find his mother and sister. I need a full canvass—traffic cam footage and cell tower records to check for pings at the time Meiko was left in the Dumpster.”

  He raked a hand down his face, and I realized he’d been up all night. “Hon, this isn’t New York.”

  “Well, what do we have? He will have stuck close to home, right? That school is in Los Ranchos just off Fourth. What do we know about that custodian?”

  “He’s been cleared. We can canvass the area, talk to the school staff and neighbors, see if they saw anything unusual. But with everything going on, the whole town is in an uproar. I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “I’ll revisit the missing persons report,” Cookie said. “If only I knew someone on the police force who could get it for me.”

  Uncle Bob held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll have it to you in an hour.”

  “And, Uncle Bob, we need a guard on Meiko. If Belinda’s abductor finds out he’s still alive, he’ll finish the job. I’ve been assured of that.”

  “Already on it. Because they admitted him as a John Doe, his name won’t be on any of his charts. I’ll make sure it stays that way, just in case this guy figures out his mistake.”

  I studied Ubie’s profile. The one I loved so much. The one I trusted more than just about anyone else’s. Reyes was right. He must’ve had a good reason to lie to me. I just could not fathom what that might be.

  Normally, I would’ve asked for his help with the inquiries into my mother’s death. I missed Team Davidson. We worked well together. Not this time, however. I’d have to go it alone. Well, alone-ish. At least until I could figure out what he was lying about and why.

  He turned a questioning gaze on me. I snapped back to attention and refocused on the screen, taking note of every detail I could make out.

  Even though nothing struck me as important, I kept watching it over and over as we ate. By the time we’d fed and clothed ourselves, Albuquerque featured heavily on news channels across the nation. People were evacuating the city in droves, and looting had grown to epidemic levels.

  In total, however, even with the now hundreds of patients in hospitals across the city, there had only been seven deaths linked to the disease.

  The mass publicity partly stemmed from the bizarre nature of the infection. The strange symptoms and behaviors of those infected. Another twist that whipped the press into a frenzy was the fact that the CDC couldn’t identify, or even find, a virus. That mystery upped the epidemic’s appeal a hundredfold. Was it environmental? Was it a mass poisoning? Was it a biological weapon?

  While the press had christened the perceived virus Delirium, civilians were calling it a full-blown zombie apocalypse. If I hadn’t played such an integral part in causing it, I probably would have gone with the latter as well.

  I sat pondering the zombie angle while I drove us to the state office in Santa Fe. Then my thoughts strayed to another battle on the horizon. One our daughter was destined to fight. I’d thought about her future trials and tribulations a lot while in Marmalade, but there was one thing I hadn’t thought of until one of the wraiths pointed it out in the odd way they pointed out many things.

  That’s what was so strange about them. About the whole dimension. We didn’t have actual conversations, the wraiths and me. They could simply read my thoughts, and whenever they had something to offer, a suggestion to make, or a smart-ass opinion to throw in, they spoke to me. But they were voiceless. Instead, their thoughts were injected into my head.

  Good thing, because along with the perpetual night of Marmalade came a complete absence of sound. Any sound. It was a vacuum, eliminating sight, sound, scent, touch, and taste.

  It was a punishment.

  But I did have tons of time to do that deep thinking thing that was so popular with the kids these days. Having absolutely zero data coming in and zero going out tended to shift one’s perspective. And raise one’s odds of successfully entering an insanity plea should the need arise.

  So, one day, sometime about halfway through my coffin-esque vacay, I was thinking about Beep’s army, the Sentry. I contemplated the key players. The hordes of departed that stand at her side. The hellhounds that surround her and protect her with their lives. And one of the wraiths said something that struck a dissonant chord. Why I hadn’t thought of it before, I’d never know, but if a wraith brought it up, it was important.

  Since I’d finally gotten my land legs back, I opted to drive us to the state capital. I looked over at my contemplative
husband, his profile outlined beautifully by the vivid colors of the Sandia Mountains. He rested his right hand at his mouth, his long fingers brushing against his lips, a soft line between his brows as he thought.

  He kept his gaze locked on the landscape, but he grinned and said, “It’s usually better for the driver to watch the road.”

  “Usually being the operative word.”

  He let his dark irises drift toward me.

  I patted Misery’s dash. “She missed me. Poor girl.”

  “I guarantee you, Mrs. Davidson, I missed you more.”

  My stomach flip-flopped with that information, but I opted to address another segment of his statement. “Mrs. Davidson. I never changed my name.”

  “I’m not sure Farrow suits you.”

  I gaped at him, appalled. “You don’t want me to take your name. You’re ashamed of me.”

  He didn’t take the bait. “Something’s eating at you.”

  “Ya think?” God, I was good at comebacks. Prolly why I was named Most Likely to be Jailed for Sassing a Cop. I still had the sash and crown to prove it. “Do you remember that one sparkling moment of clairvoyance I had way back when you ripped Beep out of my arms and gave her to your biological human parents to raise because she’d be safer?”

  He shifted in his seat. “Yes.”

  “Well, during my stint in Marmalade, I was floating there, minding my own business, when a wraith brought up a super good point.”

  “And that was?”

  “I saw everyone around our daughter on her big debut. You know, when she kicks your father’s ass.”

  His jaw tightened. “He’s not my father.”

  “Either way, so I saw everyone from her great army to the Twelve, her pack of hellhounds.”

  “Yeah, I remember who the Twelve are.”

  “I saw Amber and Quentin, Angel and Mr. Wong. Everyone. But do you know who I didn’t see?”

  He planted a curious expression on me.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Us.”

  His soft frown reappeared, and he turned to look out the window again. He did that when he was thinking. He was a thinker.

  “Reyes, I’m not sure we’re going to make it.”

  “That’s not necessarily what that means. Those who prophesize rarely see themselves in their visions.”

  “Really? Well, okay, then wouldn’t I have at least seen you? I mean, think about it. Why would our daughter have to face Lucifer without us? All these prophecies, all these predictions, they all say the same thing. Our daughter is going to face Satan in a battle for humanity. Not you. Not me. Not the three of us. Beep. Just Beep. Why is that?”