Fifth Grave Past the Light Read online

  Is that all you’ve got?

  With a smile spreading slowly across my face, I dropped everything I’d just picked up and went back for more.

  5

  I may not have any skeletons in my closet, but I do have a little box of souls in my sock drawer.

  —T-SHIRT

  I woke up to a very warm Reyes pressed against my backside and a very cold Artemis curled against my front. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she were a smidgen warmer than the arctic circle. Artemis was a gorgeous Rottweiler who died a few months ago. She’d been protecting me ever since, and she had an incredible way of ripping demons to shreds and sending them back to hell, then rolling over for a belly rub.

  Unfortunately, she snored. Why a departed Rottweiler who didn’t actually need oxygen would snore was beyond me. I nuzzled her neck, then wiggled until I was out from under covers and arms and paws. Reyes lay there, his face the picture of innocence. True, it was a sexy, sensual kind of innocence, but it did magical things to my nether regions. I wanted to get one last kiss before the evening ended but didn’t dare wake him again. I’d be sore enough as it was. He had an arm thrown over his forehead, his right palm open. The burns from the bullet were already healed.

  The next time I gathered articles of clothing and headed for the door, I actually made it out of Reyes’s apartment. The frigid air in the hallway startled me. I shivered and hurried to my own apartment about ten steps away. I hadn’t locked it. I would never learn.

  Unfortunately, my apartment was just as cold as the hallway. I changed into a pair of pajamas that said instant human. just add coffee. and scurried between my sheets. Figuring I’d never get any sleep, I contemplated for the thousandth time what it would mean if Reyes was setting fire to half of Albuquerque, albeit the seedy half.

  And Garrett. What had he gone through? What had him so utterly obsessed with the dark underbelly of hell? Had he really been tortured? How was any of that even possible?

  As I lay wondering about things I didn’t want to wonder about, I heard a scratching sound under my bed. Had Artemis followed me? The sound started out as a faint scuffing but grew louder the longer I lay there. It wasn’t like a dog pawing, but more like someone scratching on wood, as though trying to claw through it. Then again, that could just be my imagination getting the better of me.

  Not much scared me, but someone scratching under my bed as I lay on it was way too urban legend for me. Next I would hear a drip only to discover it was the blood of my boyfriend hanging dead from a tree. Luckily, I had no trees in my apartment. Then I thought, Hey, a tree would add a nice touch.

  No, I didn’t need to think about things like that at the moment. Someone was definitely under my bed. Scratching.

  I inched to the side, leaned over it slowly, and pulled up the bed skirt. A set of huge blue eyes stared back at me and it took every ounce of strength I had not to scream like someone being mauled by a wild animal. I bit down and met her gaze. She looked about seven, judging by the size of her eyes and the shape of her round cheeks. She was lying on her back, scratching the wood that held my mattress. Blond hair, tangled and matted, hung over her eyes, partially obstructing her view. Her childlike face was dirty, her hair completely covered in a slick, oily mud. I couldn’t tell what she was wearing, but she looked absolutely frantic. She clawed at the wood with a panicked aggression. Her eyes wide, searching. She was terrified. Period. She wanted out of wherever she was.

  “Hi,” I said as softly as I could. She didn’t miss a beat. She continued to claw and stare at me as though trying to escape, and my heart sank.

  Just then I realized most of her fingernails were jagged and broken. They wouldn’t have broken on my bed. The dearly departed come fully assembled. Or torn apart. If her fingernails were frayed and broken, it happened while she was still alive. But she kept clawing anyway, splintering the wood with her nails, trying frantically to get out of wherever it was she was trapped.

  I climbed off my bed and lay flat on the floor beside her.

  “Honey,” I said, reaching out, hoping to ease her fears.

  She paused, but only for a moment. She stared at me as though she couldn’t quite figure out what I was or what I was doing there. Then she went back to clawing.

  Angel, my departed thirteen-year-old investigator and partner in crime, once said that my touch, as the grim reaper, was healing. I reached under the bed and put my hand on her shoulder. She stared straight ahead, eyeing the boards under my bed, but she did seem to calm a bit. Then she slowly started to claw again, only with less of a frenzied panic. She clawed absently at the board in front of her face.

  She had a pixie face with a bow-shaped mouth and huge eyes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had wings. If pixies did exist, I was fairly certain they would look exactly like her.

  Because I didn’t know what to do for her, I stayed beside her the rest of the night with my hand on her shoulder. I fell asleep that way, on the floor. Sometime in the early morning hours, Artemis had joined me. I felt like Reyes and I had joint custody, taking turns with her. I didn’t mind her sleeping with Reyes, though, because waking up with a ninety-pound dog on my back was not as fun as one might think. I liked air. I liked to breathe without my lungs being on fire. So when I woke up with Artemis literally taking up the length of me, her frigid body like ice, the fact that I was shivering should not have been surprising. Normally I was under the safety of covers when she slept with me. The floor did not conduct heat well.

  Then I remembered why I was on the floor. I startled and glanced under the bed. The girl was still there, only she had scooted to the corner farthest away from me and lay curled into herself, her knees on the floor, her eyes peering out from underneath her dirty hair. And she was lovely. With the sun peeking over the horizon and casting a soft glow in the room, I was able to see her in a different light. I could see the departed in any light, but the darker the area, the grayer the departed became. Now I could see the blond hair beneath the mud more clearly. The crystal depths of her blue eyes.

  My hand was still under the bed and there was something in it. I pulled it out and opened my palm. It was fragments of wood from where she’d scratched. I rolled over onto my side. This meant I had to kick Artemis off me. She’d been snoring, and moving her was like moving a small mountain.

  “Oh, my god, Artemis, scootch over. Dogs,” I said to the pixie. She didn’t seem amused. It happened. Once I managed to settle on my side, I lay there a long while, hoping to coax her closer. To coax her to cross.

  Then I heard breathing, panting, and not from Artemis. I rolled onto my knees and looked over my bed. There in a far corner of my room between my nightstand and leopard skin floor lamp, was another girl, only this one was older. She looked about nineteen, but she was very similar to the pixie. Matted blond hair, slick oily mud from head to toe. She wore only a short gown. Her bare feet were covered in scratches, as though she’d fought back, kicking at someone, or she’d tried to run before dying. I wondered if the girls were related. Then I noticed ligature marks on her neck. I hadn’t seen them on the pixie, but her hair and position had made it impossible to be sure. I could get a probable cause of death of this one at least. She had been strangled, and judging by the broken blood vessels in her eyes and the swollen face, that was very likely the way she’d died.

  Artemis woke up and began sniffing under the bed. I was worried she would scare the pixie. Instead, the girl seemed fascinated by her. Her features softened and she almost smiled. Almost.

  “You keep an eye on this one, okay?” I said to Artemis, and I went around the bed to try to talk to the other one. Like the pixie when she first showed up, this one was terrified, staring off into space with wide eyes. She kept her hands up as though trying to defend herself. When I touched her arm, she curled into herself even more. She ducked her head behind her arms and whimpered.

  Sometimes my job sucked. What had these girls gone through? What made them scared of their own shadow? Having re
cently gone through a bout of PTSD, I could understand the “scared of your own shadow” thing, but normally death brought with it a certain amount of healing. People didn’t suffer their own ends for eternity. Yet these girls seemed stuck in the moments they’d died.

  I needed a plan. First coffee. Then Uncle Bob. Something must have happened. Surely these girls had been reported missing.

  Cookie was going to be in class all day. For a second, I actually thought about postponing it, then realized the world would be a safer place with her in that class. I couldn’t let the world down.

  I visited the ladies’ room and sat atop my porcelain throne. That’s when I heard more whimpering coming from the living room. No way. Another one? Feeling better – there was nothing like ninety pounds resting on your bladder at dawn – I peeked into my living room. I didn’t see anyone besides Mr. Wong at first. The sounds were coming from somewhere near him, but he wouldn’t be making them. He was a permanent fixture, had been here since I rented the apartment, and was being his usual self, hovering in a corner, silent as the moon. Since he’d never said anything, had never even moved from that spot, I doubted he would be whimpering now.

  I tiptoed to Sophie, my secondhand sofa, and saw a third woman. And while this one was blond as well, she was not a natural blonde. She looked Hispanic. Around twenty-five. But she had the same matted hair, only the blond in hers hung in uneven patches as though it had been bleached in a hurry or under duress. And she had the same terrified expression. Exhibited the same mindless behavior.

  What the hell was going on? I would never figure it out without a caffeine fix. I turned to have my morning meeting of the minds with Mr. Coffee. We talked every morning about lots of different things. He mostly gurgled and let off steam while brewing the elixir of life. I mostly yawned and complained about mornings, the weather, men. Whatever struck my fancy.

  Once he’d finished his rant, something about how I only loved him for his carafe, I realized I had run out of clean cups. And dish soap. After a quick trip to the bathroom and back, I washed a few cups with shampoo, then reached in the top cabinet for my hidden treasure of gold. Nondairy creamer. Some people would call me a sellout, a charlatan for using the fake stuff, but the fake stuff made me happy. Much like puppies did. And George. Reyes’s shower.

  But when I opened the cabinet, I found another woman holed up inside it. I jumped back, let out something that resembled a squeak on a rusty wheel, and clutched my heart. One would think that, since I was the grim reaper, I’d be used to the dead showing up unexpectedly. Nope. It still got me every time. On the bright side, the rush of adrenaline helped. Not a lot. I still needed a caffeine fix, but at least I was awake enough to realize I quite possibly had my underwear on inside out. Something didn’t feel right down yonder.

  I approached the woman with caution when another movement caught my attention. I had to look up. Up! And there on my wall was another woman. This one looked about thirty. She could’ve been a natural blonde. Wasn’t sure. But she was crawling up my wall toward the ceiling. She scurried to a corner and curled into it.

  I did a 360, turning to assess my surroundings, and counted no less that five more women in varying states of terror. They were all filthy, all covered in the same oil, and from what I could see, all strangled. My heart sank for them. They couldn’t have all died recently. I would have heard something in the news. Then I realized their clothing and hairstyles were from different time periods. While one looked almost recent with a Faded Glory button-down, another actually looked from about twenty years ago, chunks of her hair pulled into a ponytail with a fluffy neon scrunchy. The terror in their eyes, the mindless fear that paralyzed them, ripped through my heart.

  My front door opened.

  “Good morning,” Cookie said as she walked in, almost ready to face the world. She looked like she hadn’t gotten much sleep, and she had a rather nasty shiner.

  “Hey, you,” I said, pretending not to notice. I poured her a cup and added all the fixings.

  “What do you think?”

  “What? Oh, you mean your black eye? I hardly noticed.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said with an indignant gasp before pointing at her eye. “I earned this puppy. I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth. Amber made me breakfast.”

  “No way.”

  “Way. And it wasn’t half bad once I picked out the shell fragments.”

  “Nice.” I took a sip of my coffee. Smacked my lips. Took another sip, then handed it to Cookie. “Here, taste this.”

  She took a sip, then handed it back, smacking her lips, too. “What is that?”

  “Not sure. Mr. Coffee has never let me down.” I took another sip. “Maybe it’s not him. I ran out of dish soap and had to use shampoo. I’m not entirely certain I rinsed well.”

  “You did your dishes with shampoo?”

  “It was either that or my apricot body scrub.”

  “No, good call. A little shampoo won’t hurt you.”

  “Right? I just don’t know what my day would be like without coffee to give it a good kick start. Is it wrong that every time I run out of creamer, I become slightly suicidal?”

  “Not at all. I became suicidal once when Jug-N-Chug ran out of French vanilla flavoring syrup.”

  “I hear ya.” Coffee was that place where the sun comes up over the horizon and lights the heavens in a burst of vibrant colors. Shampoo remnants didn’t change that fact.

  “Is your aunt Lil here?” she asked.

  Aunt Lillian had died in the sixties and was now a semipermanent roommate. Thankfully, she traveled a lot. “I think she’s still in Africa. She loves that place.” Speaking of dead roommates, I perused the woman hanging – literally – in my space bubble. “When you get a break in class, I need you to do some research.”

  “Okay, on what?”

  “I have an apartment full of departed women.”

  Cookie stopped. She looked around, suddenly wary. “Like, right now?”

  “As we speak.”

  “How many are we talking?”

  “Let me count.”

  I strolled into my bedroom, made a detour to count the one in the shower, then came back out and pointed my finger in every direction imaginable. Watching Cookie’s expression go from slightly worried to horrified was also a lot like that place where the sun comes up over the horizon and lights the heavens. Only, you know, funnier.

  I walked back into the kitchen and went through the cabinets. “Nine,” I said, matter-of-fact. “Oh, wait.” I went to the fridge and checked it, too. “Nope, just nine. All blond but not all natural. Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, and one Asian. Ages anywhere from around seven-ish to thirty, thirty-five.”

  She put her cup down, so I knew what she was about to relay was serious. “Charley, I need to stay home and help. This is serious.”

  Nailed it. “I know it is, but they aren’t going anywhere and I am almost certain they didn’t die recently. But why are they showing up now? And in droves?”

  “Do you think this was the work of a serial killer?”

  “Most likely. I can’t imagine these deaths the result of more than one person’s efforts. Two at the most. I tried to get them to chillax, but I don’t think they know what that means.”

  “Okay, call me if you need anything.” She started for the door, then stopped. “No, I can’t go to this class. I need to help you with research and stuff. These poor women.”

  “No, you need to go learn how not to kill people unless you really, really, really want to. Like on purpose. And if I have to, I can get Garrett on this as well.”

  “Garrett,” Cookie said, her voice low and sultry as she purred his name. I could have sworn her eyes rolled back into her head.

  “Hmm, that’s surprising.”

  She bounced back to me. “What?”

  “It’s just that last night you couldn’t get enough of checking out Uncle Bob’s ass. I thought maybe you had a thing for him.”

&
nbsp; “What? I was not checking out your uncle’s ass.” When I did that deadpan thing I was so fond of, she fessed up. “Okay, maybe a little. Is it just me or is he getting in shape?”

  I had noticed. Uncle Bob was much more fit. And quite comely. I knew why, too. He had such a thing for Cookie, it was unreal. He was getting fit for her. It was sweet. And slightly disturbing. What if they dated? What if they dated, then broke up? Where would I be? I nudged her toward the door.

  “Okay, I’m leaving Amber alone today. She’s promised to stay in and do her homework.”

  “On a Saturday? All day?” I snorted. “I used to tell my parents the same thing.”

  “That’s it. I’m taking her to her grandma’s.”

  “That’s too far. You’ll be late for class. You don’t want to sit in the back of the room, do you? Besides, I’m just kidding, she’ll be fine. She’s nothing like me. Now, off you go.”

  “Wait. What the heck is that?” I looked where she was pointing.

  My newest painting sat propped against a bookcase. “I figured I would express my feelings through art. You know, for the new shrink.” My sister, Gemma, had set me up with a psychologist to work on my PTSD. That painting should help move that right along.

  “And you were feeling homicidal?”

  “I felt macabre with a hint of beheading would do the trick. This stuff freaks the shit out of them.”

  “You know, Charley, they really are trying to help you.”

  “I know, I know. Now, off you go.” I hated to do it, but I had to force Cookie out the door, then lock it behind her. She was being very uncooperative.

  I turned toward the bathroom to shower and get dressed, but came face-to-face with another departed woman. Only this one was not at all like the others. She had long black hair and wore scrubs with an ID attached to a lanyard.

  “Hi,” I said, checking out her neck. She hadn’t been strangled like the others either.