Keeper vs. Reaper (Graveyard Guardians Book 1) (4 page)

Beyond the grapes he could see the structures of the wineries. Some were old and antique in appearance. Others were more contemporary, having been built more recently. Farther out, he spotted large homes
that were set against the hills.

Well … now that he was feeling better, maybe he should go do some wine tasting.

On second thought, nah, he still had to drive back to Summer Hollow, and he didn’t really care for wine all that much anyway.

With nowhere to go and not caring to go anywhere in particular, he opened the door and j
umped down from the driver seat. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes that he rarely touched from behind the seat and crawled up onto the hood.

Lighting a smoke, he settled back against the windshield and puffed on his cigarette as he stared down at the beauty below him.
He knew full well that the beauty of nature was about the only thing that he would come close to loving in his pathetic life.

Ethan let go of her hand and they strode quickly across the short expanse to the farmhouse. Lucy heard movement in the house as they stepped up on the porch. She hurried to the front door and flung it open to find all of her brothers and sisters had gotten to the house before her and Ethan. The entire brood of adult children were scurrying about in the kitchen uncovering the food and making coffee.

“Hey Luce!” Her oldest brother Gregory Jr, set a tray of blueberry muffins on the counter and embraced her. “How ya doin’?”

“I’m all right.” She gave Greg a squeeze and then wiggled out of his arms. “Just want this day to be over, mostly.”

“Well, we’re almost there.”

Thank
God.

Lucy knew his intention was to reassure her, but she saw that his eyes were the ones holding back sadness.

Lucy knew Greg well enough to know he was regretting that he hadn’t been around as much the last few years. Well, longer than that really. Greg was thirty-five years old and lived in San Francisco, which was about four hours away from home. He had been called over to become Keeper for one of the Bay Area graveyards. The family who had been Keeping it had no living heirs to take over.  Before that he had assisted her father at home in Summer Hollow, like all the children did.

Greg smiled, “Ethan, how
‘bout you man, you good?” He held his hand out for a shake.

Ethan returned the smile, but his was weak. Lucy knew he was happy to see Greg, but he missed Gregory Sr. Ethan grasped Greg’s hand. “I’ve been better, for sure.”

“Son of a …” James yelled from in front of the open oven. His sharp yell was immediately followed by the ear assaulting clang of metal muffin tin against tile kitchen floor. “Shit! I burned my fingers.” He stuck two of his fingers between his lips.

Lucy and Stephanie both hurried over and fell to their knees to try and save the muffins. “Use an oven mitt, dumbass! Look at what you did
,” Steph screamed at him from the floor.

“Are you serious? Fuck the muffins, I
burnt
myself, Steph.”

“Well you wouldn’t have if you had used a fucking oven mitt.”
Steph’s voice escalated and she stood up to face him.

James stood a full foot taller than Steph, but she stared up at him and fearlessly balled her fists at her side. Their identical dark brown eyes met and then he flipped her the middle finger as a silent challenge. Lucy stood up from the mess to intervene but Hannah slid in between them.

“Let me look at it, J.” She put her arm around James and gently led him away. The impending fight would have likely been an embarrassing scene had they been left to go at it. Sadly, it wouldn’t have been the first time the public had witnessed an Estmond family brawl.

“You got lucky!” Steph called as they headed toward the bathroom. “
God, I can’t believe he is twenty-four years old and hasn’t learned to use the freaking oven mitts.”

Lucy sighed, trying to push her frustration with her sister aside. Stephanie and James were fraternal twins and one of the closer pairs out of the clan. They were the youngest, aside from Lucy.

Since birth the twins had fought a lot, but anyone who dared pick a fight with either Steph or James had to deal with the other half of the pair. “Leave him alone, at least for today,” Lucy whispered to her sister.

Steph rolled her eyes, insinuating a ‘yeah right
, like that’s gonna happen’ and then bent back down to the floor. She gathered the remnants of the crumbled muffin mess and tossed it in the metal trash can at the end of the counters.

Across the kitchen, Olivia had her hair pulled up into a messy bun to keep any renegade strands from getting in the food. She whipped away from the Formica countertop with a tray of cookies
and hurried toward Lucy. “Get this stuff out in the family room. I can see people starting to come over from the cemetery.”

Lucy frowned at her sister. “I don’t understand why we have to do this shit
,” she muttered as Olivia shoved the tray into her hands.

Olivia sighed. “Because we are it. There isn’t anyone else.” She pointed at the door leading to the family room. “Now get your ass in there.”

Lucy clutched the tray and stalked out of the room, hearing her sister giving orders to everyone else. About thirty seconds after she set the tray on one of the folding tables they had set up in the room, the kitchen door swung open and the rest of her family marched out, each holding an item for the folding table. Ethan trailed behind them with a giant silver coffee pot.

“Open the door, Lucy
,” Olivia demanded. “Ethan, put that on the buffet and plug it in.”

Lucy shook her head. Olivia had always been this way, it wasn’t just the stress of the funeral. She was a complete control freak. Lucy could only be grateful that she didn’t have to share a room with her growing up. She had to share with Stephanie, which was entirely on the other side of the spectrum since Steph was carefree and extremely messy.

A quick peek out the curtain before she opened the front door for the guests had her looking back at her family. “Man, we made all these snacks and every single person out there has a freaking casserole or something.”

“Lucy! Just let them in, for crying out loud.”

“All right, bossy.” She swung the front door open and then propped oven the screen door so that everyone could wander in and out freely.

“Hi, Mrs. Bradley.” She waved as the elderly woman navigated the steps with a casserole dish covered in aluminum foil.

“Hello Dear.” Mrs. Bradley smiled as she stepped up onto the porch. The smile added a few more creases to her age wrinkled face. “I brought you my special recipe, homemade mac n cheese.”

Lucy reached out to take the dish from her. “Oh, this is wonderful. I can’t wait to dig in to it. Thank you, Mrs. Bradley.”

In truth, she could wait. Mrs. Bradley brought her homemade mac n cheese to every public event involving food, and it tasted like what Lucy imagined a burnt piece of rubber might taste like. Whatever the special ingredient was, it did not help the recipe at all. But, somehow, every place she took that darn mac n cheese, she took the dish back home empty.

Lucy stood there while Mrs. Bradley nodded, apparently approving of Lucy’s comment about the mac n cheese and then she reached out, placing her liver spotted hand on Lucy’s shoulder, “I’m so sorry for your loss, honey.”

Here it comes.

“Your daddy was a darn fine man.”

“Thank you again, Mrs. Bradley.”

Mrs. Bradley withdrew her hand and left Lucy standing on the porch as she wandered into the house muttering “Yes, darn fine man.”

While the rest of the crowd began their ascent up the steps onto the porch, Lucy hurried into the house after her. Depositing the mac n cheese on the folding table without even bothering to uncover it, she caught Ethan’s eye across the room and made a face. Ethan was just as familiar with Mrs. Bradley’s special mac n cheese as she was, so he gave her a smile and rolled his eyes.

The chatter of voices escalated as more people poured into the house. Lucy tried her best to be cordial as each person appeared in front of her, expressing their condolences for her loss. Each time she glanced up, one of her siblings was also engaged in conversation with someone. Even Ethan was being sought out by the mourners.

The walls of the house began to feel confining, too small and crowded.  Lucy grabbed a mug, filled it with black coffee and stepped out onto the porch. Her hopes for a few minutes of alone time were crushed when she found several people out on the porch chatting with each other.

With no other option, she glanced out at the graveyard and quietly slipped off the porch. Once she had crossed the lawn and passed the fence, she found herself in the peaceful silence of the dead. Just what she needed.

Wandering slowly up one of the gravel pathways with her mug in hand, Lucy stared at the strips of sunlight filtering through the trees. The shadows from the branches moved back and forth with the gentle breeze. She found one of the old iron benches that were scattered throughout along the trails and sat down to stare out at the tombstones. The graveyard had always been one of the places she liked to go to think. This time, she found herself pondering why it bothered her so much that everyone had something great to say about her father.

People sure did love him. She tried so hard to be a good person like he was, but it came easy for him. For her, it was much harder to live up to his standard of goodness, she had too much intolerance for stupidity. She also didn’t like being around people that much, so kindness just didn’t come that easily.

“Just be yourself, Lucy Mae,” her father always said to her on the many long talks in the graveyard. “You don’t have to be like me. I am me and you are you. Besides, do you honestly think that I never get fed up with the idiots we come into contact with on a daily basis? We all have our moments, Lucy Mae, and it doesn’t make us any less caring and it sure as hell doesn’t make you any less of a person. It’s human nature baby girl.”

God
, she missed him so much already.

“It was a nice speech.” She heard the familiar voice behind her. “A bit generic, but still a nice one.”

Lucy’s fingers loosened from their grasp on the coffee mug. It slipped from her hands and fell with tiny clink onto the gravel. She swung around quickly to prove to herself that she wasn’t just hearing things. “Dad?”

There he was, the blue mist swirled intensely, trying to hold the form of her father’s human body. “It’s me, baby girl.”

“Dad! What are you doing here? You were supposed to have crossed over.”

His ghostly form reached up and adjusted the
collar of his tacky vacation shirt. “I had business to take care of. Why else would I be here?”

“But … but I thought that we took care of all that.
Dammit Dad, you were supposed to have taken care of it so you didn’t have to be stuck here!”

“Lucy Mae, don’t you dare raise your voice to me. We have some business to discuss and when it’s all over, then I can cross over.”

Lucy began to pace back and forth in front of her father. “I can’t fucking believe this.” She shook her head. “Dad,
why
?” She hadn’t known that she was crying until she reached up in frustration and placed a hand on each side of her face and felt the tears that had escaped the corners of her eyes. “What could be so important that you couldn’t take care of it when you were alive? Holy shit. Fuck.”

“Lucy Mae, watch your language.”

“Dad! This makes it so much harder, you have no idea.”

Greg grinned and shook his head slightly
. She remembered him doing the same thing when she was a child and did something naughty but too cute to be punished for. “Honey, we have to talk.”

She threw her hands in the air. “We should have talked about whatever
it is before you died.”

“I couldn’t tell you then, because then, I was in charge of the Graveyard
. I was the Keeper.”

“We are all Keepers.”

He reached out to touch her and his transparent hand slid right through her solid one. Lucy turned away and wiped more tears from her cheeks.

“But now you are in charge, honey. This is your graveyard. Your brothers and sisters will help you. Everyone take
s shifts just like always, but this is your turf to protect from the Reapers.”

She sniffed. “And that’s the information that you thought was so important you had to avoid crossing over to tell me?”

He shook his head again. “No, it’s not.”

“Well don’t be so cryptic Dad! Out with it.” She crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

Her father gestured to the bench, “Sit down.”

“No.”

“Fine then.” He spread his arms out. “Honey, you are a legend. Up in the attic, in Grandma’s trunk, you will find the proof of what I am about to tell you.”

Greg paused to let her react, but Lucy simply waited for him to continue his explanation.

“The legend says that the seventh child, from one of the original seven lines of Keepers, born on the seventh day of the seventh month, is the chosen Keeper who will bring forth an end to the Reapers.”