The Graves of Saints (28 page)

Slowly, in the sky above the Hudson River, hate brought her back from the edge of destruction. She thought of nothing but Cortez and his effort to make vampires once more the monsters they had
been before Octavian brought them into the light.

She could not wait to show him how much of a monster she could really be.

Brattleboro, Vermont

The first thing Amber Morrissey noticed while pulling her rented Ford into the parking lot of Summerfields Orchard was the yards of yellow police tape. With the gray autumn sky
hanging low overhead and casting its pall upon the orchard, there was something garish about that tape, stretched from tree to tree far up on the hillside. Despite the charm of the big barn that
had been converted into a store and the pumpkins and cornstalks and other autumn decorations that were on display in front of the place, not to mention the big tractor that should have been pulling
children on hayrides, her eyes were drawn to that yellow tape way up on the hill for the simple reason that it did not belong. It spoke silently but all too clearly: something terrible had happened
here.

She had passed a police car as she turned in. Now, as she parked and turned off her engine, she noticed movement in her rearview mirror and saw that he had gotten out of his vehicle and was
approaching her.

‘What does he want?’ Amber said, studying her own reflection in the mirror. ‘I just restored the glamour spell when we landed. It can’t be slipping.’ She glanced at
the seat beside her. ‘It’s not slipping, is it?’

To others, the passenger seat would appear to be vacant, but she could see the ghost of Miles Varick clearly. Her former professor, handsome and grizzled and dead, frowned as he studied her.

‘Not from what I can see,’ Miles said. ‘After the killings here last night, he’s probably supposed to check out anyone who pulls in.’

‘What, every young mother who drops by and pulls into the parking lot to turn around when she sees the place is closed?’

‘You’re not turning around.’

The rap on her window made Amber jump in her seat. The engine was off so it would have been easier to just open the door, but the cop was blocking her in, now, so she turned the key enough to
get the electricity running through the car again and rolled down the window.

‘Afternoon, officer,’ Amber said brightly.

‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ he said.

The ghost drifted a little nearer to her, peering out the window so close that his cheek would have been almost touching hers if he could have touched her at all. The cop’s gaze did not
waver; he had no trace of the sight, none of the supernatural experience that would have allowed him to see Miles or see through Amber’s glamour. It made her exhale.

‘My name is Amber Morrissey,’ she said, reminding herself that she was here on official business. ‘I’ve been asked by the United Nations to consult with the owners about
last night’s events. If you want to check on that, I can give you a direct number to reach Commander Leon Metzger of Task Force Victor.’

Not quite the truth; Octavian had sent her, but Metzger would back him up.

The cop nodded slowly. ‘These ladies know you’re coming?’ he asked, tilting his head toward the house a ways up the hill on the right, beyond the barn.

‘As far as I know they do.’

He bent and looked into the back seat, then studied her face for a moment. She wondered exactly what he thought he might see that would alarm him. One twentysomething blonde in a rental car was
not going to be able to continue the supernatural massacre that had taken place in the orchard last night. The daylight was fading, but it had to be clear that if she was a vampire, she had to be a
Shadow, and they were supposed to be the good guys.

‘You a witch like the others?’ he asked.

A ripple of disgust went through her. The urge to let her glamour fall away, to show him the terror of her true face and plunge her fingers into his chest, maybe tug out a piece of his soul, was
powerful.

Instead, she smiled. It was a cold smile, she knew, and enough to get him to take a wary step back.

‘I’m a whole different sort of witch,’ she said.

Nervously, he returned her smile and nodded as if they had shared a joke instead of a moment that would keep him up tonight.

‘You go on up, if they’re waiting for you,’ he said, already half-turned for the walk back to his cruiser. ‘Give a holler if you need anything.’

‘I’ll do that.’

By the time she had rolled up the window and gotten out of the car, slipping her keys into the pocket of her burgundy, hooded sweater, he was already halfway to his vehicle. As she slammed the
door, Miles’s ghost passed through the glass and metal and fell in beside her, the two of them heading up toward the house on the hill together.

The path to the house was not nearly so well trodden as the others in Summerfields Orchard, reserved as it was for family and friends rather than the thousands of customers who trooped up and
down the rows of apple trees and through the pumpkin patch and other parts of the orchard through three seasons every year. Glancing around, Amber was surprised that they did not see a single
person outside. No one worked at harvesting apples or pulling pumpkins in. The property stretched across the road they had come in on, and she realized now that they had not seen anyone on that
side either – no tractors, no pickers, not a soul. The police had not just closed down the shop, they had shut the orchard completely.

Or perhaps it hadn’t been the police who made that call. After their sacred ritual, a gathering of friends and those who shared their faith, had turned into a slaughter – after they
had seen some of those friends hideously murdered – of course they would cease all activities on the property, out of respect if not in mourning. With all that Amber had been through, the way
she had been altered, she sometimes found herself having to work to hang on to human instincts. It troubled her very deeply, but now was not the time for her to ruminate on her own problems. Not
with so much grief all around her.

‘I don’t like the feeling of this place,’ Miles said, his voice sounding like a whisper beside her ear, though she could see him gliding along half a dozen feet away. The
voices of the dead always sounded like that to her, intimate and forlorn.

‘I’m sure the whole aura of the place is tainted after last night.’

‘Well, it’s good that they’re earthwitches,’ Miles said. ‘It may take a while, but if anyone can purify the land it would be them.’

Amber arched an eyebrow, tempted to ask what Miles knew about earthwitches. But he had been her favorite professor, once upon a time, and she’d enjoyed his lectures so much because he
seemed to know something about everything.

As they approached the house, she saw someone moving past the window and a moment later the front door opened to reveal a lovely black woman with her hair in beaded rows. Amber’s first
thought was that she was crying, but the woman’s eyes were dry and Amber realized that she had imagined it, that the sorrow that weighed on her was so powerful it cast the illusion of
tears.

‘You must be Amber,’ the woman said, coming down the steps and holding out her hand. ‘I’m Tori Osborne.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ Amber said, shaking her hand. ‘I’m glad Peter told you we were coming. I was afraid he might not have reached you and then I’d be all awkward
and . . . well, I’m glad.’

Tori gave a curious smile. ‘“We”. That’s right, he said there were two of you. Did your partner wait in the car?’

Miles Varick’s ghost gave a small laugh. ‘Not much of a witch.’

‘No,’ Amber said to Tori, pointing at the place where the ghost stood, hanging just above the ground. ‘He’s right here. His name is Miles Varick.’

Tori arched an eyebrow. ‘Annndd . . . he’s a ghost?’

‘Peter didn’t mention that?’

‘Nope.’

Amber offered an apologetic shrug. ‘It’s a strange world, these days.’

The sadness in Tori had abated for a moment, but now it returned full force. ‘It certainly is.’

She went back and closed the front door of her house, then started along another path that led around the side of the house and up into the orchard.

‘Come on, then,’ Tori said. ‘You should meet Cat. And I know what you’ve really come to see.’

‘We’ve come to help keep you safe,’ Amber said, glancing sidelong at Miles’s ghost. The phantom looked slightly offended.

Tori smiled. ‘No offense, but I’m not sure what you and a ghost are going to be able to do for us if we have another vampire attack tonight.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Amber said, grimly serious now.

Something in her tone must have gotten through to Tori, because the earthwitch glanced at her while they walked and seemed to be examining her anew.

‘You didn’t just come to see . . . well, to see Keomany?’

Amber froze on the path, staring at her.

‘Did she just say—’ the ghost began.

‘Did you say “Keomany”?’ Amber asked.

A ripple of anger passed visibly across Tori’s face. ‘I guess Octavian didn’t tell either of us very much, did he? It’s a bad habit he has. A dangerous habit. Did you
know Keomany before?’

Amber nodded. She had fought the chaos goddess Navalica side by side with Keomany Shaw, and had seen her die.

‘Well, then, you’re going to love this,’ Tori said, and then they were walking again, both of them a little faster than before.

It surprised Amber that their route took them away from the police tape instead of toward it, but Tori guided her through the orchard in a zigzag pattern of rows and trails, moving ever upward
until they emerged at a broad clearing where a tall apple tree in full fruit stood at the center of a makeshift post and plywood fence, as if some animal had been penned inside. Two of the panels
of that strange pen had been removed. Over the top they could see a pair of heads – a man and a woman – both turned away and gazing at something on the ground which seemed to fascinate
them.

‘Strange,’ Miles said, his voice so familiar and intimate in her ear.

‘What is?’ Amber whispered, feeling like an intruder and not wanting to disturb the people inside the pen.

Tori glanced at her, mistakenly thinking that Amber must be speaking to her.

‘The taint I felt when we arrived?’ Miles said, his spectral brows furrowed with curiosity. ‘It ends here. This clearing is just . . . it’s pure, somehow.
Clean.’

Tori led them over to the opening in the pen.

‘We’ve got visitors, honey,’ she said.

The two people inside the pen turned, startled from their reverie. The woman had to be Cat Hein, Tori’s wife. The man was fiftyish and balding, but tall and with the powerful build of a
fellow used to hard work. He clutched a baseball cap in his hands and looked on in deference, waiting for his companion to speak, which made her his boss.

The woman glanced at Tori, then recoiled in shock when she saw Amber, actually taking a step back, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

‘Holy shit!’ she said.

‘No fair,’ Tori said. ‘You can see the ghost!’

Cat took another step back, eyeing the new arrivals warily. ‘Yeah, I can see the ghost. It’s a ghost.’ She pointed at Amber. ‘But what the hell are
you
?’

The words were not spoken in disgust, but rather a combination of fear and fascination. Yet still Amber felt the kind of shame she had rarely experienced since her days of being teased in the
schoolyard when Tim Hansen had told the whole sixth grade that she had stripped naked in front of him and he’d rejected her, a reversal of the truth that had nevertheless haunted her for
years.

‘I’m Amber,’ she managed. ‘Amber Morrissey.’

‘Peter Octavian sent us,’ Miles’s ghost supplied helpfully, since unlike Tori, Cat could see him.

Tori, meanwhile, kept glancing back and forth between her wife and their guest, clearly baffled by the reaction.

‘Cat, what the hell?’ Tori said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cat mumbled, studying Tori as if wondering why she wasn’t reacting. ‘Really. We’ve had a horrible twenty-four hours and I just . . . I knew
Octavian had sent someone, but I had no idea . . .’

The woman was at a loss for words, but at least she was no longer running away.

‘Why are you freaking out?’ Tori asked. ‘What are you . . .’ She took a closer look at Amber, realization dawning. ‘Wait, what do you
see
?’

‘Better show her,’ Miles said.

Amber and Tori were still outside that wooden pen, with Cat and the man in the baseball cap on the inside. She didn’t want to frighten Tori, but Miles was right. She normally would have
hesitated with the employee there, but Cat didn’t seem to have any interest in hiding her reaction from him, so Amber would follow suit.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Amber said to Tori, more a plea than a warning.

She dropped the glamour, letting them all see her true countenance, the hard, burgundy skin of the Reaper, her long talons, and the hair like razor wire that swept back from her face.

‘Good Christ!’ said the baseball cap man, turning pale as he crossed himself.

For her part, Tori smiled in dawning awe. ‘Wow,’ she whispered.

Amber gave a tiny laugh. ‘Now that is one reaction I did not expect.’

Tori turned to Cat. ‘Maybe Peter did send us some real protection after all.’

Cat nodded slowly, taking a few steps toward the wall that separated them. It was in the midst of being dismantled and from the look of the posts it had been higher before. Now they were able to
see eye to eye over the top.

‘Amber, right? I meant no offense,’ Cat said.

‘I know,’ Amber replied, though the shame still resonated inside her, mostly from memory. Her mother had once told her that people never really got over the difficult times in their
lives, they just diluted them with time and experience.

‘This is Ed,’ Cat said, gesturing toward the baseball cap man. ‘He’s our foreman.’

Ed looked as if he feared she might eat his face given the opportunity. He nodded warily and raised a hand.

‘Hey,’ he said.

Amber smiled, then instantly regretted it. With her long, sharp teeth, her smile looked ferocious.