Eighth Grave After Dark

She had me dead to rights. “True, but I can do this while you’re banging my uncle.”

A loud bark of laughter burst from Amber before she contained it.

“I promise to fill you in the minute you get back. This is your wedding day, Cook.”

“Yeah, Mom,” Amber said. She winked at me. “I have your six, Aunt Charley.”

We high-fived. I loved that kid. But Cookie shook her head as she hung up her dress.

“Robert and I have already agreed. I’m going to help you with the case while he does what he can on his end. He’s already gone into town to see if there have been any new developments.”

“Cook, this is insane.”

She walked to the sink to wash the glitter off her face. “Charley, we aren’t going on our real honeymoon until after Beep’s arrival anyway. It’s okay.” I sensed a ripple of apprehension go through Cookie when she mentioned her honeymoon. I’d sensed it almost every time we talked about it. If I didn’t know better—and admittedly, I didn’t—I would’ve sworn Cookie didn’t want to go on a honeymoon at all.

Still, it was her wedding day, for heaven’s sake. No bride should work on her wedding day. I was about 90 percent certain there was a law against it. Then again, who was I to argue?

“Okay, I need everything you can get. Friends. Social media activity. Phone calls lasting more than a couple of minutes.”

“She’s fifteen,” Amber reminded me. “All her phone calls last more than a couple of minutes.”

I smiled at her. “Excellent input, grasshopper.” I’d make a PI out of Amber yet.

She flashed her pearly whites.

I took a few pages out of the file Kit had left with me. “I’ll go check in with Rocket, inquire about Faris Waters’s … status, and then comb through her texts. If I find anything suspicious, we can cross-reference them with her phone calls. If she was lured somewhere by a predator, I want to know.”

Cookie’s face brightened as though she’d been champing at the bit to work on a new case. It had been a while. We’d done some small side jobs that didn’t require our presence, though nothing of this caliber for a long time. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this had more to do with her honeymoon than with the case.

I reached over and brushed glitter off her cheek, regret consuming me nonetheless. No one’s wedding day should be spent looking for a missing child.

“Do you think she’s still alive?” Amber asked.

Cookie placed a hand on her shoulder as I glanced up toward the attic.

“One way to find out.”

6

My death will probably be caused by being sarcastic at the wrong time.

—TRUE FACT

I left Cookie to get what she could on Faris’s social life while Amber went to find Quentin. He was staying the night, since he didn’t have to be back at the School for the Deaf in Santa Fe until the next day. While Amber wanted to help with the case, she decided spending quality time with the cutest boy on the planet—her words—would be more fun.

I walked to the end of the hall on the second floor, where another set of stairs led to the attic. Rocket had been staying up there since we moved here. We’d already had to replace the drywall twice. Rocket filled his days scratching the names of those who passed onto the walls. He knew the name of every person who’d died everywhere in the world. There was no way he really wrote them all. I’d read once that there were over 150,000 deaths worldwide every single day. So I wasn’t sure why he chose to scratch certain names and not others, but for decades, recording the names of the departed had been what he considered his job. Who was I to argue? Surely there was a method to his madness. I’d have to pay closer attention someday, to see if the names he inscribed had any kind of connection to one another.

Just as I was about to ascend the stairs, I felt a rush of cold air at my neck. It whispered through my hair and caused goose bumps to erupt across my skin. I turned and saw her, the girl I’d been trying to talk to for months. Not the sobbing woman in my closet. She’d shown up just a few days ago. This other girl had already been living in the convent when we moved in. She was a young, almost childlike, nun, but her habit was of an older style than what they generally wore now.

I stopped and turned slowly toward her as one would do with a wild animal one was trying to capture. I didn’t want to scare her off. She’d been trying to show me something; I was sure of it. Every time she appeared, she would hurry away from me, stopping to glance back every so often, as though making sure I was following her. But every time I did follow, I’d lose her in the forest.

“Not this time,” I said as she turned away.

She walked quickly down the hall toward the main stairs and disappeared. I descended the stairs and went out the front door, knowing she’d be waiting for me. And she was, her expression full of fear, her lashes spiked with recent tears before, just like always, she ran away.

“I’m not losing you,” I said to her back. She didn’t acknowledge me.

We continued on the same path as always, the one that led in the opposite direction from where I’d been earlier, the way long since overgrown with vegetation, and as always, she disappeared from there. I stopped and whirled around in frustration. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. What was she trying to show me?

I continued deeper into the forest. “Where did you go?” I asked the empty air around me. Maybe I needed to have Angel tail her. Perhaps he could keep up. She was like Rocket, believing I could run through solid objects just as she could.