Eighth Grave After Dark

“So, where are you going with this?”

“You made a mistake hitting on that woman when your gut told you she was about as stable as a three-legged chair. We all make mistakes.”

“What Marika did wasn’t a mistake. It was quite intentional.”

“I get it. I do. I just hope you give her a second chance is all. Especially now that she broke up with her boyfriend.”

“She broke up with him?”

I nodded, knowing that would get his attention.

“I don’t know, Charles. Chicks are crazy.”

“Duh. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep trying.”

“Maybe it could work. I mean, I’ve always wanted a family. And Zaire is great. Marika has her moments, too.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said, punching his arm. “So, did you get it?”

“Is that the only reason you’re talking to me?”

It wasn’t, but I couldn’t let him know that I genuinely cared about him. “Of course.”

His mouth widened into a grin that made his silvery eyes sparkle. “It’s behind that weird box.” He nodded toward the potato bin.

“Sweet!” I scrambled up to check out my new toy. “I’ve always wanted a sledgehammer.”

At about half my height, the handle wasn’t bad. The head of the sledgehammer was about the size of a Big Gulp. All in all, it seemed pretty nonthreatening.

I took the handle and tried to pick it up, ignoring the skiptracer at the table. His snickers would not deter me from my task.

“Fine,” I said, dragging it from behind the potato bin and across the floor.

“You aren’t going to kill anyone with that, are you?”

“That’s certainly not the plan,” I said, huffing and puffing as it scraped along the tile with an awful, horror-movielike sound.

“You realize this floor is over a hundred years old.”

I felt bad about the floor. I really did, but I couldn’t pick the stupid thing up. “It’s much heavier than it looks.”

“Would you like some help?”

“Nope,” I said, winded. I’d traveled about two feet. “I got this.”

There was a tiny room off the kitchen with a wooden closet of some kind. Nobody knew what it was, even Sister Mary Elizabeth. It could have been a confessional, for all I knew. Either way, no matter what we did, we could not get the door open. Normally, that wasn’t a big deal. But the more I thought about it, the more it ate at me. There could be anything in that closet. There could be a dead body. Or a mountain of gold. Or a staircase to a secret passageway.

After months of trying to pry it open, I couldn’t take it anymore. This was my last hope. That door was coming open if I had to tear down the wall around it.

Garrett got up and followed me to the room that we had set up as the laundry room. Though I’d refused his help physically, he decided to help in other ways. He watched and chuckled and assured me I was batshit every so often. So, there was that.

After an eternity, we got to the door, a thick wooden thing set in the middle of a wall in the small room. The wall butted up against the room that Cookie and I had set up as our office, but we’d stepped the rooms off. There was a good five feet of space in between that wall and the office wall. So what was there?

I was about to find out.

As Garrett watched from the doorway, swigging his beer pretty as you please, I pulled with all my might to try to at least get the sledgehammer off the ground. I wasn’t weak. I could lift stuff. Heavy stuff. Well, heavy-ish. This thing was insane.

I set it back down just as Reyes walked up. He wore the same doubt-ridden grin as Garrett.

“Gonna get it open, are you?” Reyes asked, wiping his hands on a towel.

“Yes, I am.” I set the hammer down to take a break. “We need to know what’s in there. There could be anything. I mean, why is it locked?” I examined the door for the thousandth time. “No, how is it locked? There’s no lock.” I pointed to emphasize the absurdity of it all.

The door was massive. In a convent with regular doors and regular walls, why was this door—the same door that was impenetrable—so thick? So sturdy? Reyes had even tried to see into the closet incorporeally. He couldn’t get in!

“I mean, aren’t you even curious? What kind of room is impenetrable even to something that is incorporeal?”

I struggled to lift the sledgehammer again, but now I had an even bigger audience.

“She at it again?” Osh asked.

“Hardheaded as the day is long,” Reyes said.

My frustration rose to new heights. “Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants, if you aren’t going to help, what were you talking to Angel about?”

His gaze narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“In that field today. I saw you.”

He straightened. “What were you doing out there?”

“I was following that sweet departed nun. She’s been trying to show me something and then someone pushed me and I almost fell to my death and were you there? No.”

A blast of heat hit me then, and I couldn’t tell if he was angry with me or because someone had pushed me.

“What do you mean, someone pushed you?”

Oh, thank God.

“Who pushed you?”

“Why were you talking to Angel?”

“Is that what happened to you?” He took my arm and indicated a scrape down the back of it, his touch scalding.