The Curse of Tenth Grave

While Cookie pulled up Emery’s credit report and phone records in a feat that I slid into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” category, I met with Mrs. Abelson and told her what her husband was up to, trying to push the superhero angle on her.

She didn’t buy it, and my heart went out to the guy. He was about to have a very bad day. I think it was the pot thing that sent her over the edge. What would her church group say?

I couldn’t help but wonder why the church group would say anything unless she told them, but there was no arguing with her. Not that I was in the mood, anyway. So, I sat there and let her jump to her own conclusions. Listened to her rant and rave about how she’d been betrayed. About how unfair he was being by hanging with a bunch of kids and relaxing.

I was doing really well with the whole thing, staying calm and collected despite the odd looks we were getting in the Frontier, one of my favorite restaurants on this crazy rock. But then she started in on her husband, and I lost it. I told her how lucky she had it to have a husband who could enjoy himself despite her incessant nagging and high-maintenance marriage plan.

She sat livid for a solid minute after I’d finished, then walked out, her face a bright scarlet, her back ramrod straight. There was just no way to dislodge the stick up her ass. Her husband was cursed.

After the meeting, I scratched Mrs. Abelson’s name off my Possible Repeat Customers list and hustled back to the office with a to-go pint of salsa verde. Quite frankly, we’d be lucky to get paid on this one.

Way to go, Davidson.

Wait, no, Davidson-Farrow. Hmmmm … it was growing on me.

But the case was over, and that called for a celebration of salsa verde and tequila. Of course, the latter would have to wait until tonight, but salsa verde, much like salsa dancing, could be enjoyed anytime. Not, however, before I went to pay my old friend Rocket a visit.

I hadn’t seen Rocket since I got back, but I was still completely intrigued by the bombshell Strawberry had dropped while invading the air space in my living room. The names that he wrote on the walls were meant for Beep? They were chosen specifically for her?

First, how?

Second, why?

And third, come again?

It boggled my mind, but getting information from Rocket was even harder than getting information from Strawberry. Rocket was like an overgrown child who’d died in a mental asylum in the fifties. He was a savant of sorts, and if he’d had his gifts while he was alive, I could only imagine how they treated him. Electroshock therapy came to mind. Anything to control him.

I pulled up to the abandoned asylum I now owned, thanks to my sugar daddy. Not that I had any idea what my husband’s net worth was. And not that I wanted to. I had zero interest in looking at his will. Ever. I figured I’d go first, anyway. I seemed to have been born with a flashing hazard sign duct-taped to my back.

After trying several combinations on the keypad, I finally found one that worked.

The combination didn’t work on the front entrance, however. I wondered if the keypad needed a battery or something. It had worked before.

No big. I would just do what I did before Reyes bought the building. I’d sneak in.

I walked around the east side and found my usual entrance, a basement window, but a vicious Rottweiler tackled me to the ground before I could get inside.

Artemis must have been hanging out at her old stomping grounds. Though the house where Donovan and the gang used to live had been torn down, that apparently didn’t keep her from seeking out a familiar environment.

I let her lick my face, her stubby tail wagging at the speed of light, for several minutes before I realized we had an audience. A little boy was watching me try to wrestle the ninety-five-pound dog, to get the upper hand and bury my face in the folds of her neck.

But Artemis was incorporeal. She was my very own personal guardian, and while that was all well and good, to the little boy watching me, I was basically wrestling air.

I cleared my throat and waved to him. “New exercise routine. It’s going to take the world by storm. Mark my words. It’s called … Grassercise,” I said as I picked dried grass out of my hair.

Then, with an air of nonchalance, I stood and walked to the basement window.

“Rocket!” I said, calling out to my old friend as I wiggled inside.

Stuffing my ass through a tiny window used to be easier. When I toppled over the sill and landed headfirst on a table that I hoped had already been broken, I called out again.

“Rocket! You here?”

I took the flashlight out of my jacket pocket and shined it toward the stairs leading from the basement.

Nothing had changed in all the months I’d been away. The area was still strewn in trash and debris. A decrepit, three-wheeled gurney sat in one corner of the basement and an old rusted bathtub decorated another.

I loved this place. Creepy things gave me a sense of nostalgia. I blamed my upbringing. And my stepmother. She hadn’t been so much creepy as a bona fide creep, but still. It warmed the cockles of my heart. If I’d ever taken art, I would draw stuff like this. The stuff of my dreams. The stuff of others’ nightmares, if the plethora of horror movies set in abandoned asylums and hospitals was any indication.

Still receiving no answer from Rocket, I headed upstairs. I ran my fingers along the hundreds and hundreds of names he’d carved into the walls. What had Strawberry said? That the names were meant for Beep? How? What did she mean?

Maybe it was simply her nine-year-old imagination taking hold, but somehow I doubted it. Why would she come up with anything like that?

Just to test out a theory, I decided to see the names from a different vantage. I stopped in one particularly graphitized area and shifted. My celestial vision instantly picked up on things my human vision simply could not. The storms that plagued the intangible world raged around me, whipping my hair into a frenzy, scorching my skin.

The walls of this building were still there, but I was straddling both worlds. Both planes. I had yet to shift completely. Not consciously, anyway. I was terrified of getting lost in the other realm. Of being unable to find my way back to this one. So when I shifted, I did so hesitantly. Cautiously.

But it was enough to see something I’d never seen. The names Rocket carved fairly glowed in the burning edges of this world. As though they were on fire. As though his writing them set them on fire. Was he assigning the names? Or was he simply writing the names already destined to … what? What did the names mean? What did they have to do with my daughter?