“I promise, but—”
Tram shook out of my grip like my hands were wet spaghetti. He traced my cheek with a fingertip. “Do you mean it?”
His gentle touch on my skin startled me with its hidden flame. “I do, but—”
“I’ll keep you safe.” Tram withdrew his fingertip slowly, like maybe he didn’t want to. I sure didn’t want him to.
“The trees trapped them, right? They won’t come back?”
“No. They won’t come back, but you still can’t bury anything. Next time you come, touch a tree.” He held me with his gaze before he walked away.
“But…” I looked at Mom’s gravestone and shook my head. Are they all this crazy, Mom? A breath of wind ruffled the leaves in the wreath on the ground. “Wait!”
He turned.
“What about these leaves? Aren’t they a gift for the dead?”
He jammed his hands into his pants pockets, his eyes not meeting mine. The red on his cheeks grew brighter. “The wreath is for you.”
Then he disappeared behind a grove of trees.
I just stood there like a dumb ass. Too many thoughts swam through me, and since fishing wasn’t my thing, I wasn’t quick enough to catch any of them. Just one thought was all I needed to focus.
Kneeling in front of Mom’s headstone, I brushed my fingers over the ear-lobe soft leaves in the wreath. The same card from the night before poked out. It can’t be you, it read. Scratched on top and filled in with dirt was the word WHY. All I needed was one thought to get my focus. I found it on the back of the card.
You’re too important to me.
“Two more dead people are back, Leigh,” Jo yelled into the phone. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”
“I am.” I juggled my cell from ear to ear while I painted over my black nail polish with purple. Everything I’d seen lately that was associated with black made the color not as cool anymore. I wasn’t even wearing any. Except for the studded black cuffs around my wrists, but those didn’t count because the studs were silver. “Believe me, I am.”
“The cop that got away spread it all over town.” Jo dropped her voice to a whisper. “Aren’t you worried about your mom?”
I narrowed my eyes at Mom’s guitar with my funeral dress still draped over it. How much should I tell Jo? How much of Tram’s wild tales would she believe? “Tram says…nothing will happen to her.”
“But how does he know? And who is he anyway? I don’t believe for one second you’re old family friends. You would’ve told me you knew someone that hot.”
“You’re right. I met him in the graveyard. He just…” I made a face at my fingertips. They were more brown than purple, but I’d run out of polish remover. “…knows stuff.”
“Well, does he know why all these dead people keep showing up? And why a cop was killed in the same place we were last night?” Jo’s voice went all squeaky. “Leigh, I’m freaking out.”
At the mention of the dead cop, my stomach dropped to my knees. He shouldn’t have been there last night, but I thought I had to be to keep mom safe.
“He does know, but I’m still not clear on all the details.” Tram seemed to know all about the dead Sorceresses. Sorceressi to cut the ‘s’ abuse. But I had no idea how he knew about them. I knew nothing about him. “Jo, calm down. Take some catnip.” In the state Jo was in, I wasn’t about to tell her anything else.
Jo heaved a sigh, and I could easily picture her in a yoga pose. “I’m breathing.” After a few more breaths, she said, “Oh, hurray. Cal’s home.” Her tone gushed with sarcasm.
At the sound of his name, I ground my teeth together, and my heart turned cold.
“He likes you, you know.”
I flexed my scabbed knuckles and winced. “He likes Megan, too.”
“No, I meant Tram.”
A flush scurried up my neck to my cheeks. “How do you know?”
“Did you see the way he looked at you at the video store? Like you were the center of the universe? Cal definitely noticed.”
Warmth kissed my heart as I thought about the note Tram left for me. Maybe it was because he was so mysterious—and yes, hot, too—but he seemed to have taken up residence in a large part of my brain. And not just since yesterday, either, if I was being completely honest with myself.
“Jo, are you going to be okay? I need to go.”
“I’ve got my nose in Elf’s tub of catnip. I’ll be fine.”
“Save some for Elf. I’ll talk to you later.”
After I ended the call, I wiggled my fingers and toes to make sure they were dry and jumped off my bed. Carrying my boots, I hurried down the hallway to find Dad. His bedroom door was open, but I knocked anyway.
“Come in,” he called.
I went in. Images of a basketball game flickered over Dad’s face. Instead of watching his favorite team play, he lay on the bed with his back propped up against a pile of pillows. His bookmark, a shiny quarter, danced over the knuckles of one hand. In his other was the book David’s Illusion of Breakfast, one he’d read last summer. It was upside down.
“Uh, Dad?” I came closer and tried not to look at the empty place next to him. “Your book’s upside down.”
He looked at the cover and almost smiled, the coin still spinning over his fluttering fingers. “So it is.” He stopped to flip the book over. “How are you?”
I shrugged and tried to keep my eyes on him and not Mom’s side of the bed. “How are you?”
“I’m taking it minute by minute,” he said then gestured at my boots. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Um…” Now I wasn’t so sure.
“The game’s almost over. I promised Darby we’d get ice cream afterwards. You can come, too, if you want.”
“Um…” He would be with Darby soon. I would make it a fast trip to the graveyard so I could be with them. “I’m not really in an ice creamy mood.”
“That’s okay. Are you going to Jo’s?”
After the death in the graveyard, I couldn’t tell him the truth, even if he didn’t know about the cop yet. “Yeah, but I’m riding my bike.”
“Straight to Jo’s then, and be careful.” He caught the coin in his palm but kept his gaze on me. “I love you, Leigh.”
“I love you, too.” My voice sounded strained, so I cleared my throat as I went to the side of the bed to plant a kiss on his forehead.
Back in the hallway, I stopped at Darby’s door and peered in. She sat at her desk with her back facing me. Crayons lay scattered across the surface.
“Bye, Darby.”
She slapped her hands over her picture and whipped around. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
She looked down at her finger, then glared at me. “And you made me get a paper cut.”
“Let me see.” I stepped inside her room, but her blue eyes narrowed even more.
“No.” She plucked a tissue from a nearby box and held it to her finger. “Go away.”
I hesitated for a second, but nodded. She hardly ever got mad at me. I didn’t want to make her even madder. “Enjoy your ice cream.”
On my way to the garage, I wondered if anything in my family would ever be the same again. Dad and Darby weren’t acting like themselves. I already knew I would never be the same, but it would tear me apart if my family went just as mental as me.
Someone had taken the quilt off the piano and folded it up on the back of the recliner. With a sigh, I shook it out and covered as much of the piano as I could. Why couldn’t anyone just let things stay buried?
As soon as I slipped my feet into my boots, I poised a finger over the glowing orange button in the garage. Something scurried over by the trashcan, but it was too dark to see. My heart jumped against my ribcage. I really didn’t want to know the source of the sound, but I jabbed the button anyway.
Sunlight flooded in. Everything looked normal, except Mom’s empty parking space.
I stood still, listening, while I let my heartbeat slow to a steady hammering.
Maybe Whaty-Whats had electrodes I could attach to my head to zap me back into Normalville. All those weird sounds I’d been hearing like the bells and the scurrying were getting old fast.
After I pushed my bike to the driveway, I ran back inside the garage. The future Olympic Sport of bolting out before the door squishes me began. I won. Go me.
Fluffy Rorschach tests spotted the bright sky, waiting to be interpreted. Mom worked as a psychologist, and when I was younger, she would show me the funny inkblot pictures. I’d always make up wild stories about what I thought I saw. Maybe after my trip to the graveyard, Darby and I could lie in the grass and tell the clouds’ stories to each other.
The warm Kansas wind at my back thrust me forward, but the way home would be a real bitch. The ropes on the empty flagpoles jangled a welcome when I neared the open gates. I sailed through and bounced along the path. None of the graves had flowers or other items left from friends and family. None of them. Everyone really did know not to leave gifts for the dead. Or did Tram just hide them under twigs, too?
Mom’s grave was still undisturbed. I didn’t think I would ever not be relieved by that.
When I leaned my bike against a nearby tree, my fingers grazed the rough bark. Hadn’t Tram said to touch a tree when I came back? He was so strange, but my palms grew sweaty at the thought of him. I pressed a hand to the trunk, just to make sure he knew I was here.
Mom’s headstone sparkled before one of the Rorschach clouds passed over the sun. I sat and brushed a finger over her image. She was so beautiful. Smart and funny, too. She was the complete, perfect package. Maybe she’d been too perfect for Earth.
My hand slipped from her picture, and I wrapped my arms around my knees.
The entire Baxton clan has completely lost their minds because we miss you so much, Mom.
When I saw a figure with a green hooded sweatshirt approaching, a flutter of warmth lifted my mouth into a smile.
He slid the hood off his head. As he walked closer, color rose to his cheeks. This made him look a lot less intense, especially when he gave me a small smile in return. Gorgeous much?
“Hi,” he said, stopping next to me. His voice sounded deep and gravelly. More so than normal, if normal could even describe him.
“Hi.” I gazed up into his eyes. A gust of wind waved his curls above his head. “Who are you, Tram?”
He looked away, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “I’ll show you,” he said, his eyes sliding back to mine.
That wasn’t quite the answer I expected, but okay. I took his outstretched hand, and the heat of his touch danced along my skin. After he pulled me to my feet as if I weighed zero pounds, his hand didn’t let go of mine. My gaze slipped to his mouth, and the fire that burned inside me was too much. I dropped his hand. The sudden absence of his touch made me shiver, but at least I wasn’t melting with thoughts of what I would like to do to his lips.
He squeezed his empty hand into a fist before starting down the path. “This way.”
I followed and kept a respectable distance between us. If I wanted to learn who Tram really was, his flame touch and my imagination needed some control.
“Do you recognize where we’re heading?” Tram asked.
I nodded. The police tape was gone, but this was where the dead Sorceressi performed their strange ritual the other night.
Tram stepped off the path and wove between the graves. He stopped and stood on a grassy area that was empty of headstones, then pointed at the undisturbed ground under his shoes. “This was where Sarah was buried.”
The bright green of the grass blinded me as I stared at it. This was where she’d woken up and climbed out, her face etched with shock and terror to find she wasn’t dead at all. This was what the Sorceressi were dragging me toward. My heart racing, I backed away.
Tram stood at my side a second later. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer, so he led me away from Sarah’s grave. He pulled me gently to the ground, and we sat at the foot of a large tree. Bird calls and the gentle rustle of leaves orchestrated a soothing tune.
“Better?” he asked.
I took another breath, but my body gave one last quiver. “Yeah.” I could feel him studying me, as though he wanted to make sure.
He pointed at the tree we sat under. “This is an oak tree, if you didn’t already know. Over there is an ash tree.” He pointed to another tree several yards away to the left. “And over there is a hawthorn tree.” That time, he pointed to another even further away on the right. “Those three trees are known as the Trinity.”
I wrinkled my forehead. How could tree identification tell me who he was?
“In the very center of those trees is Sarah’s grave,” Tram continued. “That’s the reason her grave is special to One and Two. Once Sarah was buried there, once that piece of land became a grave, One and Two came as quickly as they could to cast her out so they could put their chosen Three in.”
“Why? And what does this have to do with you?”
Tram looked straight ahead. “When One and Two resurrect their chosen Three, they’ll have more power than any other magical being.”
“Other magical beings?” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Like you?”
He turned to me, his expression too mixed to read. When his gaze traveled briefly to my lips, a blush reddened his face, and he stared at his hands like they were the coolest things he’d ever seen.
“One, Two, and Three will together have enough power to free Gretchen from inside the earth. This will unleash terrible chaos on its surface.”
I decided to ignore the fact he’d not answered my question. For now. “Who’s Gretchen?”
“A dark Sorceress,” he said and scraped at the dirt with the heel of his shoe. “One of the darkest who ever lived.”
“Why is she inside the Earth? Like dead and buried?” I asked.
A drawing of a tree trunk and branches emerged under Tram’s heel. His voice sharpened as he continued sketching in the dirt. “More like dead and imprisoned. She’s inside the Core, along with every other magical being ever convicted of a crime. If One, Two, and Three free her, every other prisoner will be freed, too.”
I swallowed. “That sounds…serious.”
“It is. Imagine if every human prisoner was released today, only think of it as a million times worse.”
“Oh.” My gaze slipped up to Tram’s intense face, the set of his jaw, his blond eyelashes. Even though what we talked about sounded dangerous, I felt I needed to memorize him in case the world did erupt in chaos. “So, why do they want to do this?”
“Gretchen is the reason no one gives gifts to the dead anymore. Whenever anyone did, she would show up, take the gifts, then kill the people who left them.” With every scuff of his shoe, leaves surfaced in his dirt tree. “But her sister gave gifts anyway, and Gretchen chose her as One for some reason.”
I pressed a hole in the knee of my black skinny jeans together, pretending to sew it back up. “Maybe Gretchen’s sister wanted to be One.”
“Maybe.” Tram glanced at me and continued. “Gretchen killed and buried her sister inside a Trinity in a graveyard. Once Gretchen resurrected her, she became One. Then the Trinity trees began to bleed, and the first hinge to the door of the Core was broken.”
I stared at the tree drawing in the dirt below Tram’s heel, wanting to memorize it, too. It was beautifully detailed. Who knew someone as intense as Tram could be so incredibly artistic?
“Wait,” I said, shaking my head. “The trees bled?”
Tram nodded. “The three of them kept bleeding until the blood mixed together. The power of the blood crushed the hinge.”
“Let me guess. There’s three hinges on the door to the Core, right?”
“Yes. One chose Two because of her gifts to the dead, and the second hinge broke.” Tram kicked at his tree drawing, erasing it, and I sighed. “I believe it was your blood that nearly broke the final hinge.”
I willed my
memory to fill the empty earth below his heel with the tree again, but I couldn’t. “There’s nothing special about my blood. It’s just…” I shrugged and bent my scabby knuckles. “Normal.”
Tram frowned.
Doubt stitched through me even though it had no reason to. I was normal, just not in Krapper’s strict definition of the word. And obviously not in the Sorceressi’s either.
I cleared my throat. “So, Gretchen wanted inside the Core if she was trying to open it, right? Why would anyone want it open?”
“No one knows for sure. Maybe she was looking for someone who was imprisoned inside.”
“But if she’s there now, how did she get in if the third hinge hasn’t opened?”
“She was captured by Trammelers after she resurrected her sister.” He glanced at me then looked in the opposite direction.
I stared at the back of his head. “What’s a Trammeler?”
He folded his arms on top of his knees, still not looking at me. “They’re like prison guards and bounty hunters all in one.”
“Tram the Trammeler,” I said, hoping that would make him turn toward me. It didn’t. “Is Tram your real name?”
“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce my real name.” His voice sounded far away.
A small, brown spider tickled my arm, and I flicked it away. What was with the spiders crawling all over me lately?
“Will you please tell me who you are?” I demanded.
He sat up straighter and glared in the direction of Sarah’s grave. “I’m one of the last Trammelers and the only active one left.”
“Left?”
“Gretchen and her cult killed the rest of the Trammelers. I’m the only one left who’s willing to go after them.” He glanced at me. “Ever since I moved out of my foster parents’ house and accepted my duties as a Trammeler six months ago, I’ve been travelling through every Trinity in a graveyard, searching for some sign of One and Two and Gretchen’s cult members.”
“Oh,” I said, letting his words penetrate my brain. “Did you say through every Trinity?”
He nodded. “I take my power from the Trinity trees. Their roots let me burrow through the Earth.” He turned to me, his eyes searching mine. “Like you witnessed the other night.”
The Grave Winner Page 8