Someone called my name again, followed by clanging steel.
As I spit dirt from my tongue, I stared up at Ica’s old ash tree, the one I’d first put her in, its split sides looming up above me. The black three singed into its bark seemed to stare down at me sideways over the gaping mouth that still oozed blood.
It couldn’t be Darby’s. I would never give her blood to Ica. So where did the memory come from of me standing next to Ica’s tree in the dark, watching spiders crawl out of her mouth and toward me?
One and Ica stood on either side of me while the twins stepped up to my head.
“You resurrected this tree to make a new Trinity and so Ica could escape, you resurrected Mr. Benjamin to empty his grave, and you resurrected Ica from it. You brought back all of them,” the twins said, “because you want to be Three.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. You made me.” I had never raised the dead before that dog, but even as I thought it, doubt sent a quiver through my body. I’d raised the dog without the spell book because I could remember it. I’d remembered all of it. Because I knew it. Because I’d done it before. “No,” I said again, not wanting to believe any of what they were saying. It couldn’t be me. I couldn’t be the monster under Darby’s bed. I didn’t want to be the grave winner. The furthest thing I wanted was to be anything like One and Ica. They were lying. “I never asked you to crawl inside me.”
“You sure didn’t stop us,” they said. “You opened your mouth wide that night in the shower.”
“No, I was choking on water,” I said and flicked my gaze to One. She knew about this, had known since I’d asked her who was raising the dead and she’d tried to pry open my jaw to show me.
It was me.
The steady hammering by the gate and the shouts of my name continued, but I barely heard any of it over the pressing weight of what I’d done. Because now, without the spiders blocking my memories, without the fog, I remembered more and more.
I dug Darby’s drawing out of the trash. I half-buried it in a random grave as a gift for the dead, knowing that I would find it and do what I had to do to keep her from danger. I’d hid behind a tree outside the graveyard and tried to entomb Ms. Hansen and Mrs. Rios inside trees so they would stay out of my way.
But how could I do any of this? Had being buried in the Trinity grave turned me into Three anyway? Had I been fighting for my rightful place inside it all along to finish the job?
“Please,” I begged, because I feared it was all true. If I did want to be Three, then why was I so scared? My fingers closed around a strand of hair in the dirt. Sarah’s hair from her lost head. I flung it away and tried to back into the gnarled remains of Ica’s tree, but something arctic had cuffed my wrist to the ground. Something else that felt like frozen, wrinkled paper slid over my other one.
“You didn’t stop after you resurrected Ica.” The twins shrugged in unison and cocked their heads to the side with an eerie grin on their faces. “I guess you didn’t know what to do with all of them.”
Realization sucked the air from my lungs. Terror welled up in my throat. I risked a look down my arms splayed in the dirt over the Trinity grave.
Two bony hands had punched through the earth to pull me under. Finger bones clicked together as more clawed through the dirt and reached for my boots. I fought to get loose with a moan, unable to tear my gaze away from the horror surrounding me.
Until a gravelly sigh split open the loose gray flesh that was once a face right above me. A dirt-spattered hand dragged the rest of a dead body from the mouth of Ica’s tree.
The twins said something, but my heartbeat drowned them out with its thrashing between my ears. I bucked and clawed to get away, but fear gripped me around the neck so tight, I could hardly breathe let alone move. Especially when I saw the dress the corpse was wearing.
Black polka-dots on light purple, the color of lilacs. I’d picked the dress out for her myself.
A strangled cry tumbled out of my mouth. My eyes fell closed. I didn’t want to see anymore, but I could still hear the dirt falling apart underneath me as my body sank lower into the ground with every cold, wasted hand dragging me down.
“Leigh, are you in there?” the voice by the gate yelled. “It’s Dad. I believe you.”
Dad. Here. He couldn’t be. He couldn’t see Mom like that. One and Ica would kill him if he made it inside the graveyard.
“No,” I tried to shout, but it came out a whimper. I tried again. “No. Please, don’t hurt him. He’s my only parent left and he can’t see her...”
Revulsion licked an icy tongue up my back at the thought of him seeing her like that. I bit back a sob as I stopped fighting and nothing but involuntary shudders rolled up and down my body.
“He can’t see me, either,” I cried.
The earth beneath my back vanished, and my landing six feet under shocked the rest of the air from my body. I fought for another breath, blinking the tears from my eyes. Dirt started sifting down, burying me, and no one would be around to help me this time. No Sarah. No ash tree keys. No Tram. No one but me, and doubt twisted through me so sharp, I didn’t know if I wanted to help myself. Did I want to be Three way, way deep down?
I kept my gaze on the dirt walls around me. If I was to die, I refused to have my last memory be of my dead mom standing over me. Dirt splattered down, spraying my face and body with grit. It mixed with my tears and rolled sandy warmth down my temples.
With three of us, we would be unstoppable. Gretchen and the other thousands of dark Sorceressi would be freed from the Core. So would an immortal Counselor, unless I could somehow rescue Tram from him.
More dirt fell. It felt heavy on top of me; it would only get heavier. Soon it covered my eyes, nose, and mouth, pressing its weight on my burning lungs.
Couldn’t breathe. I had to open my mouth. But if I did, I would suck down death. Even though I knew it was coming, even though maybe I wanted it, I still needed to fight it off, like I fought everything.
Pain scorched through my chest. Keep. Mouth. Closed. My heart bucked against my ribcage with loud hammering pleas.
Sunlight splashed on a bare arm capped with a purple sleeve covered in black dots, but that couldn’t be right because I was in a grave at night, dying. A pair of vivid blue eyes met mine, framed by blonde hair. Mom. Alive.
She stood in a field bursting with sunflowers. A light breeze that smelled like flowery perfume turned her hair and fluttered the ends of her dress. She was here, with me, just when I needed her the most. Was this heaven? Was I already dead? I reached out to make her stay at my side forever, but my hands grabbed at nothing.
She started to smile, but it broke apart with the tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Leigh. I’ve made so many mistakes.”
It’s okay, I wanted to tell her. But bursts of color behind my eyelids were floating in front of her, hiding her from me. Mom? Her perfume still lingered in my nose, along with the soil-scented death sentence.
There was a scream, and I realized it was my entire body begging for air. The fiery burn in my lungs would consume me if I didn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I couldn’t.
So I didn’t. My mouth opened, and a strange kind of calm drifted over me. My heartbeat slowed. The explosions of color behind my eyes swept away in a gust of wind like lost balloons, leaving an empty field of sunflowers bobbing happily in the sun.
The pain lessened, the sunflowers vanished, and then...nothing.
And then something—power, a spark—something jolted through every vein in my body, awakening me. Resurrecting me. Fueling me with a strength beyond anything I’d ever imagined.
Continue The Grave Winner series in book three, The Trinity Bleeds: http://mybook.to/trinitybleeds
Acknowledgements
The following people/animal deserve a lifetime supply of virtual cookies and/or kitty treats and hugs:
Gabe and Jesse for putting up with a messy house so I can write. Clean houses are boring anyway.
My beta readers/critique partners Pam Godwin and Mysti Parker, both of whom help make my stories look good even when they start out like crap.
The readers. I’m going to find a t-shirt that says Readers Are My Oxygen. Thank you for following Leigh’s crazy journey!
About the Author
Lindsey R. Loucks works as a school librarian in rural Kansas. When she's not discussing books with anyone who will listen, she's dreaming up her own stories. Eventually her brain gives out, and she'll play hide and seek with her cat, put herself in a chocolate-induced coma, or watch scary movies alone in the dark to re-energize.
www.lindseyrloucks.com
Lindsey Loucks’s Newsletter: http://www.subscribepage.com/z5q9c5
What Gifts She Carried Page 25