Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel

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Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel Page 7

by Lauren M. Roy


  Not that he would’ve blamed the kid.

  He only wished the crime scene cleaners had been able to do as thorough a job as Cavale. It wasn’t the police department’s job to clean up the aftermath of a murder. That responsibility lay with the homeowners, or in this case, their next of kin. Some of the cost was covered by insurance. The rest, Val had paid for out of Night Owls’ emergency fund when Helen’s family balked at the expense. Those services didn’t come cheap.

  They weren’t paid to make it look pretty, just to remove the biohazards. The crew had been respectful as hell—since they did the cleaning during daylight hours, it had fallen to Chaz to be there with them. He’d done his best to stay out of their way, sticking to the shambles of the Clearwaters’ downstairs while they worked up above.

  Elly had been there when it went down—she’d been the reason the Creeps came to Edgewood in the first place, chasing her and the book she’d stolen from them. The Clearwaters had given her sanctuary, and her hostess gift had been death. She’d been barricaded in the second-floor library with Henry and Helen, listening as the Creeps barreled around the house, making their way to where the humans had hidden. They’d dispatched the first few to make it past their wards, but for Helen Clearwater, whose only experience with the Creeps had been the stories her husband told, it was too much.

  She broke and ran. Henry had followed after her.

  They didn’t make it far before they were driven back into the library.

  When Val and Chaz had come to the house the night after the murder, Chaz had gotten an eyeful of a real crime scene—something he’d never wanted to have. Blood everywhere, books and debris strewn about, ash and ichor from the Jackals they’d managed to take out covering it all like a film.

  Now you could point out where they’d died by the missing sections of carpet, the heavy bleach smell in the doorway, and the places where chemicals had leached the color from the spattered wallpaper.

  It was a terrible thought, and Chaz hated himself a little every time he thought it, but Helen’s last act had probably saved some of the books. The cleaning process wasn’t kind to sturdier materials, like walls and baseboards and flooring; it would wreak unspeakable havoc on books. Chances were, it would have destroyed some of the older tomes Henry had collected, the ones he stored on the shelves far in the back of the room that spanned half the house. Chaz never let himself think too far beyond that, about what and why, but there it was. Dying just inside the library’s entryway meant Val, Elly, and Cavale (and, he supposed, himself and Justin) had access to all kinds of obscure occult stuff.

  Justin was with him tonight. He’d done the same as he had the first couple times he’d come with Chaz, refusing to look anywhere but straight in front of him until they got to the library—“straight in front of him” coinciding with “the back of Chaz’ head.” There was missing carpet leading deeper into the library, too, but only fifteen feet or so. One of the detectives thought Henry might have dragged himself away from the fighting for some reason, judging from the blood trail. Pulling himself out of the fray to rest by the shelves, then back to where Helen lay, to expire with his wife in his arms.

  Chaz had pored over the books near that spot a hundred times, had brought them back to Val’s house and set them up in the exact order he’d found them, but neither of them had been able to find what the significance might have been. If there even was any. Maybe the old man had simply tried getting to the phone to call nine-one-one and realized it wasn’t going to happen. They could speculate for the rest of their lives and never know.

  Justin had set himself down in the far corner, working on a stack of books Chaz had set aside the day before. He’d been quiet the last few minutes, none of the usual scritch of pen on notepad as he marked down the books’ conditions and subject matter, or the soft thunk as another one went into a box marked Edgewood, Resell, or Store. “Store,” to outsiders, might indicate the book would end up at Night Owls. In truth, those were the ones headed for Val’s.

  “How are you doing over there, man?” Chaz turned around from his own stack to see Justin hunched over a particularly fat tome. It took up most of his lap, making him look like a kid reading an oversized book of fairy tales.

  “This one’s annotated,” Justin said, not looking up.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Probably only to me.” He tried to hide it as Chaz came over for a closer look, but then he relented. “It’s poetry. John Donne.” He passed the leather-bound edition to Chaz as though he were handing over the Holy Grail.

  Chaz had never had much of a head for poetry, unless you counted the lyrics to eighties hair band songs as such. Tortured artists from the seventeen hundreds just didn’t do it for him. Still, he held the book reverently—as much out of respect for Justin as out of protocol. Sure enough, the margins were filled with notes in the professor’s cramped handwriting. As he turned to the front to see when it had been printed, something slipped out from between the covers and fluttered to the floor.

  Justin snatched it up. Most of the time, Chaz still thought of him as the gangly, awkward kid he’d been when they’d hired him. Other times he moved with that ridiculous vampire speed, and Chaz was reminded of his own relatively weak physicality.

  “What is it?”

  “A picture.” Justin stood so they could both look at it: Henry and Helen Clearwater, waving from the open front door, keys in their hands. “I think it’s the day they bought this house.”

  They looked so happy in the shot, so very goddamned vital. “You should keep it,” said Chaz. “The picture and the book. Get a frame, hang it up, you know?”

  Justin didn’t respond at first, staring intently down at the photo. It took a few seconds for Chaz to register the way his nostrils flared, and how he’d started taking slow, shallow sips of air, the way you do when you’re trying not to smell something rotten.

  “I can’t block it out,” Justin said. “The smell of death, it’s everywhere in here. I can’t . . .”

  “Take a walk.” Chaz took him by the shoulders and steered him out of the room. “Go on, go for a spin around the block and clear your head. It’s okay. Take as long as you need.”

  “Yeah, I . . . That’s a good idea.” He walked the first few steps down the hall, but by the time he reached the stairs he was moving at a lope.

  Chaz waited until he heard the front door slam before he unclenched his fists. Close fucking call, there. The night they’d come in here after the murders, Val had nearly lost control when she got a noseful of the Clearwaters’ blood and the Jackals’ scent. She’d kicked him out of the library with her fangs and claws showing and bloodlust in her eyes. Justin didn’t have nearly her level of control. He hadn’t changed, not quite, but Chaz saw the fingertips of his cotton gloves stretching as Justin’s nails elongated. Sure, his hands hadn’t bent and twisted into a vampire’s ugly fucking claws, and no fangs had peeked out beneath his lips, but the transformation didn’t take terribly long.

  And even without fangs and claws, if the kid had wanted to bash Chaz’ face off a wall or a desk while they waited, he was more than capable. Chaz wasn’t keen on the idea of being Justin’s late-night snack.

  He figured when he came back, he’d remind Justin that he didn’t have to breathe, didn’t have to smell whatever the cleaners hadn’t been able to wash away. But it seemed prudent to first let him calm down and work some of that sorrow and anger out with good old fresh air. Later, he’d tell Val about it, to be on the safe side. Justin had come with him a few times now and had never gotten that close to losing it. Far as Chaz could tell, nothing had changed from the last time to this aside from finding that book. He didn’t know if strong emotions could bring on the old killing urges, but hey, it got the Hulk going; why not a new vampire whose mentor had been brutally murdered?

  Chaz worked on getting himself back to calm. Wouldn’t do for Justin to come b
ack in and pick up on Chaz’ fear. It’d be apologies and offers of atonement for the rest of the night, and fuck that noise. They were cool. Chaz was cool. Everything was goddamned cool.

  He got back to sorting and stacking, losing himself in the rhythm of it. Most of the books up here were going to end up at Val’s. Whatever logic Henry Clearwater had used to categorize the books, it had died with him. No card catalog, no ledger, no mysterious ciphers for them to decrypt. Chaz had booted up the slim laptop they’d found downstairs, hoping for a stroke of luck, but the only one he got was that the professor hadn’t password-protected the machine. Once Chaz was in, everything on the drive was Edgewood-related. Any hopes the old man had gone digital—spreadsheets, Internet library sites—were quickly dashed. Which meant more work for Chaz, trying to get the gist of the books and figuring out where the hell this shit would go, according to the Dewey Decimal System.

  “Have to see if we can convince Justin to take some library science courses next semester,” he muttered.

  A prolonged thud came from downstairs, accompanied by the susurrus of pages that could only be a book avalanche.

  “Speak of the devil,” Chaz said. He hadn’t heard Justin come back inside. The first-floor library didn’t hold much of interest—what they hadn’t already gone through could go straight to Night Owls when they ran out of time in the house—but maybe it was better for Justin to work down there tonight. Far as Chaz knew, no fighting had gone on in there. The smell of death shouldn’t be so bad.

  Another series of thuds, these ones almost rhythmic, as though Justin were taking a book down and tossing it over his shoulder. Chaz stood frozen for a moment, making sure he was hearing right.

  The whispery sound of a book sliding from the shelf.

  A shirring of pages being flipped.

  The thud of the book hitting the wall.

  The slap as it landed on the floor.

  Shuffle-step.

  Repeat.

  “The fuck?” He set down the book he’d been assessing and crept to the top of the stairs. If Justin was down there Hulking out, sneaking up on him was probably a colossally stupid idea. But . . . abusing books wasn’t Justin’s MO. Especially not when the volumes in question belonged to the Clearwaters. He would just as soon dig Henry and Helen up and piss on their corpses.

  The noises came again. Chaz was halfway down the stairs when he realized he hadn’t thought to grab a weapon. Shit. Both libraries had fireplaces. If Chaz could get to the hearth before whoever was down there, he could grab the poker off the rack and use that. Other than that he’d have to rely on yelling and waving his arms about, and hope it was some neighborhood punk he could put a good scare into. It wasn’t like he could grab any knives from the kitchen; Helen’s relatives had made off with every bit of silverware and cutlery.

  At first peek, his neighborhood-punk theory seemed solid. From the back, he caught sight of shoulder-length hair, a little on the greasy side. Then he saw what the guy had on, and it didn’t compute. Who wears a suit to do their breaking and entering?

  A dirty suit.

  The guy was filthy, streaks of mud not only ruining the suit but caking his patent-leather shoes as well. Now that he glanced down, Chaz saw the footprints the guy had tracked along the floor.

  He was halfway to the poker before the idea that dude doing B&Es in a suit might equal mobster, but by then he was committed. “Hey. Hey, asshole! What the fuck do you think you’re—”

  The guy turned around, startled, and all thoughts of grabbing the poker flew out of Chaz’ head. His skin was grey and mottled, his eyes sunken deep into their sockets. Stringy flaps of skin were all that was left of his nose, and his lips had peeled back to reveal a row of yellowed teeth.

  “What . . .” said Chaz. “Who . . .”

  The thing dove at him. Thought kicked back in, and Chaz fumbled his way toward the fireplace set.

  Too slow.

  It bellowed as it came on, the wordless shout turning into a grunt as they collided. Chaz hit the wall hard enough to hear the plaster crack. Then it was battering him, the loose grey skin of its fists coming into frightening focus with each hit. Its fingernails—the ones still attached, that was—were blue-tinged. And sharp. Chaz’ cheek opened up and oozed warm blood down into his collar.

  He got his arms up, somehow, into the defensive guard he saw when he watched boxing matches at four in the morning. It seemed much easier on TV, like you could hold out for hours while some huge dude whaled on your arms. Now that he was trying it out himself, Chaz mostly felt like the kid on the playground screaming, Not the face! Not the face! while the bullies went to town.

  This close, he smelled the graveyard stink of the thing: formaldehyde and congealing organs. It reared back to roar again, and looking out between his arms Chaz got a gander into its tongueless mouth.

  That did it. He bulled his way past the thing, driving it enough out of his way that he could reach the rack and grab a poker.

  Of course, that meant turning his back on it, and before he could bring his weapon around, it had him by the hair. “Fuck! Ow!” It dragged him around in an arc by his ponytail until he crashed, gut first, into the crest of a wingback chair. They seemed all comfy and nice until you had the wind knocked out of you by their hard back edges. The poker fell from his fingers and clanged off the hardwood floor.

  “Shit. No you don’t,” he said, but it wasn’t like the intruder was taking suggestions.

  It beat him to the poker by millimeters, yanked it away with one hand, and caught Chaz by the collar with the other. He heard the whistle as the thing brought the poker over its head, about to bring it down on Chaz’.

  “Aw, fuck,” he rasped. He had time to wish his last words hadn’t been so shitty, when his attacker was yanked backward. Chaz’ collar tore, a hank of fabric going with the thing as it sailed across the room.

  Justin.

  “Careful,” Chaz yelled. “That thing’s fucking strong.”

  But Justin didn’t need the warning. The fangs and claws had come out, twisting the affable bookseller that Chaz knew into someone terrifying. He towered over the thing where it lay dazed and picked it up by the scruff of its neck. The poker was still clutched in its right hand; Justin wrested it away so hard a few of the thing’s fingers went with the length of cast iron.

  The loss of its digits didn’t bother it. When Justin pulled it to its feet, it curled its remaining fingers into fists and took a swing. The blow landed, but Justin barely seemed to register it. He swung the poker as though he were Big Papi going for the fences. It connected with the thing’s skull with a dry crunch, but that didn’t bring it down.

  It staggered away, bellowing and clutching its ruined head, and made for the door. Justin chased after it, but he was only gone half a minute before he came back in and knelt next to Chaz. “Are you okay? How bad did it get you? Shit, you’re bleeding.”

  “I’m fine.” He pushed Justin’s hands away from where his cheek had started throbbing. It wasn’t that he thought Justin would go all Gary Oldman–Dracula and lick the blood off his fingers, but better not to tempt it. “Where is it? Did you kill it?”

  “No. It took off, and I didn’t know how bad you were hurt. I can track it, if you want me to. I think . . . I think that’s what I was smelling earlier. Not . . . Not the Clearwaters.”

  “Nah. It’s gone for now. Let me hit up the medicine cabinet and see if there’s anything I can clean this cut with, then we’ll see if we can figure out what the fuck it wanted.” He winced as he tried to stand. The rib he’d cracked when they were fighting the Jackals had only just healed, his recovery accelerated by Elly’s salves and spells. That bash into the chair hadn’t been good for it.

  Justin helped him keep his feet, only to push him down in the offending chair. “You sit. I’ll see what I can find.” A few minutes later he returned with hydrogen peroxide, co
tton balls, and a bottle of prescription-strength ibuprofen just past its expiration date. “I know you’re not supposed to take other people’s medicine, but I thought this might be an exception. Also, let me see your eyes. I just noticed that dent in the wall that’s shaped like your head.”

  “I’m not concussed,” said Chaz, but that was the last shreds of his dignity talking. This time, when Justin leaned in to swab the wound, Chaz bore it as stoically as he could, only wincing a little at the sting. “If that son of a bitch gave me, I don’t know, grave herpes, I’m gonna be bullshit.”

  “I don’t think there’s such a thing.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d better not be the world’s first case, is all I’m saying.”

  “What was it doing here?” Justin looked around the room, surveying the damage. “It looks like one of those poltergeist things Elly talks about happened to the shelves.”

  “It was going through them book by book. I don’t know what it was looking for, though. It wasn’t exactly the chatty type.” He paused. “Or maybe it was, but the whole no-tongue thing kept it from communicating. Maybe I should’ve brought it a pen and paper. I mean, obviously it can read.”

  Justin walked over to the bookcases while Chaz shook out a couple pills and dry-swallowed them. He trailed his fingers along the books that hadn’t been evicted from their shelves, muttering their names to himself. “It’s all literature,” he said. “Stuff Professor Clearwater used for classes.” He stopped to pick up a fallen volume. “Oh. Hey. I think our guy dropped his shopping list.”

  He brought it back over to Chaz to show him, but now Chaz’ head was throbbing in time with his cheek. “Sorry, dude, you’re going to have to read them off to me until this stuff kicks in. Anything on the bestseller list?”

 

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