To the Grave

by Monica Corwin

  To the Grave

  Monica Corwin

  To the Grave © 2017 Monica Corwin

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Contents

  To the Grave

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  To the Grave

  Not even death can keep her down.

  Fresh from digging out of her own grave, cursed dark witch, Dani, must hone her magi-coding skills to hunt down her own murderer.

  Soon she finds herself in the middle of battle between the light and dark. And the light usually wins.

  Chapter 1

  No two graves tasted the same. And no matter how many times I clawed my way out of the Earth, I never failed to inhale dirt as I ascended.

  Why these concerns were my first thoughts after a resurrection, I don’t know.

  The moon shone through the low tree branches, almost full. I tracked it across the sky all night while I waited to be set free.

  Unleashed, Angel would correct me. I leaned back on the pile of dirt, only a nailed in plank wood plaque with Danilo Santos on the other side. The cemetery would wait for a grave stone no one ordered. As I shifted the rope tied to my wrist, the bell jerked and sent the tinkle of the noise through the quiet night. It grated on me. That sound heralded my continued existence, but also my confinement by magic.

  Next time, I’d tell Angel to put a cell phone in my memory drawer or slip it into my dress pocket after I’m in the casket. He had a bad habit of making me wait. As if putting off releasing me rebelled against his family’s curse. A curse placed on my family which somehow ensnared the casters too.

  The snapping of twigs came from the entrance gate, and finally, I watched Angel slip through the steel barriers. His white gold hair gleamed like a beacon from the moonlight above.

  Finally, holy hell. His great-grandmother moved faster than he did.

  “I’ve been sitting here all night,” I grumbled, knowing it wouldn’t matter. No use complaining at him just to be ignored.

  He crouched in the freshly turned dirt and untied the bell at my wrist.

  An electric shock zipped its way through me, and I sighed at the freedom. Climbing the rest of the way out of my grave came easy after that.

  Angel didn’t help. In fact, he put a few feet of distance between us as I finally gained my footing on solid ground. My black dress was caked in mud and dirt; it was useless to try to wipe it away. I’d have to start labelling my clothes so Angel didn’t inter me in a favorite again.

  “Let’s go,” I said, scratching as much of the dry debris off my skin as possible. I trekked and stomped across the cemetery, continuing to try and loosen the grime. Angel’s car, a white Honda Accord, sat idling at the curb with the lights off.

  I folded carefully into the passenger side and waited. Once he climbed in next to me, he froze until I glanced over. The only light in the vehicle originated from the green glow of the dashboard console. Even in the dark, I could feel the cold disdain emanating from the glare leveled at me. “What?”

  He clicked his seatbelt with deliberate force.

  I sighed. “We both obviously know I’m immortal. If I fly through the windshield, I’ll come right back as usual.”

  His hands went off in a flurry of movement.

  Instead of arguing further, I rolled my eyes and clicked my seatbelt. “It’s not like you have to plan the funeral and pay for it. I do all the work. You just have to deliver the instructions and the bell. Stop being a baby.”

  He didn’t respond, only put the car in gear and pulled out onto the dead street.

  A shower and a bottle of wine would help clear the fresh memory of being buried alive from my brain. Or so I told myself every time it happened. Hopefully, we had hot water. It was always a lottery.

  With a werewolf downstairs and a family of witches upstairs, everyone kept odd hours. Well, unpredictable hours. But no one, dead or alive, used the shower after a full moon. Sam always got first dibs. It had never been a rule, but it became a thing in the house.

  We rode in silence. Angel refused to sign while driving. And the one time I offered to drive, he glared and refused to speak to me for a week.

  I picked dirt out of my broken fingernails as streetlights flashed down on the windshield enough for me to see. The stylist at the funeral home hadn’t bothered with a top coat. All that was left of Salacious Lady 99 had been pressed into my cuticles.

  Once I gained some semblance of my dignity, it would be a busy recovery week. New identity, obviously a manicure when my schedule freed up. I chuckled to myself. Like I had any sort of schedule to keep.

  Oh, and solving my murder should be added to that list.

  Thankfully, we didn’t live far from the cemetery where I owned my own plot. I looked at it like a real estate investment. If anyone ever got suspicious, I could just sell it or trade it. Not like it lost equity over time.

  I stared out the window as we made our way to the four-story run down building we called home. We being the only supernaturals in our little corner of Hercule, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. Too far away from any significant civilization to matter to anyone else, but different enough that we all seemed to band together.

  Well, Angel stayed out of necessity to me. He didn’t inherit his family’s gifts. It went with his ability to speak. His hearing was affected too, but he’d gotten the witches upstairs to magic him up a hearing aid to help with that.

  Now, if only I could get them to give him a personality, and all would be right in our little homestead.

  We pulled up the short incline drive, and I practically rolled out of the car in my effort to climb out of it as fast as possible. Shower. Wine. Shower. Wine. In that order, and then more wine to follow it up.

  I burst inside through a cloud of sage.

  “Doesn’t work,” I yelled as I bee lined for the bathroom. The white witches upstairs were always trying to keep me from coming back. Thinking sage could repel the evil in me. Dark magic, white magic, gray magic. It didn’t matter. It was all the same, just cost more depending on what kind you used. Sometimes that white magic shit cost the most. Thank all the unholy saints, the bathroom was empty. I flipped on the light, slammed the door, and studiously refused to look at my reflection.

  I didn’t need to see the dirt caked into my hair or the way mud hardened in the creases of my eyelids. Guess no one thought about that when they cursed my Filipino ancestors to immortality. Well, they didn’t think of a lot of things back then. I flipped on the shower and chucked clothes while I prayed it heated. Instead of testing it, I just climbed in. Not going to lie, even a cold shower would do after the night I endured.

  A knock broke through my concentrate
d effort to scrape the mud from my scalp. I cursed loud and thorough and in the language of my father. Then I figured whoever was out there wouldn’t know what it meant anyway. “What,” I shouted over the water spray.

  “I just wanted to grab something,” a deep masculine voice cut through the door.

  Sam.

  I let out a sigh. “Fine.”

  He entered to the creak of the hinges. “Sorry to interrupt. I know you like to be alone, well...after.”

  I didn’t respond to that. Any response might be taken as invitation, and I did not want anything resembling company for 24 hours.

  Natural deaths were usually easier to deal with. The murder, not so much.

  The sounds of riffling under the sink stopped, and then the door closed. I doubted Sam needed anything. This was his way of checking up on me, making sure I actually made it back.

  I was convinced they were all waiting for me to rise as a zombie one day. And not a one of them would believe me when I told them there’s no such thing.

  I scrubbed, loofahed, washed, and groomed myself until the water ran clear and cold. A stack of towels sat on the toilet. I hadn't grabbed any in my haste to reach clean. Sam must have put them there when he came in. That thoughtful bastard.

  If he planned for clean towels to get him in my bed again, he was nuts. Not after the shit he pulled the last time. I could walk on the wild side, but I don’t get that wild.

  I still didn’t look in the mirror while I brushed my teeth and hair. The acidic taste of whatever they put inside me at the funeral home still lingered. Really better not to think about it too thoroughly.

  The hallway still stank of sage incenses and the bundles they’d piled up around the front door. I shook my head but continued toward the kitchen in the back. It wasn't much bigger than a shoebox. Sam sat at the table with his feet slung up on the opposite chair. When I came in, he slid them off and thunked to the floor hard enough to rattle the overhead cast iron.

  He pointed to the countertop where Angel stood avoiding looking at me. At 4’9, the towel wrapped around my body doubled over and covered me from cleavage to shin. “Calm the hell down, Angel. I’m not going to seduce you.”

  Instead of answering, he let out a huff. His way of letting me know he didn’t appreciate the sarcasm.

  I poured from the bottle which Sam pointed out, all the way to the rim of a wine glass. Then I took both the bottle and the glass to the empty table. I wasn’t in the mood to see Angel’s judgment. At least Sam would talk to me.

  “Was it bad, tonight?”

  I shook my head. “No, the ground hasn’t gotten too cold yet, and the dirt wasn’t packed in. I was mostly bored waiting there for my ride.” The last part pointed at Angel who huffed again and left the kitchen.

  “You know it’s hard on him too,” Sam said, between bites of Cocoa Bites.

  “You mean it’s hard on him to untie me after I was murdered, buried alive, and then dug myself out of my own grave? Yeah, he has the rough job in this equation.”

  Sam pointed the spoon at me, dribbling milk on the table. “If you think about it, yes. He gets the punishment of his family’s curse, but none of the magical benefits. Maybe if he got the magic part, too, it wouldn’t be so bad.”

  The wine bottle shattered in my hand, and the liquid began to seep over the edge. I took a deep breath and concentrated the bottle back together, wine intact, between locking my eyes on Sam. He had frozen the second the glass shattered and eyed me warily. A little of my blood had to be mixed in there now too. Oh well, bottom’s up.

  “I do not want to discuss my family history or Angel’s family history. Or the shit deal either of us are stuck with after a two-hundred-year old blood feud. I want to drink wine, get a little buzzed, and not dream about dirt going down my throat.”

  Sam bobbed his head and pushed his sandy brown hair out of his face. He was tan and gorgeous and would be the perfect wolf for some lucky creature one day. If that dimple didn’t kill her first.

  I stood up and took my wine with me. “Goodnight Sam.”

  He didn’t answer, and I made my way up to the second floor and closed myself in my room. Obviously, my mood wasn’t going to even out until I drank myself to sleep and maybe took one more shower.

  I could still smell the formaldehyde.

  It didn't take long to pound through the bottle, and as my brain went all warm and fuzzy, the light seeped through my curtains with the sunrise.

  I wasn’t afraid of the dark. It was death I’d grown to fear. Each time I met my end, it felt harder and harder to come back to myself.

  The sound of an alarm somewhere in the house woke me well after the sunlight crossed my side of the house and window. No not an alarm. Someone with zero self-preservation pounded on my door. I pulled the covers up and cracked one eye open to check my phone screen. 3:00 pm.

  “Go away,” I called.

  The knocking stopped and then started again. Which meant Angel stood out there and obviously couldn't tell me what he wanted through the door. “Come in, Angel.”

  The door creaked open, and I jerked the covers down. His green eyes were wide and panicky while his skin appeared paler than usual.

  “What is it?” I asked, sitting up with a spike of adrenaline.

  His hands started, and in his panic, he didn't slow down enough for me to catch it all.

  “Do it again,” I told him.

  He forcefully signed my way. I really needed to get this man to stop with the media intake.

  If the news reported another body, another witch at that, then my murder might not be the only problem I had to face right now.

  Chapter 2

  I didn’t even get a full twenty-four hours to regroup this time. Like, the universe conspired against me this resurrection. Can’t a girl recover from death in peace?

  I climbed out of bed and slugged on some sweatpants. My comfiest pair with holes around the cuffs from scuffing them on the bottom of my shoes around the house. The tank top I put on before after my shower would have to be enough. I didn’t have any boobs to speak of, anyway.

  The TV blared from the living room, and I shuffled in with a yawn. Sam handed me a cup of coffee, and I could have kissed that scruffy mug of his for it.

  Black, just like my heart.

  The news reported the murder, but nothing about a witch. Not that there would be. Supers were sort of an open secret. Everyone basically knew we existed, but no one talked about it. “How did you know there was a magical connection?” I asked, before sliding into the love seat and slinging my legs up. Perfect size for teacup me.

  Angel began signing, and I watched carefully, my brain still slow with sleep. “If you called the coroner’s office, how did you get the inside scoop?”

  He gave me one of those are-you-kidding looks. No response necessary. Angel and his family always did have to stay close to the morgues. If I didn’t turn up, they met problems too. The curse which locked my family into life, locked them in as my keepers as well.

  “What kind of witch?”

  White magic, he signed.

  That didn't fit with my murder. Usually when supers were killed, they matched magic with magic. Killing a white magic witch and black magic witch for the same purpose would cancel each other out.

  “Any other ritual type killing or witches dead?”

  Angel shook his head. I glanced at the clock.

  “Don’t you have school or something?”

  He shrugged and lowered his gaze to play with a pill of fabric stuck to our ratty couch from the 90’s.

  I let it go. I wasn’t in the mood to argue with him. Besides, when we argued, it was mostly just me yelling and him ignoring me. And it always ended with: you aren’t my mother. To be fair, he bordered on 28. Not outrageously young by any standards, but everyone seemed young to me. Even Sam at 40. Although, he didn’t appear a day over 25 himself.

  I turned to the only sun kissed occupant of the room. Sam lay across an oversized arm chair i
n the corner by the bookshelf which needed anchored twenty years ago and now looked like something out of Dr. Seuss.

  “Have you heard anything from your crowd? They could be travelling outside the city, and we are only just hearing about the local occurrences.”

  Sam scratched the middle of his chest and shook his head. “No, but I’ll ask when I see them this week.”

  The full moon approached, which meant the werewolf went a little loopy, and the three witches upstairs brought out all the sage. As if the full moon herb combination might somehow cleanse me from my own house.

  This Victorian was built before my family came to the United States, and it would likely be here long after I finally met a permanent end.

  Nothing worked, everything creaked and groaned like an old woman, but she was a beauty. You could still see it in the crown molding and the mullioned windows.

  I sat up and chugged down the rest of the coffee with a sigh. Then I shuffled over to the staircase and shouted, “Witches, get down here.”

  The sound of glass shattering came from the top floor and then a bunch of shuffling and creaking. Five minutes later, three women who didn’t look older than twenty flowed down the stairs in matching sun dresses. The triplets were by far the creepiest witches I ever met, but they payed rent, so I dealt with it.

  I met three pairs of wary brown eyes. “Have any of you heard of any witch deaths, murders, that sort of thing?”

  Tiffani-with-an-i glanced at her sisters before answering. “We have not, but the cards say something is coming. Already moving. Something old and dark.”

  She eyed me from the holes in my sweat pants to my red chipped nails. My black hair was bound in a messy bun on top of my head. Judgement with a capital J.