Graveminder

not until she felt a gentle touch at her wrist and heard, “Come on, Rebekkah.”

Amity, one of the only people in Claysville Rebekkah kept in sort of contact with, gave her a sympathetic smile. People were standing and moving. Faces she knew and faces she had seen only in passing before turned toward her with expressions of support, of sympathy, and of some sort of hope that Rebekkah didn’t understand. She stared at them all uncomprehendingly.

Amity repeated, “Let’s get you out of here.”

“I need to stay here.” Rebekkah moistened suddenly dry lips. “I need to stay here alone.”

Amity leaned closer and hugged her. “I’ll see you back at your grandmother’s house.”

Rebekkah nodded, and Amity joined the crowd of people who were leaving. Semi-strangers and family, friends and others, they walked past the casket and dropped flowers and earth into the yawning hole. Lilies and roses rained down on Maylene’s casket.

“Wasting all that beauty,” Maylene whispered as they dropped flowers on another casket. “Like corpses have any need of flowers.”

She turned to Rebekkah with her serious look. “What do the dead need?”

“Prayers, tea, and a little bit of whiskey,” then-seventeen-year-old Rebekkah answered. “They need nourishment.”

“Memories. Love. Letting go,” Maylene added.

Rebekkah waved away Father Ness and Reverend McLendon as they tried to stop and comfort her. They were used to Maylene’s eccentricities—and Rebekkah’s staying with Maylene while she lingered with the dead. They’d leave Rebekkah alone, too.

Once everyone was gone, once the casket was covered, once it was just her and Maylene alone in the cemetery, Rebekkah opened her clutch and took out the rose-etched flask. She walked up to the grave and knelt down on the earth.

“I’ve been carrying it since it arrived in the mail,” she told Maylene. “I did what the letter said.”

It had seemed wrong to put Holy Water in with good whiskey, but Rebekkah did exactly as she’d been told. There were always plenty of bottles of Holy Water in Maylene’s pantry. Holy Water and heavenly whiskey. She opened the flask, took a sip, and then tilted it over the grave once. Tears streamed over her cheeks as she said, “She’s been well loved.”

She took a second sip and then lifted the flask in a toast to the sky. “From my lips to your ears, you old bastard.” Then she tilted it over the grave a second time.

“Sleep well, Maylene. Stay where I put you, you hear?” She took a third sip and then poured the flask’s contents onto the earth a third time. “I’ll miss you.”

Then Rebekkah finally wept.

Chapter 13

DAISHA STAYED OUT OF SIGHT DURING THE FUNERAL. SHE’D STOLEN A black hoodie and jeans— and some food— from a woman who’d been taking out her trash that morning. The woman didn’t stand up after Daisha had finished eating, but her heart was still beating. And most of her skin was still on her. The thought of skin and blood shouldn’t make Daisha’s stomach growl, but it did. Afterward, the thought of it was gross, but in the moment, it was ... exactly right.

It made her mind clearer, too. That part was important. The longer she went between meals, the less focus she had. Less body, too. She felt like she was being pulled and pushed in every direction all at once. Earlier she’d fallen apart, scattered like smoke in the breeze.

This morning she stood in a cemetery and watched them put Maylene in the ground. It seemed so permanent, being killed and being buried, but obviously it wasn’t.

Daisha kept herself behind a tree as she watched. She’d had to come. When she’d heard the bell, her body was as pulled to this spot as it had been when she’d met Maylene there. The inability to refuse the strange compulsions, the impossibility of holding on to thoughts or memories, the hungers that filled her, everything had become wrong. Daisha wanted answers, wanted company, wanted to be right . Only Maylene had understood, but she was dead now.

Maybe Maylene will wake up, too.

Daisha stood waiting, but no one stepped up out of the earth. No one came to join her. She was as alone now as she’d been when she was alive for real. Daisha didn’t remember crawling out of the ground. She didn’t really know when she’d woken up, but she was awake. That part she knew.

She leaned her head against the tree.

The shrieking woman was carrying on something fierce, and the Undertaker was scowling at her. He had scanned the crowd and the cemetery. Every so often, his gaze had paused on the woman who had come to stay in Maylene’s house.

Now she glowed like Maylene had. Maylene’s skin seemed to be filled with moonlight, a beacon that drew Daisha even before she saw her. All Daisha had known was that there was a light, and she had to go toward it. As the new woman had poured her flask onto the soil, she had started glowing until her whole body was filled with brightness.

The rest of the mourners had left, but even if they weren’t gone, Daisha couldn’t walk up to them and ask. Only the Undertaker and the wailing woman waited.

Daisha started shaking, and the focus that she’d had started to fade. She started to fade, so she fled before her body could dissipate again.

Chapter 14

AS THEY WALKED TOWARD THE CAR, LIZ HELD ON TO HER MOTHER, NOT in a protective way, but as a please-Mama-don’t-make-another-scene measure. The supportive arm she offered was accepted only as long as there were people watching; once they reached the car, Cissy shook her off.

Liz pushed down her guilty relief. There was no good way to handle funerals: each and every one was a reminder of what Liz and her sister weren’t.

Not good enough.

Not chosen.

Not the Graveminder.

Truth be told, Liz had no actual desire to be the Graveminder. She knew all about it, the contract, the duties, but knowing didn’t make her eager to be a Graveminder. Her mother and sister seemed to feel that they’d been slighted, but spending life worrying about the dead didn’t appeal to Liz. At all. She talked the talk well enough—because the alternative was feeling the back side of her mother’s hand—but she wanted the same things that most women in Claysville wanted: a chance at a good man who would agree to enter the birthing queue for the right to be a parent sooner than later.

Not that Byron would be a bad man to bed.

She stole another glance at him. He was lovestruck with Rebekkah, but that was an inevitable result of the whole Graveminder-Undertaker gig. Her grandmother and Byron’s father had made eyes at each other for as long as Liz could remember. Like to like. She shook her head. Despite everything, Maylene had been her grandmother, and she ought to be ashamed of thinking ill of her when she wasn’t even cold in the ground. And for thinking lustful thoughts at a funeral. She shot a glance at Byron again.

“Look at him,” Teresa muttered. “Can’t take his attention off her. I don’t think I’d have any struggle resisting him if I were ... you know .”

Liz nodded, but she silently thought that she wouldn’t want to resist Byron. “Not every Graveminder marries the Undertaker. Grandmama Maylene didn’t. You wouldn’t have to ... be with him.”

Teresa snorted. “It’s a good thing, too. I don’t know that I want a man who has fucked both our