Graveminder

“I think I’d really like for us to be able to stop asking that of each other.” Rebekkah watched him close the cabinet.

“After we get things set back to normal, I promise to stop asking.” He glanced at her before he walked to the door.

“Deal.” She followed him out into the hall and pulled the door closed behind her. Being the Graveminder would become less exhausting—and bizarre. It had to. Maylene had lived a fairly calm life; at least it had seemed that way. When Rebekkah had lived in her house, her grandmother’s restrictions were unusually stringent, but most of the time life was pretty calm. Maylene usually didn’t fuss too much about curfew, but when she did, she was inflexible.

“Once they are put to rest, the Graveminder keeps the dead from waking, but with Daisha and Troy, Maylene couldn’t because ...”

“Because Cissy hid their bodies,” Byron finished.

It all made a horrible sort of sense now: if they’d been buried, Maylene would’ve tended their graves, and they’d have rested. If they’d been able to come to the Graveminder when they awakened, they wouldn’t have become feral. Someone stopped me : that’s what Daisha had said. She stopped me , Troy had echoed. Cissy had stopped them. She’d intended for them to become more dangerous before they came to seek out the Graveminder.

She used the dead to murder Maylene.

They were partway up the stairs when Rebekkah announced, “I want to see if we can talk to Daisha. Troy couldn’t tell us much, and I need to know how many people Cissy’s killed, and where they are, and who all knows, and I want to know why. ”

Byron was silent as they went upstairs and exited the building. As they stood at the side of the Triumph, he said, “ Daisha murdered Maylene.”

“No,” she corrected. “Cissy used the dead as weapons. They were no more than tools to her. My dead, mine to protect, and my grandmother ... Cissy killed them.”

His expression revealed nothing. “So you’re excusing Daisha?”

Rebekkah paused. Am I? Daisha and Troy had both killed people; they’d injured people; they’d done so in ways that were both painful and grotesque. Do I forgive that? She wanted to. In some ways, she had: she’d hugged Troy and consoled him. Her reaction wasn’t what she would’ve expected a week ago. My dead. The words she’d said were the truth of it, though; these were her dead. They were her responsibility. Being the Graveminder had tempered her— normal —responses; it hadn’t negated them, merely blunted them.

“No.” She reached out for Byron’s hand. “I took Troy where he needed to go. I stopped him. I’ll stop Daisha and as many of them as Cissy has made. I’m going to stop her, too. No matter what it takes. If that’s too cruel or —”

“It’s not,” he interrupted with more than a little edge to his voice. “Let’s be clear, though: are you telling me you’re willing to kill Cissy?”

“Just hand me a gun.” She picked up her helmet, put it on, and waited for him to climb onto the bike.

“Shooting someone over here isn’t like it is in Charlie’s world, Bek. They don’t get back up.” Byron slung his leg over the bike and put his helmet on. “If you do this—”

“If I don’t, Cissy is going to keep hurting people. She murdered Maylene.” Rebekkah felt a rage like she’d never known before. “She used the dead—my dead , Maylene’s dead—to kill. If we need to, we’ll take Cissy to Charles’ world. If there’s another answer, we try that, but we stop this.”

Silently, she straddled the bike and wrapped her arms around him.

The bike roared to life, and Byron said nothing more. It wasn’t like the last ride where he started out slow; this time he went through the gears, accelerating from stop to blur in what felt like a couple of heartbeats.

Chapter 48

BUT SHE HASN’T CALLED ME AT ALL THIS WEEK,” LIZ STRESSED. “TERESA never goes this long without calling or visiting.”

“Your sister doesn’t consider how her actions affect others, Elizabeth.” Cissy Barrow snipped a dead rose from the bush she stood beside and tossed it into a nearby bucket. “She thinks her interests are more important than duty.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“We had a disagreement,” Cissy admitted.

“About?”

Cissy waved dismissively, garden shears in her hand. “The usual. She thinks only of herself. You’re not like that, are you, Elizabeth?”

The inflexible self-righteousness of her mother’s voice made Liz tense. It wasn’t that her mother was heartless, but she didn’t believe in coddling anyone. Children are to be obedient and devoted. Young women should respect their mother. Purposelessness leads to complacency. Liz had heard her mother’s reminders often enough that she knew the deceptively mild questions for what they were: tests.

Liz squared her shoulders and kept her voice even as she said, “No, Mama. I think of the family first.”

Her mother nodded. “Good girl.”

“Do you need me to do anything?” Liz offered tentatively. “I could talk to Teresa if you know where she is.”

“Eventually, child. Right now, she’s not quite ready to talk. She will be in a few more weeks, but she’s confused right now.” Cissy’s gaze wandered over the garden that she had planned and cultivated in Liz’s yard. It wasn’t what Liz herself would’ve picked, but there were things worth defying her mother over and things easier to let slide. Floral placement fell in the latter category.

“Soon I’ll have everything in place. Both of you will fulfill your roles.” Cissy clipped another dead rose.

“Our roles?” Liz felt the fear inside of her growing by the moment. “What roles?”

“One of you will be the Graveminder, Liz. I realized that it would need to be you. Teresa understands that now. First, though, we need to remove Becky from the equation.” Cissy stepped back to admire the rosebush. “Byron will do just fine if we can convince him. Better to work with known tools than start from scratch, right? He switched his loyalty from your cousin to that girl when Ella died. He’ll switch to you just as easily.” She tossed the shears into the bucket with the rose heads. “I’m going to wash up.”

Liz stood in her tiny yard and watched her mother walk away. She’s talking about Rebekkah being dead. If I’m the next Graveminder, that would mean Rebekkah would be dead. Trickles of fear grew into full-fledged terror. What has she done? Teresa, where are you?

Liz said that she didn’t believe in “twin-sense” anymore, but in a town where dead people could—and did— come back, believing in a connection with a womb-mate wasn’t that peculiar. I don’t want to believe it right now. If she did believe it, if she thought about the real reason for her fear, she’d have to ask herself just how capable of murder her mother really was.

“Please be okay, Terry,” Liz whispered.

Chapter 49

BYRON KILLED THE ENGINE OUTSIDE THE TRAILER, WALKED OVER, AND jimmied the lock on the front door.

Rebekkah gave him a bemused look. “Do I want to ask why you know how to do that?”

“My father taught me.” Years ago, Byron had thought that the peculiar lessons were signs of his father’s laid-back nature, proof that having an older father was a better deal than the other kids had. In fanciful moments,