make room for me in their circle.
Moving up beside them, I stared down at the ground, searching for what had captured their attention.
I saw nothing but an empty grave.
Then I felt pressure on my back and suddenly I was falling, falling into that dark, fathomless pit.
Gasping, I bolted upright on the chaise.
It took a moment to orient myself, another to calm my racing pulse.
The office had grown cold while I slept. I’d turned down the air when I got home from dinner because the house had been hot and stuffy. I hadn’t thought to adjust the thermostat before I fell asleep, and now the room was so chilly the windows had fogged over.
I reached for the afghan draped over the foot of the chaise, then went completely still, my hand suspended in midair as I sniffed. The scent of jasmine floated across the room, so faint and delicate it might have been a remnant from my dream.
But I knew it was real. She was here.
Drawing the spread over me, I lay shivering in the dark. I couldn’t see the garden through the frosted windows, but I knew she was out there.
Light from the kitchen filtered into my office, illuminating the beads of condensation that ran down the glass.
I caught my breath, waiting…
A pattern emerged in the frost, as though an invisible finger traced it from the other side. A heart.
Like the one I’d formed in the garden with pebbles and seashells.
The image was there one moment, gone the next, melting into rivulets of condensation as the jasmine scent faded.
She, too, had vanished back into the mist, but I knew she’d be back. She wouldn’t leave me alone until I figured out what she wanted.
Fifteen
Sometime during the night, the drizzle turned into a downpour. The exhumation had to be delayed until the weather cleared and the ground had time to dry out so that the loose dirt could be sifted through a screen.
Since I couldn’t work outside, I spent the rest of the morning at Emerson. A number of unmarked graves near the north wall had yet to be identified, and ironically, I couldn’t locate graves for two names that had turned up in an old family Bible I’d come across.
Creating a site map for a cemetery as old as Oak Grove was always a challenge, not unlike putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Missing markers, lost records, illegible headstones, overgrown graves—time wreaked havoc on the dead as well as the living.
I was so engrossed in the task at hand that the scrabbling sound didn’t register at first.
Then my head came up and I sat very still, wondering if a mouse might have chewed its way into one of the file boxes.
Located in the basement of the Emerson library, the archives room was a crowded space of shadowy alcoves and dim corridors that traced through rows and rows of packed shelving.
Normally, I didn’t mind the gloom of closed-in places, but with the unidentified sound came a slight panicky sensation of isolation. I was all alone down there. The desk where I worked faced the wide staircase that led up to the first floor. I hadn’t seen anyone come down since I’d been sitting there.
It was nothing, I told myself. The place was old and creepy, filled with the sounds and smells of the past. No different from the dozens of other basement archives where I’d spent many a contented hour immersed in the lives of the long dead.
Shrugging it off, I went back to my work.
The sound came again—fierce scratching followed by a loud thud.
One of the boxes must have fallen to the floor. Not the work of a mouse, I was quite certain.
Fear tapped along my spine as I tilted my head, listening.
A shadow appeared at the end of one of the corridors, and I gasped before I realized it was a person instead of that frightening silhouette I’d encountered on the path at Oak Grove.
“Hello?” I called out.
“Hello!” came back the surprised rejoinder. “I had no idea anyone else was down here. Have you been sitting there long?”
“A couple of hours.” I peered into the gloom. “I didn’t see you come down the stairs.”
“I used the back stairwell. I guess that’s how we missed one another.” He came toward me then, but I didn’t recognize his face or his voice until he was almost upon me. “Ms. Gray, isn’t it? Daniel Meakin. We met at Rapture.”
“Yes, of course. Nice to see you again, Mr. Meakin.”
“Daniel, please.”
I inclined my head. “Amelia.”
He glanced down at the files and record books strewn across the desk. “More Oak Grove research?”
“Yes.” I explained about the graves without names and the names without graves.
“Quite a grave dilemma, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “Indeed.”
“They don’t match up then?”
“Unfortunately, no. But you may be able to help me out. I understand there used to be a church next to Oak Grove.”
“Yes, in fact, the old section of the graveyard was owned by that church. When the building was destroyed, city officials took advantage of what was then a remote location to open a new, more parklike cemetery right up against the old churchyard. In time, people forgot about the boundary and both sites became known as Oak Grove.”
“Do you know if any of the registries were lost or destroyed when the church came down?”
“It’s certainly possible. A lot of the old records were burned during and after the Civil War. Perhaps some of them have been misplaced or misfiled in here.” He glanced around with a frown. “Like Oak Grove, the archives have been shamefully neglected for years. The system is in dire need of a complete reorganization.”
“I won’t argue with that. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time down here poking around in all these old boxes.”
“My favorite pastime,” he said with a smile.
“Mine, as well.”
“You don’t mind the solitude?” he asked. “So many people find this place depressing.”
“I’ve never minded being by myself.” Loneliness was an old friend. “I just wish I could find what I need.”
“You know, I believe I have some books in my office that reference Oak Grove. I’ll have a look when I get back and see if I can find anything that might be useful to you.”
“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”
The whole time we spoke, he’d been holding his left wrist awkwardly at his side, reminding me of Temple’s speculation about his scar and a possible suicide attempt.
As if reading my thoughts, he began to edge back into the shadows. “I should let you get back to work.”
“Just one more thing before you go…”
He waited obligingly.
“The other night at dinner, Temple and Ethan mentioned that you’d attended Emerson with them as undergrads. You have a long history with the university, it seems.”
“Too long, I sometimes think.” That deprecating smile again.
“During my research, I ran across a reference to a secret society on campus. It was called the Order of the Coffin and the Claw. Do you know anything about it?”
