Graves' end Read online

  But this time the lively, rainy darkness disappeared, and a cool, bright morning dawned in its place.

  Lia found herself standing amidst the Yard’s old camellia trees, her favorites amongst all the plants, wearing nothing but a robe delicately stitched together from their fresh, translucent leaves. She looked down at it, marveling at the intricacy of its construction. The leaves were small, paper-thin and plastic-shiny-springtime foliage, vivid green and bursting with new life. When Lia moved she did so carefully, taking pains not to tear the fragile, living garment.

  Thock!

  Lia turned at the unexpected noise. She knew the sound of wood being chopped, the thud of the axe head when it bit into the grain followed by the quick clatter of two half-logs tumbling to the ground. The familiar sound reached her again:

  Thock!

  Lia headed toward the woodpile at the back of the Yard. She came out of the trees in time to see Dexter-a living, vital Dexter-bringing down his axe to bifurcate another length of wood.

  Thock!

  He was shirtless and sweating a bit from exertion. Lia liked watching the way the muscles worked in his back and arms when he swung the axe. He was built like a long, inverted triangle: broad at the shoulders, tapering down to small hips.

  Thock! Another log cracked and split. Dexter bent to pick up the halves and set them aside, and that’s when he noticed Lia.

  He straightened up, not saying a word, giving her that knowing look and that lopsided grin. He was quite a bit taller than she was, big and solid through the chest, with a flat, firm stomach. Lia didn’t quite realize she was biting her bottom lip while she eyed the point where his flesh disappeared behind the crisp front of his well-fitted work pants, just below his navel. He had an appealing air of genial masculine beastliness about him. A certain quiet confidence and maturity that Lia found lacking in so many of the other men she knew or regularly saw, when she compared them.

  Dexter set the axe aside as Lia padded over the soft earth to stand before him, opening her weightless leaf-robe and letting it fall back from her shoulders. Dexter stepped closer, put an arm around her, and drew her to him, chest to chest. She was sure he must’ve felt the thudding rhythm of her heart both under her left breast and right through the planes of her back.

  At that moment a jolt of alarm straightened Lia’s spine. Dexter let her go and stumbled back-almost recoiling, you could say.

  Lia looked down and was horrified to see her own hands stripped bare of flesh, the bones bleached to a chalky white. The leaves that made up her robe were all brown and dead and curling.

  She willed the images and sensations away, but that driving urgency only intensified. There was something happening back in the waking world that needed attending to. She could feel her friends’ distress over it quite keenly now, and she began the long upward struggle back toward them and toward consciousness, leaving her strange, intimate moment with an impression of Dexter Graves unconsidered. She didn’t understand what the vision meant, but didn’t feel like she could spare the time to wonder about it, either.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Graves stepped in close to Hannah when she checked the front display on Lia’s wireless telephone. Riley and Black Tom also crowded in and craned their necks to look over her shoulders. Lia was still sleeping soundly on that massive four-poster bed, behind them.

  “Someone you know?” Graves asked, pitching his voice low so as to not disturb Lia’s rest. “Those tiny phones are goddamn amazing, by the way, that they tell you who it is that’s calling…”

  “No,” Hannah said, frowning over the caller ID. “It says Ingrid Redstone. Not a name I’ve heard before.”

  “Ingrid Redstone?” Graves repeated. He didn’t think he could’ve heard her right.

  “It’s been ringing,” Riley said. “This must be at least the third re-dial.”

  “Should I answer it?” Hannah asked.

  “Yeah, do it,” Graves said. “But keep it vague. Wish there was an extension I could listen in on.”

  “I can put it on speaker,” Hannah offered.

  Graves nodded his approval, quietly impressed.

  Hannah unfolded the phone. “Hello?”

  The caller hesitated for a long while. Then, “…Lia?”

  “Ah, no,” Hannah said. “No, Lia’s not, ahh, Lia can’t come to the phone right now, but I’ll be happy to give her a message, if you like.”

  “Who’s this?” the caller asked sweetly. Her name was Ingrid Redstone, if the ‘caller ID’ was to be believed, and Graves had to admit that the honeyed voice did sound the way he remembered.

  “I’m, uh… Lia’s boss,” Hannah said. Graves guessed she was being mindful of Lia’s wariness regarding names, which he figured was probably smart. She was improvising, although she was neither a performer nor a deceiver by nature.

  “Lia’s boss at Potter’s Yard?” the woman calling herself Ingrid asked.

  “Umm, yeah,” Hannah said, after a longish beat. “Yeah, that’s me, all right.”

  She was at a loss for more to say. Graves folded his arms, frowning and thinking.

  “Well,” Ingrid continued, “my name is Ingrid, Ingrid Redstone, and I was really hoping I might speak with Lia. Do you know when she’ll be available?”

  “Well, she, she’s a little busy right now,” Hannah said. She was floundering, not quite sure what was required of her, or even what was going on. Graves had a notion rattling around in his head, but he wasn’t ready to let the rest of them in on it yet.

  “She’s organizing a lot of new stock, you know, waaay out back,” Hannah continued. “She forgot her phone up here in the office.”

  “Oh, did she?”

  “Yeah, yeah, she did,” Hannah lied. “And it’s a pretty big place, so I’m not exactly sure where she is right now, but I’ll sure tell her you called, miss, ah, Redstone, was it?”

  “That’s right, Ingrid Redstone. Lia’s been working on a… a project for me, and it’s really quite important that I speak with her as soon as possible.”

  Graves could stand the charade no longer. “Yeah, I just bet it is, Ing,” he snarled down at the little phone Hannah was holding up. “Tell me-this ‘project’ of yours gonna end with Lia’s gray matter spattered all over Hardface’s door, or was that just how things shook out with me?”

  “Dexter,” Ingrid said, after a moment. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “In the… well, hell, I was gonna say ‘in the flesh,’” Graves said, aware of the inadequacy of the expression. “But yeah, it’s me. How’ve ya been, dollface? Hope the years’ve been kinder to you, ’cause they’ve sure taken a toll on me.”

  “Welcome back,” Ingrid said, and Riley and Hannah exchanged a glance. “Dex,” Ingrid hesitated on the other end of the wireless phone line. “I–I want you to know that what happened, back in 1950? That was… well, it was a complicated situation. What I did to you, I didn’t do lightly.”

  “Glad to know you didn’t blow my brains out on a goddamn whim, Ingrid.”

  “Dexter, I had no other choice,” Ingrid exploded, suddenly emotional. “You have no idea what would’ve happened if you’d gone through that door!”

  “I sure didn’t then,” Graves said. “My horizons have broadened since.”

  “You may think they have,” Ingrid shot back, “but you still don’t know what’s really at stake.” When she spoke again she pitched her voice very low. “Dex, this isn’t the very best time for me to talk about all this. But there are things you need to know. You and Lia both. And you need to know them before dark.”

  “Yeah, regarding Lia,” Graves said. “You come anywhere near her, and my head won’t be the only one with a hole in it. You get me?”

  “Nyx will be coming at sunset,” Ingrid warned. “And Lyssa, and the Tzitzimime, too. None of them are finished with you, and they’re not the last Caradura has to send. Meet me before the sun goes down-”

  “Nuts to that, sister!” Graves said. “Our social lif
e ended when you pulled that trigger.”

  “How’s Lia feeling, Dexter, why don’t you tell me that?” Ingrid challenged, trying a different tack. “Still on her feet?”

  Everyone in the guest room looked over at unconscious Lia, and then back to Graves.

  “And what would you know about that?” he said darkly. “What did you do to her?”

  Hannah jumped when he shouted.

  “Oh, it’s not me doing it, Dex,” Ingrid said. “It’s you.”

  Graves hesitated. Hannah, Riley, and Black Tom all stared at him. “What the hell are you yappin’ about, Ingrid?” he said. “I’m not doing a damn thing to Lia. I wouldn’t ever.”

  “Haven’t you stopped to wonder how it is you’re up and walking around?” Ingrid asked. “What do you think is powering that? Chthonic potential is what. Earth energy. The sort of force that needs a channel.”

  “Then you tell me how to change that channel.”

  “When we meet,” Ingrid said. “Before sunset.”

  Dexter shouted down the line at her: “You must already have a hole through your goddamn head if you think I’m gonna meet you anywhere outside of hell, sister! Now you tell me how to fix this, you tell me rightnow, before I-”

  “What? Come after me?” Ingrid said, cutting him off. “Oh, no! Whatever will I do? I’ll just have to cower here at Potter’s Yard until you track me down, Sherlock. Just be sure you do it before dark. Seriously.”

  Ingrid broke the connection, and Lia’s phone burbled a dropped call tone.

  Nobody knew what to say. Hannah, Riley, and Black Tom looked up at Graves, but all he could do was shrug, helplessly.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ingrid closed her phone and wandered away from the Lyssa tree-a source of amazement for her henchmen that in Ingrid’s opinion almost amounted to an art installation. She was trying to avoid the avid attention of that creepy Xavier, whom she knew had been eavesdropping during her call. The other men hadn’t wanted to hang around the leather-suited Archon with the sapling tree growing up through her head after she tried to talk to them, but Xavier hadn’t been deterred. He hadn’t let Ingrid out of earshot since arriving at the nursery.

  Her bare foot encountered something soft and yielding on the ground. Something lying concealed under the cover of a low shrub.

  Looking down through the foliage she parted, Ingrid found a black cat. It hadn’t moved, despite being accidentally kicked. It was alive, no doubt about that, yet unresponsive to stimuli. Ingrid made a gesture to knot the oddity up in a precautionary binding hex, one she could shore up later if she saw a need. Then she put away her phone and picked up the limp animal, frowning.

  This meant something. She was sure of it.

  She was looking critically at the inert black cat when Xavier crept up behind her. “So,” he said out of nowhere. “You think they gonna come, or what?”

  Ingrid turned, startled, but kept it cool. She betrayed nothing. She fixed Mickey’s footsoldier with a contemptuous gaze of a sort that usually made men feel self-conscious, to say the least. Xavier had sidled up a lot closer than she might’ve expected. She looked him up and down dismissively, then looked at the cat again, and grinned. “You know, I have a feeling they will,” she said.

  Ingrid tucked the animal under her arm and strutted off, through a thicket of potted palms, pointedly ignoring Xavier as he watched her walk away.

  He lingered, waiting to make sure Ingrid was really gone. After the Red Witch wandered out of earshot, he fell to his knees and ripped his own face off, gasping. ‘Xavier’ was nothing more than a disguise. While he caught his breath, Winston, the King’s skeletal servant, looked disdainfully down at the floppy face in his hand.

  “Bloody hell, I forgot how hot these things can be,” he muttered, his voice and manner changed completely from those of his crudely-drawn character. As if servitude weren’t enough, the final indignity was that he was now being forced to act, like some vagabond gypsy player prancing for coins on a rickety stage.

  He looked again at his false face, which was stubble-scalped and marked with a teardrop tattoo at the corner of the left eye. It’d been flayed off a recent arrival in Mictlan mere hours ago. It felt moist, and smelled meaty.

  “How do the living tolerate it?” Winston wondered aloud.

  He heard a rustling in the oleander behind him and threw his face back on. It shrink-wrapped down onto the bones of his skull. He still had no eyes (the ones that came with a fresh face were impractical, as they tended to deflate or turn cloudy so quickly; and besides, the King prized them as jewelry), but he covered up that fact with his sunglasses and got to his feet before two of the gunmen he’d enlisted ‘rolled up on him,’ to employ the vernacular of the day. He recognized them as Top Shelf (aka Reggie White) and his shadow Andrej Mirovic (known amongst his confederates as the Silent Soviet, due to his lack of English). Winston had hand-picked each member of this crew himself.

  “Dude, what you doin’ back up in here, anyways?” Top Shelf said. “Takin’ a leak?”

  “Yeah, why,” Winston shot back, dropping into character as Xavier once again. “You wanna watch?”

  Top Shelf snorted in contempt and wandered off in the direction Ingrid had gone, with quiet Mirovic trailing along behind him. Winston stared after them through Xavier’s dark lenses.

  “Wankers,” he muttered.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Lia got out of bed. Nobody saw her. Nobody was looking in her direction. She was still fully dressed, except for her shoes. She suspected her hair was mussed and she smoothed it self-consciously, probably not doing it any good.

  “Dexter?” Hannah said, breaking the silence that filled the guest room at Casa de Rojo. She still hadn’t folded up Lia’s phone, although its screen had gone black. “What are you gonna do?”

  “You’re gonna tell me how you can possibly know Ingrid Redstone, for starters,” Lia said, from behind them.

  There was a mass turn. Hannah, Dexter, Riley and Black Tom all wheeled around. Hannah ran over and hugged her, hard. “Lia, honey!” she exclaimed. “How are you? You fainted dead away, we were so scared-”

  “I did not faint, don’t you say that,” Lia admonished her. Hannah let her go and she slipped back into her shoes. “I never faint. I don’t want to be a girl who faints.” She turned to Graves. “Dexter?”

  “What, how did I know Ingrid?” he said. “I met her back in the ’40s, before I… well, you know. She was a singer in a bar I spent kind of a lot of time in back then. She’s gotta be into her nineties by now.”

  “If she is, she’s got a great plastic surgeon,” Lia said. “I saw her yesterday morning, and there’s no way she’s more than thirty years old.”

  Dexter looked confused. “But that’s not possible,” he said.

  “Says the Crypt Keeper,” Riley piped up.

  Dex glared at him like he meant to rejoin with something snotty, but then relented. “Yeah, good point,” he admitted. Then: “Lia, she said there’s things we need to know. She said I’m here, somehow, because of you.”

  “Not to the best of my knowledge,” Lia said. “And I do think I’d notice. What am I, reanimating in my sleep?” She frowned. “But I guess I did find your lighter in a place she sent me to…”

  “Can you undo it?” Dexter asked. “Whatever it is she did to me that’s hurting you?”

  Lia shrugged. “I don’t even know what it is. This’s beyond me.”

  “That Ingrid woman didn’t seem to think so,” Hannah said.

  “No,” Lia agreed reluctantly. “No, I guess she didn’t.” She looked up at Dexter. “So, Dex. We gonna go talk to her, or what?”

  “Hell no, we’re not gonna go talk to her!” Dexter said. “You know how to spell ‘trap,’ sister? That’d be I-N-G, uh,” — he thought about it- “R-I-D.”

  “But what about all those ‘things we need to know?’” Lia asked.

  “That’s a bluff,” Dex said. “She’s bluffing. It’s bullshi
t.”

  “What if it’s not, Dexter?” Hannah asked quietly.

  Hannah and Dexter exchanged a private glance, and Lia knew they were both thinking of her. She must still have looked pretty worn out. She hadn’t really expected that three hours of sleep would erase those dark, haunted circles from underneath her eyes.

  “If that’s the case,” Dexter reassured Hannah, “then we’ll find out what she knows some other way. But playing by Ingrid’s rules is not gonna be the smart move, here, I’m tellin’ you. I’m getting a notion she’s a better tactician than I ever knew.”

  “You guys are welcome here for as long as you need,” Riley said. “We’re defended. Let ’em come.”

  “Thank you, Riley,” Lia said, touching his arm affectionately. “But I don’t think that’s really gonna work.”

  “Why not?” Dexter and Hannah said together.

  “It’s nice here,” Dex elaborated. “Swanky.”

  “And safe,” Hannah supplied.

  “You’ll see, if we hang around long enough,” Lia told them. “Riley, can I have a drink of water? Maybe a sandwich or something, before Steb wakes up? I don’t know if I can handle him today.”

  “Of course you can,” Riley said. “You can have roast duck and chilled caviar, if you like.”

  “PB amp;J’ll be fine.”

  Hannah meekly raised her hand. “I might try the duck and caviar.”

  “Come on,” Riley said. “We just restocked the kitchen.”

  They all filed out into the hall, except for Black Tom. Lia noticed, but she figured he’d be along directly. He wasn’t her shadow, after all.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Graves realized that Casa de Rojo’s party people had come to terms with his mementomori presence much more readily than most crowds would have. The decayed Dick Tracy, Riley, and Hannah hung out amongst them in the main hall and talked amidst their chatter while Lia finished off her snack: two sandwiches, a banana, and a glass of sweet iced tea.