Good morning, Mr. Crane.
I laughed,looking up to see Elliot leaning in the doorway, a smile on his face that I wasn’t entirely certain how to read, but that I hoped I would see again every day.
“Seriously?” I asked him.
He walked across Noah’s kitchen, then bent and took my face in his hands, kissing me thoroughly. “I am going to say that to you every day for the rest of your life,” he said softly.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat, blinking away emotional tears. “I’m okay with that,” I told him.
Seth Crane.
It was weird. I’d been Seth Mays for so long that I wasn’t really sure what to do with the fact that I was going to change my name everywhere—it was already on the marriage certificate, and I’d started the process of switching over things like credit cards, trying to figure out what I needed to change social security cards and get a new driver’s license—there are a lot of placeswhere you use your name. Work, doctor’s office, credit cards, vehicle registration… So many places.
It was totally worth it.
“Come on,” he said, his expression growing serious. “We need to get going.”
I wasn’t any happier about it than he was. Definitely less happy, in fact.
We were driving back out to the house—Hart was meeting us there, and he was bringing Ward with him. I hadn’t wanted to ask him why, but I had a pretty good guess.
If the Community had killed my mother and the Augusta County cops had been willing to cover it up and blame someone else, then there was a not-insubstantial chance that there were other victims who had been killed, either intentionally—like Momma—or unintentionally, as I suspected Rachael had been—adults and children allowed to die from Arcana, injuries, or other illnesses that prayers hadn’t been able to heal.
I was afraid of what he was going to find out. In part because I just wanted to go home, and the more Hart and Ward found, the more likely I was going to stay tangled up in whatever legal ramifications would result from it. Especially if Ward found out something about Momma. Or Rachael.
I climbed carefully into the familiar passenger seat of Elliot’s Tundra—we’d taken Henry to the airport yesterday so that he could fly back to Wisconsin—and sat back, trying to calm my already-racing heart.
It didn’t matter that a quarter of the Community had been arrested, that the FBI had essentially ordered surveillance on the rest, and that my parents were dead—going back still made my palms sweat and my stomach churn.
Elliot reached over and took one of my hands. “You okay, baby?”
I drew in a long breath, then let it out again. “No, but I will be.”
He pulled my fingers to his lips and kissed them before letting me go. “We’re almost done here,” he said softly.
I snorted—I couldn’t help it. “Until Ward finds another dozen murder victims,” I muttered.
“Goddamn it,”I grumbled from where I was sitting on a rotting log at the edge of the clearing where Momma and Rachael were buried. The flower wreaths were wilted, and Elliot had gathered them up and put them in the back of the truck for disposal.
My reaction was in response to the shimmering forms of three ghosts—Lady Sylvia Randolph was the first, with the other two being my mother and sister. I liked Lady R well enough, creepy as she was, but I had no desire whatsoever to speak to either Rachael or Momma.
I heard Elliot draw in a breath, as though about to say something. I looked up, then nearly fell off my log. “Shit!”
“Fuck!” Elliot gasped out at the same time.
Rachael had appearedrightin front of me, her empty, translucent eyes boring into me.
“She’s curious about you,”came the eerie voice of Lady R.
I swallowed, my mouth and throat completely dry. I tried breathing through my nose, trying to get my heart rate back under control.
“Why is he angry?”my dead sister asked.
“Ask him yourself, girl,”the dead Victorian woman replied.“He’s got ears.”
I did have ears, but if it hadn’t been for Ward, who was still over by the graves, it wouldn’t have mattered because I wouldn’t have been able to either see or hear the dead women.
Rachael kept staring at me, but she did as Lady R suggested.“Why are you angry?”
