“What’s he doing?” I whispered to Wyatt.
“Searching for emotional imprints.”
I was staring at the ground, pacing in a circle, when I noticed impressions that might have been… bare feet? They led me to a modest structure made of stone with the word CLEAVY in bold letters above the door. Dead vines twisted around the building as if they had attempted in vain to strangle the life out of it. I tried pushing and pulling on the door.
“Find something?” Blue asked, coming up behind me.
I pointed at a shiny new lock. “You wouldn’t happen to have any bolt cutters, would you?”
Blue reached in her pockets and fished out a couple of pins.
Wyatt sidled up beside me. “She’s pretty nifty with picking locks.”
After a long minute, Blue tossed the lock to the ground and tried to push open the door, but it was too heavy. Claude leaned his body against it and shouldered it open.
The room smelled musty, and I wrinkled my nose as we aimed our lights inside.
“What’s all that?” I asked, noticing a pile of junk in the corner.
Wyatt entered and knelt down, wiping away some of the cobwebs. “Looks like someone wanted to take their silver to the afterlife.”
A stone coffin claimed the center of the room, and what I noticed immediately were the fresh clumps of dirt on the floor.
Everyone backed up against the walls when Viktor came in. He stepped up to the coffin and bowed his head respectfully. Butterflies circled in my stomach.
Viktor touched the coffin with his fingertips. “Christian did not deserve such a vulgar disposal. Death is inevitable for us all, even the immortals. But it should mean something. Let us give him a proper burial.”
Wyatt’s boots scraped against the dirty floor as he walked to the edge of the coffin, his head cocked to the side. “Hurry and open it up.”
Shepherd and Claude gripped opposite ends, pushing with all their might to spin the lid open. Gem averted her eyes, and Wyatt leaned in like a little kid about to watch a firecracker explode.
“Someone was pissed,” Shepherd muttered, looking at his palms.
Wyatt shone his light inside. “So we meet again. Déjà vu.”
It seemed like a strange thing to say, but then again, Wyatt wasn’t exactly the most normal guy I’d ever met. He untied the cloth wrapped around the corpse’s head. When he snapped it away, glassy eyes stared up at us. Christian’s face didn’t look pallid and peaceful like most dead people, but eerily startled.
I expected a flood of tears, but instead, everyone behaved strangely.
“Move away,” Shepherd ordered, reaching into the coffin. “This’ll hurt like a bitch.”
“What are you doing?” I asked in horror.
When Shepherd yanked his arm back, he was holding an impalement stake in his hand. Not the small ones I’d seen people use, but more like an arrow.
Christian flew up to a sitting position like a scene in a horror movie, his lip curled in a snarl. “Remind me never to dothatagain.”
I blinked in surprise. The impalement wood must have missed his heart.
Viktor shouldered Wyatt aside and placed his hands on Christian’s shoulders, his lip trembling. He waited a beat before finally speaking. “You need a shower.”
Gem and Blue laughed, relief swimming in their eyes. The tension in the room lifted, and the air circulated as everyone began to breathe easy.
Shepherd peered into the coffin. “Who’s your girlfriend?”
A skull rolled to the side, and Christian shuddered. Without answering, he gripped the edge of the coffin and climbed out, stumbling when his feet touched the ground.
Gem reached out to help. “We’re so glad you’re not dead.”
