“Since about the age of seven, when my mother started locking the book cabinets,” Nova said with a smirk. “Ironically, if she’d just left them unlocked, I wouldn’t have had the slightest interest in them. Parents create so many of their own problems.”
I was the only one who heard Jess snort with amusement at Nova’s remarks. I stared around anxiously as we waited for Nova to fiddle around with the lock.
“Are you even sure your body is here?” I asked Jess. “It’s not like you’re a local. They probably had to get the state police involved, which means your body might be in some police morgue somewhere.”
“I’m sure. I might be out of my body right now, but I’m still tied to it. I can feel exactly where it is, because it’s constantly trying to pull me back,” she said.
“So why don’t you just let it? Pull you back, I mean?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“Because it’s currently inside a zipped-up body bag stored in an airless freezer drawer,” Jess replied dryly, “and if I let it suck me back in, I’ll be trapped there, too. I might not be breathing right now, but on reentry I will start again, and I would very much like there to be oxygen available when that happens.”
My stomach lurched at the thought. “Okay, good point.”
“Got it!” Nova crowed, as the lock clicked and the door swung open.
We didn’t have to worry about motion detectors or burglar alarms—no one in Sedgwick Cove went in for that sort of modern security, except for the occasional rich outsider who bought one of the waterfront estates. When I’d suggested we get one for Lightkeep Cottage, Persi had laughed in my face.
“Why deter a thief with loud noises when you could curse their bloodline instead?” she had asked. I had to admit she had a point. TheVesper witches hadn’t locked a door in centuries. Their magic had always been their protection, and most of the rest of Sedgwick Cove’s population felt the same way.
There were a few seconds of confused fumbling as we all activated the flashlights on our phones, and the room was a terrifying confusion of looming shadows and swinging beams of light.
“How do we know where to—” Zale began, but Jess swooped past him, creating a chill breeze and eliciting a high-pitched scream. “She’s near me! I think she touched me! Is she touching me?”
Even in the semi-darkness, I could see Jess’s spirit roll its eyes. “Will someone please tell him I’m not the boogeyman? It’s this way. I can feel the pull, come on.”
“Jess says it’s this way,” I told everyone, and they all fell into line behind me. I didn’t love being at the front of the group—cowering at the back was more my speed when it came to situations like this—but I had no choice, as we’d left the only other person who could see Jess out in the car.
We moved through three large, square, adjoining rooms by way of massive sliding pocket doors that squealed along their tracks as we shoved them open. Stacks of chairs were lined up against the walls, and empty plinths shaped like Roman columns stood around awaiting their crowns of funeral arrangements. Thick carpet muffled our steps as we followed Jess’s slightly luminous form toward the back of the funeral home. Shelves on the walls held row after row of candles in every color imaginable, and the scents from all the jars of incense were enough to make my head spin. Eva let out a shriek as we turned a corner and found ourselves facing a row of figures blocking our way, but it was only a collection of statues depicting a multitude of goddesses, familiars, and other deities.
“If I die of a heart attack before we get out of here, do not let them put any of those creepy ass statues at my funeral, please and thank you,” Zale babbled, trying to get his breathing under control.
“I’m starting to think we should have leftyouin the car,” Nova hissed. “Seriously Zale, get a fucking grip.”
We sped up so that I didn’t lose sight of Jess, who was drifting along impatiently ahead of us, and watched her beckon us before disappearingthrough a solid door. I seized the handle, and was relieved to find that it turned easily under my fingers—no more time wasted picking locks.
We all agreed we could risk turning on the basement lights, since they couldn’t be seen from the street outside, and everyone seemed to relax a little—we were still about to break into a room full of dead bodies, but at least we could see where we were going. Jess drifted through a room full of coffins and racks of shrouds and ceremonial robes to a second door, this one massive and made of metal. She drifted through it, and we pushed it open after her.
I had never in my life had the slightest interest in understanding what happened to people’s bodies after they died—it was the kind of morbid mystery I was happy to leave unsolved. Now, as I gazed around at metal tables, rolling carts of sterile instruments, and a wall full of square silver refrigerator doors, I felt my stomach give a heave. Zale’s face was pale and clammy looking. Eva looked like she couldn’t decide between fascination and horror. Only Nova managed to cling to her general sense of ennui.
“Okay, now what?” she asked. “Do you think those freezer thingies are locked?”
“God, I hope so,” Zale murmured. He was staring at the doors as though expecting them to pop open at any moment, like in a zombie movie.
I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. “Jess, where are—” But as I asked the question, she appeared again, floating out from the wall of freezers looking relieved.
“I found it—I mean, me. My body. It’s in this one,” she said.
“You’re sure?” I asked, my voice higher than usual as anxiety coursed through me. “Because I do not want to play musical corpses here. I only want to open one of those drawers.”
“Yes, I’m sure! Do you seriously think I don’t recognize my own body?” Jess snapped. “Now come on! I have no idea what the effect on my body will be from being stuck in there so long!”
“Does she know—?” Nova asked, and I cut her off by pointing to the correct door. Slowly, we all moved past the metal tables that dominated the middle of the room. Thank goodness they were empty. If there hadbeen a human shape under a sheet or a toe sticking out with a tag tied to it, I might have lost all grip on my self-control, and run screaming from the room. We gathered around the door Jess had indicated, and I quickly realized they were all staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“We agreed to help you, but this is your mission, Vesper,” Nova said. “And that means you open the dead body fridge.”
Realizing I had no argument to make, I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and yanked on the handle. The door opened with the slight hissing sound of broken seals. A gust of frigid air blew out in a fog, and we found ourselves staring into a narrow metal tube with a slab on a track, and an ominous black bag resting on top of it. I seized the handle on the metal slab and pulled hard. The slab slid out with a metallic screech, and the telltale shape of a body was revealed. Unable to stand the mounting tension, and afraid I would lose my nerve, I found the zipper with shaking fingers, and unzipped the body bag.
