A little excited, in spite of the reason for our excursion, I glanced around the graveyard, scanning for any sign of life. Or rather, death. But I saw and felt nothing. Not so much as a tingle, and no sign of movement except the wind blowing leaves from trees.
Well,thatfucking figures. I’d finally realized what I should have figured out two centuries ago, and there were no wraiths around to test my new-found ability. The damn djinni had probably scared them away with his “bad” feelings.
As we walked, my gaze fell upon something I recognized, despite all that time and landscaping had done to change a plot of land engraved upon my memory like an epitaph etched in stone.
The meeting house. Where it all started.
Memories assailed me as I walked past the Birmingham Friends' Meeting House—what was left of it, anyway—and the cemetery as it currently looked was overlaid with images from my own recollection. The cold October night and the stone wall lit only by moonlight merged with a day more than a quarter of a millennium ago, when red uniforms clashed with blue, screams rent the air, and blood nourished the soil. Everywhere I turned, soldiers called out to me, some by name, others in inarticulate moans of agony. Up ahead, laid over a field of brown winter grass scattered with gray headstones, I saw a sea of red-tinged green, sprinkled with fallen soldiers waiting to be tossed into the common grave: a great trench like a gash in the earth, still being dug.
I blinked, and the gash was gone now, long ago healed and commemorated with a gray stone marker. Everyone who had seen the mass grave in person had died more than two centuries ago. Including me. Yet the images still made my palms sweat and my stomach clench. Made my eyes see what was surely no longer there.
The headstone called to me silently, and I obeyed the summons. I had no choice. My hand reached out of its own accord, brushing the cold gray stone as other textures slid beneath my fingertips.Rough cloth bandages. Warm, tacky blood. Damp, fragrant earth. Still-warm flesh.
“Lex?” Cale called, and I turned to find him watching me from ten feet away, the fake urn hidden in the backpack slung over his left shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, then I shook my head.WasI okay? Had I ever been? “I’ve been here before.” I left it at that, and he was wise enough not to ask for more.
Xaphan stared at me openly, and I could almost see the gears in his brain grinding. He was too intuitive for my liking. That, or I’d become much too easy to read.
Cale glanced at his watch. “We only have a few minutes, and I want to get there before he shows up.”
I nodded, but the djinni looked irritated. “Before who shows up?”
Cale scowled, waving me over. “We’re meeting an old friend.”
Of yours, I thought, finishing silently what Cale had surely itched to say aloud. My hand snaked beneath one side of my coat as I turned away from the mass grave. My fingers stroked the butt of my gun, looking for comfort, though I knew deep down that the nine-millimeter would do little to protect me from anything we were about to face.
I took the lead, because I was the only one who knew were we were going. Xaphan had been underground for a couple of centuries by the time the Battle of Brandywine devastated the continental army, and Cale wouldn’t be born for at least that many more.
Up ahead, the monuments came into view slowly, rising from the ground as we mounted a small hill. Dever was right: they were impossible to miss. They were massive and beautiful, inscribed to several of those who’d fought in the battle.
“Where is this old friend?” Xaphan glanced around impatiently; he was clearly losing patience with an adventure we’d repeatedly declined to explain to him.
“He’ll be here any minute,” I said, checking the time on my phone. “We need to get you out of sight.” I watched the djinni carefully, waiting for him to do…whatever he had to do in order to disappear. “Any time,” I nudged when he remained wholly visible.
Finally, with a roll of his eerie black eyes, Xaphan faded slowly from sight until I could see the largest of the three monuments through him. Then he was completely invisible. I glanced at Cale to find his eyes as wide as my own surely were. “Perfect,” I whispered, still a little stunned.
“So glad you approve,” Xaphan said from behind me now. I whirled around, my gaze searching the moonlit dark, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Frowning, I reminded the djinni that if he didn’t play his part—including the silent element of his performance—not only would Inotmake my wish, but I would help the elementals stuff him into a new jar. Then I would personally drop him into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. For a moment, as my last threat faded into silence, I was afraid I’d pushed him too far, and that he’d start torching people to piss me off. But then his lips—and only his lips—appeared out of nowhere, turned up in a decidedly lecherous Cheshire Cat smile.
Chills shot up my spine. The sick bastard seemed to think I was flirting with him.
Shaking my head in disgust, I watched as his mouth faded from view once again. Then we waited.
In the first couple of minutes, I glanced at the time on my cell phone at least two dozen times. The wind blew, and the temperature was in the low forties, but I barely felt the cold, despite wearing only my thin, bullet-breached leather coat over my jeans and sweater. It may have been the djinni’s presence keeping me warm, but I couldn’t help thinking it was my own anger at Dever and concern for Lacey.
Finally, just when I’d decided Dever wasn’t coming, the long, broad shadow stretching behind the tallest monument began to flicker. As I watched, it shimmered like the air above hot asphalt on a Memphis summer afternoon. Then Dever stepped from the depths of the darkness into the cemetery, his smile civil and inviting, yet somehow eviler than a scowl could ever be.
“Good evening, Ms. Walker. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
TWENTY-NINE
Devich’s smile graced the philanthropist’s face, but it was Dever who watched me through eyes that saw right into my fractured soul, I had no doubt. And it was Dever whose power scalded my skin with wave after wave of heat, as if I were standing too close to a fire. Not a campfire, but a roaring blaze, like a forest fire, or…
No, wait. That sounded more like Xaphan than Dever, even if the demon did originate in hell.
The djinni had obviously recognized his former friend and now clearly understood our plan, at least in part. And he would believe that since we were offering Dever an empty urn, we were taking Xaphan’s side in the centuries-old feud.
