“Jo, no,” Devon says.
“I’ll be fine. Right across the street.”
Aadesh looks back and forth between the two of us, as if watching a sporting event for which no one has explained the rules.
“The cemetery? Why?” he asks finally. “I’m pretty sure it’s off limits because of the sinkhole.” He nods toward the cluster of emergency vehicles and personnel.
“Research project,” I say at the same time Devon says, “Photography final.”
I offer Aadesh a casual shrug. “Need some photos for my final research project before I leave campus.”
I’m not leaving, but I don’t want to offer any incentive or example for anyone else to stay.
“Oh, okay,” Aadesh says uncertainly. I’m hoping he doesn’t question exactly what kind of research project I might be doing in a graveyard for a psychology class. “But aren’t we supposed to stay away from—”
“Come on,” Devon says, crossing the grass and taking the tape from Aadesh. “Let’s get these hung up so you can go home.” He claps Aadesh on the back, and I see the tension release from Aadesh’s body, replaced by a relaxed looseness that speaks to comfort and ease.
Aadesh beams at Devon. “Thanks, bro. I appreciate it. You’re such a great guy. Has anyone told you that?”
“You know, I think I’ve heard that a time or two,” Devon says, leading Aadesh away.
The secondary cemetery gate on the far side is closed but not locked. It opens with a shrill metal-on-metal squeal. I grimace and check to see if anyone is looking in my direction. But everyone in the street is still focusing on whatever is going on behind the barricade.
The cemetery in the middle of Old Campus is a bit of a Beecher oddity. The church that once stood here was the focus of life in Beecher in the 1600s. It’s been gone for ages, but the accompanying land passed from one owner to another until Beecher—at the time Beecher Women’s Teaching College—bought it. The only condition was that the graves had to stay. So Beecher University grew up around the graveyard, like skin growing over an embedded pencil tip from where that kid Dylan stabbed you in second grade.
The newest graves are on this side. An alum who became a huge donor in the 1950s—I should know his name. Dr. Kelleheris always going on about finding “this generation’s blah blah” in reference to him. The first university president is buried here, too. And his dog. The most recent—and last—is from the seventies, and it isn’t a grave at all but some kind of memorial in the form of a giant empty mausoleum. More an art piece for lives lost too soon than anything else.
Because that’s when the city sort of lost its shit about the university running its own unsanctioned and unregulated graveyard in the middle of a bunch of college kids, living, eating, and drinking the water. Eventually, the university built new buildings on the other end of campus, shifting away from the graveyard.
All of which makes this odd little cemetery the perfect place to be ground zero for whatever is going on, especially if it’s somehow related to Death. Or me.
I skirt around the newer graves on this side. They seem mostly untouched, the ground maybe a little more raised up in places, like a blanket under which a sleeping body has shifted position.
I shudder at the mental image, heading directly to the older section where the original settlers were once buried. Here, the sandstone grave markers are thin and sharp at the edges, worn by weather and time. Several of them are now on the ground, in pieces, and the earth has been torn open in deep runnels that reach right out into the road, where the asphalt is lifted up.
Nothing here looks like someone crawled out of a grave—most of those stories about being buried alive or vampires rising from the dead came from the Old Ones or their spawn. If injured severely enough, it takes time to heal and recover, especially for spawn but even for the Old Ones. Unfortunately, if the good townsfolk are a little too quick to bury you, well, that’s what you get for almost dying in the old days, I guess.
But while the grass is torn and the earth rumpled like a bedsheet after a weekend bender, there’s nothing person-sized.
Also, four hundred plus years would be a long time for recovery.
“All right. I’m here,” I say. “What do you want?”
“I can feel you.” I turn slowly in a circle. “If you want me, I’m standing right here.” My hands tighten into fists, the tension rising in me. “Stop being such a coward and going after human kids who have no way to fight back.”
Above my head, the crows resettle themselves with a dramatic and surprisingly loud flutter of wings, startling me.
But nothing else moves, and there is no other response.
Frustration burns in my chest. “Let’s go, asshole,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m tired of this.” My throat aches with the need to shout at my invisible foe. But I can’t risk drawing the attention of the authorities in the street.
This time, that twinge of magicflexes, growing stronger for just a second, in response. But it fades to that same background baseline just as quickly as it started. So quickly that I wonder if I imagined it.
But no. Instead, I’m pretty sure I’m being taunted. Like a bully on a playground giving you a little shove as he passes by to remind you of your place.
Fine. They want to play? Let’s play.
I flip the edges of Carter’s coat out of the way and drop to my haunches in the narrow open area between the old graves and the new section of the cemetery. Taking a deep breath to squelch my remaining misgivings, I close my eyes and focus on the borrowed warmth and life inside me—my power. I imagine it swirling around in that same sunny yellow vibrancy that I pictured allthose years ago, when my father first taught me how to feed. How to kill.
