Page 79 of Demon and the Raven

“Yes,” Father Dennis replied with a grin. “The crypts are back there.”

“Oh, that’s not scary at all.”

“Don’t worry,” Father Dennis said, giving Lorne a quick pat on the shoulder. “Between me and Xander, we’ll protect you.”

“No offense, Father, but you’re kind of a smartass.”

His smile told Lorne he knew.

“Wait,” I rushed out, putting the mixture in my pocket and opening the bag. I pulled out four dried lavender flowers and passed two to each man. “Put one of those in each shoe, please.”

Lorne looked surprised, but Father Dennis did it immediately, no question. “You’re just gonna do that?” Lorne asked, but he bent over and unlaced his boots.

“It can’t hurt, can it?”

Lorne looked to me. “This is so nothing follows us home, right?”

“That’s right.”

“What about you?”

“I was supposed to give a tour yesterday, and I never took it out of my shoes.”

“It would drive me nuts to have this in my shoes all the time.”

I shrugged. “You get used to it.”

We started walking, soon arriving at the wrought-iron fence and the giant angel oak tree that once upon a time used to be at the front of the cemetery. Clouds covered the moon, and it started to drizzle. Lorne did a slow pan to me, making me laugh.

“And you see, when this kind of thing happens in horror movies, people always say, oh, that could never happen,” Father Dennis grumbled, gesturing all around him. “But here we are, in the middle of Night of the Living Dead.”

“You think you’re funny, but this isn’t funny,” Lorne apprised him irritably.

“Come now, son, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Taking a back seat to my common sense, Father.”

Father Dennis scoffed, but he let me take the lead.

“You know,” Lorne said, “there’s something naturally creepy about wrought iron.”

I couldn’t help smiling at him. There he was, making conversation to keep up the pretense that everything was normal, even though we were in a cemetery at night.

“Why lavender in shoes?” Father Dennis asked as we all walked side by side now, our shoes moving the gravel over the cobblestones.

“Because lavender protects from all kinds of things, but mostly, if something were to follow you around in here, as Lorne mentioned before, you don’t want to lead it home.”

“Well, I would never question the Raven of the Woods,” he said, smiling at me.

The sudden screaming wail was a surprise.

“Oh dear,” Father Dennis gasped.

Immediately, Lorne flew forward because that was his way, to always run toward danger. He was a hero, after all. Father Dennis and I quickly followed.

Catching up to him, we all ran together, and when Lorne saw the path, he took over the lead, wanting us behind him, and followed it to where it opened into a space with weathered gravestones scattered among high, overgrown grass.

During the day, it was foreboding, perhaps too quiet because no one had been interred there for centuries. And so without any visitors, if you ventured here, you were alone. Now, at night, in the dark, scary was a reasonable choice of word. Even more so because not ten feet in front of us was a supine woman, eyes closed, hands crossed over her chest, looking dead—and floating about five feet off the ground. A man holding a flashlight read aloud in Latin, while another was using an aspergillum to throw what I was guessing was holy water in every direction. The source of the screaming was another woman, on her knees to the left, hands over her ears, absolutely wailing. Beside her, open on the grass, was a Bible.