That is probably what we’re looking for. The same magic that is resonating with me might well be tripping danger signals in their brains. Especially if it’s my father who is behind this. I don’t think he’s crouched down inside, just waiting to jump out at me. (I hope.) But he’s connected to this somehow. I’m almost sure of it now.
“Okay.” I nod, more to myself than the others. “Let’s do this.” In a louder voice, I say to Carter and Chessa, “You should step back, out of range.”
“What, are you expecting something to come popping out like an evil jack-in-the-box?” Chessa asks, a nervous laugh belying the defiance in her voice.
I wince at how closely her description matches my earlier thought.
“I don’t know what to expect,” I admit. A crusty old spawn attempting to regenerate? An Old One that somehow got tangled up in my father’s magic? “But I would rather you and Carter not be in the direct pathway of… whatever.”
“Because you don’t think we can help,” she says, hefting the shovel up to her shoulder like an enormous bat. Clearly, this is still about me lying to her, not letting her in on my big secret. Which, it’s a secret for a reason?
I bite back my exasperation. “Because I don’t want you to die, Francesca,” I say flatly. “And I don’t know if we”—I tip my head toward Devon—“will be able to protect you while also trying not to die ourselves. And while I’m ready to sacrifice myself to keep you safe—gladly, in fact—it’s not my first choice, okay?”
Whether it’s the use of her full name or the multiple mentions of the D-word, something finally gets through to her. Eyes wide behind her glasses, she nods reluctantly and then retreats to the center of the graveyard, tugging at Carter’s sleeve to bring him with her.
“Keep going.” I point toward the street, where we left the van.
She rolls her eyes but does as I ask, pulling Carter with her.
“You sure about this?” Devon asks, as we approach the mausoleum doors.
I give a strangled laugh. “Are you kidding?”
“Just checking,” he says, with a small smile.
Still, it’s a nice reminder that I’m not alone in this.
As soon as we’re directly in front of the doors—more black wrought iron over wood beneath—I spot our next problem. The rust-spotted hasp of the padlock gleams dully beneath my phone’s flashlight.
“Shit.” Chessa is going to be intolerable after this. “Uh, thehacksaw, please?” I ask Devon. He sets the bags down and pulls the desired implement from within.
“I told you,” Chessa whisper-shouts from the street, as soon as she sees the saw. “Anything that’s rumored to be haunted is going to be locked up to keep stupid kids out. You do not listen to enough true crime, Jocasta.”
Devon and I take turns at the lock until the blade finally breaks through the hasp, and I can twist the padlock free of the wrought iron design holding it in place.
I chuck it off to the side, and then I hand my phone over to Devon and, without giving myself time to hesitate, yank open the doors.
They open with a mighty groan from unused and elderly hinges, and I steel myself, muscles tensed and ready for whatever I might see. Or might come leaping toward my face.
Behind the doors is a vestibule, a space as wide as the mausoleum itself, with built-in flower vases on shelves in the wall.
But it’s empty, clean except for layers of dust and grit and the skeletal remains of a few leaves that worked their way inside at some point. And there’s no sound, no movement within.
Well, fuck.
Then Devon edges up next to me, sweeping the light across the space, and right at the outer edge, toward the darker, narrower crypt portion at the back of the mausoleum, I catch a glimpse of something on the floor, something that doesn’t belong.
A faded green metal body with black pushbutton keys and a cylinder at the top. It takes me several long seconds to recognize what it is.
“Is that a typewriter?” I ask Devon in a whisper that still manages to echo.
“One of the victims’ personal possessions?” he suggests.
A pang strikes my chest, like one of those now-immobile keys. What future had that girl imagined for herself so fiercely that her family would have given her typewriter over as the symbol of the life she was missing?
“Yeah.”
He lifts the light a little higher, sending it deeper into that small space, and I catch the gleam of metal, a sleek gold herringbone necklace laid out on the floor, and then a pair of red leather clogs with stacked soles and a daisy pattern cut into the uppers and…
