Page 97 of We Already Dug the Grave

The room was now a dying jungle. A few plants I didn’t recognize thrived, vining up the walls and hanging from posts. Most, however, were shriveled stalks. A shelf that had once held rows of leather-bound books, histories of the Sight and tasseomancy—books I’d devoured on lazy summer evenings while lounging next to the creek—were now empty. I swiped my index finger through the thick layer of dust and frowned.

Hattie-May would’ve never let her greenhouse fall into such a state if she could help it. Ruth’s domain was behind a teacup, and certainly Hattie-May could also divine leaves in a pinch, but this greenhouse was where Hattie-May worked her magic. Where she made a difference, helping those who couldn’t find it elsewhere.

Whatever happened with Burt, things couldn’t go back to how they were. If I spent another ten years away, when I came back next time, my great-aunt wouldn’t be here.

Aunt Hattie held an important role in our plan, but seeing the state of her greenhouse, I wondered if enough of the old Hattie-May existed within her foggy memory to brew a poison that could kill undetected. What if the mixture she had in mind wasn’t as perfect as she said?

Last night as we’d sat around the kitchen table and pieced together the plan, Aunt Hattie mentioned rosary pea, but when I walked the rows of the greenhouse and found the toxic plant, it was a dried husk, its leaves brown and the pods of red berries long gone.

We were putting our faith in my aging aunt, who wandered at night and lost slips of time.

Was the woman who’d always driven her own fate still here? Did that spark of magic still exist in her?

It must. I ran my hand over the skeleton of a long-dead oleander, a pang of sadness stabbing my chest. It must, and that’s that.

I got back to work, my cheeks damp as I picked through the clutter. I found shelves of tiny dark blue bottles, each filled and labeled and covered with dust. How long had they been here, waiting to rid the world of a pest?

I kept digging through the shelves and tables containing random stacks of even more random items. There was no roll of bags to be found.

Time was ticking.

Fine. I’d find Casey first, then figure out how to move him.

I locked the greenhouse behind me, grabbing the shovel from where I’d propped it nearby before walking around to the back of the building, careful to keep my eyes straight ahead, avoiding the spot where Casey and I had spent our last moments together.

How are you going to move him, if you can’t stomach looking at the last place you saw him alive?

I’d do it because I had to. Because Burt wasn’t giving me a choice.

If the path to the greenhouse was overgrown, then the path to the creek was nonexistent. It took twice as long as I remembered, but I finally found it and picked my way through the trees toward the sound of the trickling water.

The creek itself was small, its banks rocky. But yards away, there’d always been a flat area of smooth, sandy earth.

That patch of soft terrain was unchanged, though it had seemed to be tucked farther away when I was a kid. The morning I’d pulled Casey through the forest by his ankles, it had seemed to take an hour to get there, my brain coming and going in bursts and gasps. He’d been reed thin—all sharp angles—but yanking him through the underbrush had left me sore for a week.

I was overcome with emotion as I got to work. Every slice of the shovel uncovering a memory: us at the movies, in study hall, at parties, our teeth bumping together. I dug and dug.

No Casey.

I repeated the process again and again, digging deeper than I had that day. I’d been weak with grief and shaking with fear. His grave had been a shallow one.

Now, I dug deep and wide, each stab of the shovel growing more erratic.

By the third attempt it was clear. Casey wasn’t here.

A cry clawed at my throat.

His grave was empty.

Chapter 37

Now

I threw the shovel aside and sank to my knees, plunging my fingers into the dirt like a crazed animal, digging and sifting.

Casey wasn’t here. No part of him. No skeleton. Not even fragments of bone or torn pieces of clothing.

Impossible.