Page 16 of Grave Expectations

The books. Oh goddess, how had Selma found out? Roz opened her mouth to explain, but Selma cut her off.

“Now, tell me how the hell you tethered a spirit to you. In great detail.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Great Aunt Selma squinted at the space beside Roz, tilting her head.

“Do you see him?” Roz asked hopefully.

“No,” Selma said gruffly, sitting back in the loveseat Roz dragged across from the couch. Selma was pushing ninety, but had the spirit of someone half her age. When asked how she stayed so young, she always replied, “Vaseline on your face every night, a five-mile walk a day, keeping only lovers and never, ever letting them convince you to breed.”

While most of the Graves earned the town’s unease because of their craft and standoffish nature, Selma earned hers by being insufferable. She didn’t have much of a knack for necromancy, but she absolutely had one for gossip. On multiple occasions it’d been hinted that Selma used the dead to spy on people, so she might know the juiciest town secrets.

And now she knew Roz’s—she’d tethered a spirit to her.

“Tell me where you heard the word ‘tethered’,” Selma asked.

“He said it, that I’d tethered him to myself,” Roz explained.

“Did he elaborate?” Selma asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I don’t understand the specifics of it, just that it wasn’t uncommon for a necromancer to do,” Alaric said. “They’d tether a spirit they wished to speak to, or they planned to reanimate.”

Roz relayed this to Selma, who smacked her lips. “Well, he’s no necromancer, whoever he is. Who is he, anyway?”

“Uh,” Roz said, her voice ticking up an octave. “Alaric Blackwood.”

Selma was shocked into silence for perhaps the first time in her life. Her thin eyebrows traveled up to her hairline, and for a moment Roz thought she looked impressed.

“Handsome devil,” Selma said once she’d recovered, her grin lecherous. “Now, how did you manage to do what generations of Graves haven’t been able to accomplish?”

“That’s just it—I don’t really know. I was at his statue, and I cut my hand and bled on the statue. I guess he was already there…”

“There already! How long had he been there?”

“Three hundred years. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. He’s been watching the town since his murder. He thinks the reverend that killed him put a curse on him, so he can’t cross to the other side,” Roz said.

Selma leaned back in the loveseat and tapped her chin with a long fingernail. “Did he state the nature of the curse?”

Roz repeated the words Alaric told her, shivering once they were spoken. There was a weight to them she disliked, a cadence to the words that made goosepimples rise on her skin.

“Nasty business, curses are. Even a talented witch can have their curse go wacky. He cursed him to watch, not interact. This must be why he couldn’t be reached,” she mumbled, partially to herself, partially aloud.

Roz glanced sideways at Alaric. He was watching Selma, his brow furrowed in the same pensive expression he wore on his statue. Roz wondered who commissioned the statue; it must have been someone who knew him dearly. To cast such a likeness, to capture such an expression…

“Roz, dear, stop drooling,” Selma said, snapping her fingers. Roz wiped her mouth with the back of her hand then frowned when it came away dry. “It’s an expression. About your curse, you were close enough for blood magic to bind you to this realm. Maybe it broke you partially from the curse, maybe it ended it altogether. Has he tried to cross since you saw him?” Selma directed her question to Alaric even though she couldn’t see him.

“There’s nowhere to cross. If I leave town, I’m thrown back into it. The further I get from you, the the closer I get to going back to that place where no one can see or hear me,” he said.

Selma nodded slowly when Roz relayed Alaric’s words. Then she leaned forward, her voice dropping. “There’s some parts of our history that aren’t well known. I suppose he can listen in, granted he doesn’t tell anyone.”

“Who would I tell?” Alaric said, straightening.

“Ha ha,” Roz said to her aunt.

“Necromancy is a mixed art. You have the run-of-the-mill necromancers like your mother, who can communicate with the recently dead. Then you have more complex ones, like those that can channel. As you dig deeper into the art, you get little niches. For example, reanimation. There are Graves who’ve reanimated corpses before. That practice was discontinued due to a touch of the necrophilia, if you know what I mean.”

Roz gagged.