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Chapter 1
As I lay there on the altar bleeding out of the gash in my chest, with a six-inch knife stuck in my heart, it occurred to me that I really must have fucked up.
Oh, too gruesome? Sorry. Let’s wind it back. Hi. I’m Dustin Graves, purveyor of the arcane, one-time ritual sacrifice, and dead man walking. But maybe this is too forward. We should start from the very beginning. As a wise woman once said, it’s a very good place to start.
I like to think that my life only really began the day that I died. Nothing comes closer to a wake-up call than a knife in the chest, first because it hurts like a motherfucker, and second, because getting stabbed in the heart is a great way to remind you of just how awesome it is to be alive. I never fought harder for anything than when I was strapped down to that altar. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It all happened the night I tried to tell my dad some good news, which was never something easy to do with him. Talking, that is. Not that I blamed him for my death, only that our argument – the last one we ever had – was what put things into motion, the ember that set off the blaze. I just wanted him to be proud of me, you know? Twenty-four years old and I never went to college for nothing, never amounted to anything, and finally it looked like I had saved enough to start a business with one of my buddies.
“What kind of business?” My dad squinted as he asked the question, the words rolling around his mouth like hot coals. He had been drinking, I could tell. Not a lot, just enough to fill the void that mom left behind.
“You know,” I said, thumbing the condensation on my own beer. “Business.” I swept my hand across the living room of the house where I grew up, where my father still lived, and where I hadn’t felt very welcome for nigh on six years. “Selling things. And stuff.”
Dad raised an eyebrow. A chill sheared across the table. “You have no idea what you’re even doing, do you, Dust?” This again.
Dust was what my dad liked to call me, because of how I could never stick to one thing, how I flitted from one job to another, how I left everything in the dust. It was his way of reminding me how he felt about my scattershot approach to school, work, and life, in general. Real funny, dad.
Not that he was wrong, exactly. I always did a lot of reading, and I picked up just enough about everything to fake my way through conversations, relationships, and well, life, in general. It made it easy to talk to people, and to charm them when I needed to, which was all of the time, frankly. So, for example, I know enough to recommend a nice, generic red wine from out of California, but talk to me about cabernet this and sauvignon that and I’m dead. Master of none.
“My friends are handling the business side of it,” I said, trying my best not to stammer under the weight of his gaze. Eyes blue like ice, maybe the only thing I inherited from him, and they did such a good job of making my blood run cold. It was different with us, once. We used to talk. We used to laugh. “I’m chipping in money.” I sat up straight, adjusting my collar, puffing out my chest. “And I’m handling the PR.”
Dad huffed, took a swig of his beer, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Drops of amber stuck in his mustache, the kind of soup strainer you’d see on a high school science teacher, which is exactly what he was. And it was exactly why he ragged on me for never knowing what I wanted to do with my life. That and the fact that I frequently found myself wound into trouble all through high school, but that’s beside the point.
Purpose, he told me. Duty. Something to serve the community. Even on the way here it occurred to me that it didn’t matter how I had some new venture to report to him, something beyond an odd job or a temporary freelance project. It felt that it didn’t matter because what I did didn’t matter. He never really showed much interest, whether my plan was to go into graphic design, or pursue music, or, most recently, writing books. “Who the hell makes money writing books?” He had a real good laugh over that one.
“Public relations,” he said, the word rolling around on his tongue like a wedge of lemon. “Great. So events, and parties. Drinks. Drugs. Is that what you want?” His knuckles whitened as they gripped harder around his beer. “Is that what we raised you for, Dust?”
Not this again. “That’s not what this is about.” I could feel my beer warm under my touch, or maybe that was just my ears going hot under his gaze. Shame. It was all too familiar. I didn’t know if I would ever live up to what my father wanted of me. This clearly wasn’t it.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” I said softly.
He ruffled a hand through his hair, his ears already reddening with frustration. “You know that’s not what I meant, Dustin. I only want what’s best for you.”
“Sure.” I stood upright, my chair scraping across the floor as I did. “Okay.” I hated that I sounded glummer than I expected. I hated that he made me feel this way.
“Dustin, don’t. There’s so much you could be doing with yourself. Go back to school. Get a real job. You’re twenty – ”
“I know how old I am,” I snapped. I didn’t mean to, but I’d heard this song before. It felt like being caught in a feedback loop, like being stuck in a sitcom where no one ever laughs because the father’s a mean drunk, the main character’s a deadbeat, and the pretty, supportive mom is dead.
“I should just go,” I said.
“Dustin.”
“I’ll call you. Or text you. Something.” I tossed back the rest of my bottle, the bubbles hurting my throat on the way down, the taste of it bitterer than usual somehow. I settled it down on the table, careful to place it on the coaster, because I was angry, but he was still my father. “Thanks for the beer.”
“Will you please stay?” he said. His voice was plaintive, almost fond, and it sounded like someone from seven or eight years ago, someone from far away.
“Can’t,” I said, shrugging my jacket on. I stuck my hand down my pockets, hardening my heart against the disappointed sigh heaving past my father’s lips, then threw the door open into the relative chill of Valero’s night air.
