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The masked figure was climbing over the wall with a ladder, the chain sort you use in home fire-emergencies. Two teens tried to grab the person. One kid was kneeling, hand gripping his shoulder in obvious pain.
And there, several feet away, was Marie and Edward Chevalier’s grave. The soil was disturbed, as if a pack of excited dogs had been digging. The person in the mask was not the dead one in the nearby grave. Therewasa recently deaddraugr.
And kids.
I glanced back at the teens.
A masked stranger, a dead security guard, adraugr,and kids. This was a terrible combination.
The masked person dropped something and pulled a gun. The kids backed away quickly, and the masked person glanced at me before scrambling the rest of the way over the wall—all while awkwardly holding a gun.
“Are you okay?” I asked the kids, even as my gaze was scanning for thedraugr.
“She stabbed Gerry,” the girl said, pointing at the kid on the ground.
The tallest of the teens grabbed the thing the intruder dropped and held it up. A syringe.
“She?” I asked.
“Lady chest,” the tall one explained. “When I ran into her, I felt her—”
“Got it.” I nodded, glad the intruder with the needle was gone, but a quick glance at the stone by the disturbed grave told me that a fresh body had been planted there two days ago. That was the likely cause of the security guard’s missing face. I read the dates on the stone: Edward was not yet dead. Marie was.
I was seeking Marie Chevalier.
“Marie?” I whispered loudly as the kids talked among themselves. The last thing I needed right now was adraugrarriving to gnaw on the three dumb kids. “Oh, Miss Marie? Where are you?”
Marie wouldn’t answer, even if she had been a polite Southern lady.Draugrwere like big infants for the first decade and change: they ate, yelled, and stumbled around.
“There’s a real one?” the girl asked.
I glanced at the kids. I was calling out a thing that wouldeatthem if they had been alone with it, and they seemed excited. Best case was a drooling open-mouthed lurch in my direction. Worst case was they all died.
“Go home,” I said.
Instead they trailed behind me as I walked around, looking for Marie. I passed by the front gate—which was now standing wide open.
“Did you do that?” The lock had been removed. The pieces were on the ground. Cut through. Marie was not in the cemetery.
Shaking heads. “No, man. The ladder the bitch used was ours."
Intruder. With a needle. Possibly also the person who left the gate open? Had someone wanted Marie Chevalier released? Or was that a coincidence? Either way, a face-gnawer was loose somewhere in the city, one of the who-knows-how-manydraugarthat hid here or in the nearby suburbs or small towns.
I pushed the gates closed and called it in to the police. “Broken gate at Cypress Grove. Cut in pieces.”
“Miss Crowe,” the woman on dispatch replied. “Are you injured?”
“No. Thelockwas cut. Bunch of kids here.” I shot them a look. “Said it wasn’t them.”
“I will send a car,” she said. A longer than normal pause. “Why areyouthere, Miss Crowe?”
I smothered a sigh. It complicated my life that so many of the cops recognized me, that dispatch did, that the ER folks at the hospital did. It wasn’t like New Orleans wasthatsmall.
“Do you log my number?” I asked. “Or is it my voice?”
Another sigh. Another pause. She ignored my questions. “Details?”
“I was checking on a grave here. It’s intact, but the cemetery gate’s busted,” I explained.
