Chapter Thirteen #2
“Your explanations of decomposition, or lack of, have been very useful. Since I was able to see and smell it, my descriptions will lend a touch of firsthand experience that these kinds of scholarly books usually lack. Play your cards right, and I might add you as a contributor to my companion volume on the assorted undead.”
“I would be flattered, though if you need more firsthand experience with the dead, you could have just spent more time in the lab with me.”
“I spend plenty of time in the lab with you, Oliver Barlow. You just haven’t had any corpses that were of use to me. My research requires only the crème de la crème of dead people,” Gwen retorted in a haughty voice, pointedly turning up her nose and sniffing.
A smile broke across Oliver’s lips as he gasped in mock dismay. “How dare you insult my patients. I’ll have you know they’re all very fine corpses.”
“Your corpses pale in comparison to Aldorhaven’s.”
“Ah, yes, mine are sorely lacking in insects.”
Gwen laughed with a gag. “Touché. So according to Mr. Allen’s book, Ekland should be buried up by the tree line.”
“And so is Lindstrom.”
Glancing up the hill, Oliver could make out a mausoleum with Ekland inscribed upon the pediment and a cluster of graves about ten feet away that must have belonged to the woman’s family.
The further up the hill they got, the stronger the smell of rain became.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, drawing a grimace from Gwen.
“Let’s split up. You take Ekland, and I’ll take Lindstrom. If either of us sees anything, we call the other.”
Nodding, Gwen ambled up the hill toward the stately granite mausoleum.
Oliver trailed his eyes over the headstones leading up to the dead woman’s grave for any sign of his mother’s name but found nothing.
A low iron fence surrounded the plot of graves.
The ones at the center were the oldest, dating back to the early 1700s with newer graves flanking them on all sides.
Some had already been overtaken by the woods.
Moss crawled over the stones like a green carpet, and lichen chewed at their names until they were scarcely recognizable while the trees looming over the graves hissed as Oliver grew closer.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something move behind him, but when he looked, he saw only Gwen prodding at the mausoleum with her powers.
He took two steps and stopped when a twig snapped behind him.
Whipping around, Oliver found the graveyard empty, apart from a blackbird pecking at the base of a tree.
Oliver shook his head. All the talk of murderers and the reanimated dead was getting to him.
Picking around the nearest graves, Oliver’s eyes flitted across the names of Sarah Lindstrom’s ancestors and family until he found her now empty grave only half a yard from the tree line.
He eyed the dense woods suspiciously, but when the lowest branches didn’t jump out to grab him, he inched closer to Sarah Lindstrom’s headstone.
The dirt around it looked undisturbed. Kneeling, Oliver tugged at the grass to see if someone had peeled away the sod, but it didn’t budge.
Up close, he could see a seam in the dirt where it had been moved, just not in the way someone digging a grave would have done it.
It was almost like the dirt and grass had been parted down the center and knitted back together.
An earthmancer or a plantmancer could have done it, but that would require several people with powers working together to raise the dead.
A conspiracy to terrorize the town would be far harder to deal with than a rogue necromancer.
If that was the case and there were multiple people involved, they would need to call in more investigators.
As Oliver stood and dusted his hands on his trousers, a branch slammed hard into his back.
The breath whooshed out of his lungs as he tumbled between the trees and a wave of magic so strong it seemed to penetrate his bones washed over him.
Landing hard on his hands and knees, Oliver retched and coughed away the strange magic.
He shut his eyes against the nausea, but when he opened them and sat back on his heels, panic lanced through him.
Gone were Gwen and the cemetery, and in their place stood the endless forest of the Dysterwood.
***
SURROUNDED BY PILES of discarded paper in the sheriff’s abandoned office, Felipe jolted at the distant kick of panic lancing across the tether.
His hand stilled on a note from Mrs. Stills as he focused on the weight beneath his heart.
He waited to see if any tugs of distress or further alarm came, but when nothing followed, Felipe hesitantly went back to reading.
Sighing, he set the finished pile aside and reached for the next.
So far, all he had found were letters from Mrs. Stills acting as her husband’s secretary, what looked like gambling tabs for half the town, and absolutely nothing of use.
“Miss Jones is—”
Before Mr. Allen could finish, the door banged open, and Gwen toppled inside.
Her chest heaved as she sucked in a rough, wheezing breath.
Felipe scrambled around the desk and leapt over the low rail to steady her, but when she raised her wet gaze and locked eyes with Felipe, he knew. He knew before she even said it.
“Oliver’s— Oliver’s gone,” she cried as they ushered her onto a bench.
“What do you mean he’s gone?” Mr. Allen asked gently.
“We,” Gwen paused to suck in a breath, “were in the cemetery, looking at graves by— by the woods. We split up. He was right there, I saw him, and then, he was gone. I looked. I looked everywhere for him. He— he would never leave me like that.”
Felipe had felt it. He had felt the moment Oliver slipped into the Dysterwood, and he had been powerless to stop it.
Desolation held Felipe’s body in an iron grip.
Oliver was gone. The words made no sense.
They couldn’t make sense. Mr. Allen laid his hand on Felipe’s shoulder and offered his condolences.
He didn’t want to hear it. As long as he was alive, Oliver wasn’t dead.
Felipe’s fist tightened as despair hardened to anger, and he resisted the urge to slap the man’s hand away.
“Mr. Allen, go to the tavern and get Miss Jones coffee. She needs it to help her asthma,” Felipe ordered without looking at the innkeeper. He feared if he saw the look on the other man’s face, he would snap.
Mr. Allen hesitated a moment before patting Felipe’s shoulder and slipping out the door. The moment they were alone, Gwen’s face crumpled, and she threw her arms around Felipe’s neck as she let out a rough, wheezing sob.
“I lost him, Felipe. I lost my best friend. I only took my eyes off him for a second. I shouldn’t have—”
Felipe held Gwen tightly, biting his lip so hard to keep from making a sound that he tasted blood. He couldn’t give in, not now. Tears scalded his eyes as he whispered, “It’s not your fault. We’ll find him. Remember, if I’m alive, he’s still alive. There’s still hope.”
He wanted it to be true. It had to be true, but he wasn’t sure he believed it.
Mr. Allen had stressed that once something went into the Dysterwood, it didn’t come out.
The other investigators never had, and Sheriff Ridder had come out dead and reanimated.
But none of them were his Oliver. He and Oliver had gone into the desecrated cathedral and made it out alive when no one else had.
He had to believe the man who brought him back from the dead could make it.
Gwen coughed against his shoulder and pulled back as she drew in a shuddering breath.
Felipe patted and rubbed her back as he had seen Oliver do and blinked away the wave of tears threatening to come.
Things weren’t hopeless, not yet. He would walk into the Dysterwood and burn the whole thing down if that’s what it took to get Oliver back, but he couldn’t leave Gwen like this.
Sinking back on his heels, Felipe carefully pulled off Gwen’s glasses and wiped her cheeks with his sleeve.
The crackle in her breath was getting louder, and the dusty office certainly wasn’t helping.
“First things first, we need to get your asthma under control. Oliver will have our heads when he finds out you had an asthma attack over him, and I let you get worse. What does he always tell you? Long, slow breaths.”
Felipe breathed in time with Gwen until her chest no longer heaved with sharp sucks of air and he could finally think straight.
Helping her up, Felipe led Gwen back to the steamer and ushered her into the passenger seat.
Rain pattered a steady tattoo on the windshield, but Felipe could barely hear it over his pulse pounding in his ears as he started the steamer.
He was about to pull away from the curb when he spotted Mr. Allen walking back as quickly as he could manage with a flask dangling from his pocket.
“Get in,” Felipe ordered.
“You aren’t leaving, are you?” Mr. Allen asked as he slid into the backseat and shut the door. Handing the flask to Gwen, he scrambled to add, “I know this is a shock to you, to lose your friend this way—”
“We haven’t lost him yet. I’m dropping you off at the inn. Then, I’m going to the cemetery.”
Felipe listened to the distant, steady metronome of Oliver’s heart on the other end of the tether and counted the beats. As long as he was alive, Oliver was alive.