Chapter 21 #2
I nodded. I wanted to get as far from this place as possible as fast as we could. I put the flashlight in my pocket and braced myself with a hand on his shoulder. I put my foot in his hands and he said, “Up you go!”
He hefted me as if I weighed nothing. My upper body was up out of the grave and I flopped against the grass as I tried to pull myself the rest of the way.
“Not to get too personal, love,” Jasper said, “but I’m going to give you a push.”
His hands cupped my ass and he gave me a hearty shove.
I skidded across the ground and my coat took the brunt of the abuse, but I didn’t care.
I was free! I rolled onto my back and stared up at the night sky.
The temperature had dropped and I suspected it was near freezing out, but I was so hot from my previous panic that I welcomed the chilly air against my feverish skin.
I pulled the collar of my coat aside and tried to cool my neck where Moran’s fingers had tried to squeeze the life out of me.
I closed my eyes for just a moment and then crawled back to the grave to offer Jasper my hand. He grabbed it, and I pulled while he dug his toes into the side of the grave wall. In moments he was up and out. I flopped back down and he fell back onto the cold, hard ground beside me.
“I think we need to ask for a raise,” he said.
That surprised a chuckle out of me. “What’s the going hourly rate for being almost strangled by the undead?”
“Not enough.”
“Agreed.”
“I’ll admit this career path does take some getting used to,” he said. “But I can say this, working for the BODO is never ever boring.”
“Is that why you do it?” I pushed myself up to a seated position and Jasper followed.
“Among other reasons.” He rose to stand and held his hand out to me. “Come on, let’s get this bugger buried and get some food. I’m famished.”
Jasper propped his flashlight on the headstone and stood with his arms wide.
As I watched, he gestured to the mounds of dirt that surrounded the grave, and like a maestro conducting a symphony, he guided the piles of earth back into the grave, burying Mr. Milton David Moran for what I hoped was the last time.
· · ·
We arrived at the penthouse looking rough.
The doorman, upon hearing our destination, remained impassive, leading me to suspect that Olive had warned him that we would look worse for wear, or maybe that’s just how doormen in posh hotels responded to people covered in leaves and mud with the lingering scent of a graveyard about their persons.
The elevator opened into a lobby that had only one door. We crossed the marble floor and Jasper turned the knob and pushed the door open. I froze in the doorway, taking in the opulence before me.
The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a view of the Boston skyline in the distance. The furniture was sleek and modern and mostly white. I glanced down at my dirt-encrusted clothes, afraid to step inside.
“There’s a laundry bag in each of your rooms. Use them, and we’ll have your clothes washed tonight and returned in the morning.
I took the liberty of buying you each some clothes from the spa.
They’re nothing fancy, but they’ll do.” Olive was seated at a large table with a laptop in front of her.
She was peering at the screen, not bothering to look at us.
“Brilliant, thank you,” Jasper said. “I, for one, am going to take the longest, hottest shower of my life.”
“You have thirty minutes. I’ve ordered room service for you,” Olive said. “They’ll be here in half an hour.”
Jasper started across the room and, realizing I wasn’t moving, paused and turned around. “All right, Zoe?” His tone was gentle, as if he expected the teeth-chattering disaster I’d been in the grave to return.
I nodded. “Yes, I’m just getting my bearings.”
“Leave her with me,” Olive said. “I want to talk to her.”
Jasper glanced from me to Olive and back. He lifted his brows, silently asking if this was okay. I nodded.
“Bedrooms are up there.” Olive gestured to the spiral staircase at the end of the room. “Yours is the second on the right.”
I watched Jasper climb the stairs and disappear down the hallway before I spoke. “Did you want to know how it went?”
“You’re both here, so I assume it went well.”
“Moran woke up.” I strolled across the room and stood beside the table.
“Did he?” Olive turned away from the computer and glanced at me. Her gaze lingered on my neck. “I see there was a bit of a struggle.”
I covered what I was certain were bruises with my hand. “How is it possible that he woke up? And, bigger concern, will he wake up again?”
Olive leaned back in her chair. “These are very good questions to which I have no answers.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because necromancy is your gift, not mine.”
“Surely you’ve come across this sort of thing before.”
“Sorry, no.” Olive looked very matter-of-fact about it. Why this irritated me so much, I had no idea, but it really peeved me.
“It’s possible that the necromancer who raised Moran the first time raised him again in the cemetery,” Olive said.
“You mean they were in the graveyard when we were there?” I asked.
Olive shrugged. “I have no other explanation for how he woke up.”
“Then they could raise him again!” I was freaking out. I knew it. Olive knew it. There was no use trying to pretend I wasn’t.
“Why would they when it seems they only raised Moran to kill you and he failed?” Olive asked. “Now that you’ve sent him back and buried him, they’ll likely raise another corpse to try to kill you.”
She said this so matter-of-factly as she turned back to her computer that I wondered for a moment if the metaphorical heart encased in ice in El Corazón in the BODO collection wasn’t Ariana Darkwood’s but rather Olive’s, because clearly she didn’t have one.
“Where’s Eloise?” I asked.
“She’s resting. I think coming that close to a ghoul shook her up.” Olive glanced back at the laptop. “She hasn’t lost any more body parts, so that’s something.”
Weariness settled over me. I was tired all the way down to my soul.
I wasn’t used to nonanswers for answers and I really loathed not being able to find a case study or a dissertation or something that would help me comprehend this new reality I was living in.
The only thing I could think to do was solve the problem at hand.
To that end, I asked, “Did you discover anything about my mother’s death?”
Olive glanced back at me, considering. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“It’s the assignment, isn’t it?” I knew I sounded a bit snippy and I would have felt bad about it except that a corpse had tried to strangle me and I didn’t have enough emotional bandwidth to feel regret for my tone.
Olive’s lips actually turned up at the corners. “Very well, Ziakas.”
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought she was pleased with me. “I don’t have definitive proof of murder.”
I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or not. I had no time to process as she continued.
“What I do have are some troubling medical records,” she said.
I glanced at the chair near me. It was upholstered in white suede. I’d be an absolute ass to sit on it, but I was so exhausted. I pulled the chair out and sat—gingerly, but I sat.
“Have you ever heard of the Waning Curse?”
I frowned. “ Waning as in a waning moon?”
Olive’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Exactly. It coincides with the waning gibbous, third quarter, and waning crescent phases of the moon.”
“What does it do?” I asked.
“Essentially, it’s used on a witch or a mage to slowly kill them.” A flicker of sympathy flashed in Olive’s dark eyes. “I believe the curse was used on your mother.”
“But why?” I asked.
“I suspect whoever did it wanted the grimoire, but your mother must have refused to tell them where it was,” Olive said.
“It was hidden in time,” I said.
Olive leaned forward. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s a theory that Agatha has,” I said. “She believes we could never figure out where my mother was because she was hiding in another time.” I told her about my mother’s sporadic visits and the strange antique gifts she always arrived with, like the dollhouse and the raven puppet.
“Which would explain why Eloise couldn’t feel the grimoire and find Juliet,” Olive said.
“What proof do you have that she had this Waning Curse?” I asked.
“The symptoms she had are what you’d expect—exhaustion, hallucinations, ravenous hunger but an inability to eat, difficulty in communicating, and her patient chart indicates a gradual slowing in the function of her body’s organs with no indication of any known illness.
Her magical powers would have gone dormant as well, meaning she couldn’t even help herself with magic.
Of course, human doctors wouldn’t have known what was wrong with her or have the cure. ”
“So she just wasted away into nothing and no one helped her?” I asked.
Olive nodded. “Her official cause of death was cardiac arrest.”
“That’s what we were told.”
“And it’s probable that her heart gave out because of the curse,” Olive said.
“And you’re absolutely certain she was cursed?” I asked.
“I’d say, more accurately, your mother was magically murdered.”