“That’s my grandmother.”
I looked at Leanne sharply. My impression had always been that her grandmother was still alive. After all, her grandmother was the one who had tipped Leanne off about the persecution tunnel in the basement of the women’s dormitory.
“Oh, I like her,” Madame Woods said. “She has a mischievous personality.”
I watched the smile spread across Leanne’s face. “She does.”
“She’s been gone for awhile now, right?” Madame Woods said.
Leanne nodded. “She died when I was eight.”
At this, I felt my eyes widen.
“Hmm,” Madame Woods said. “She’s making it sound as though you two still chat often.”
The skin at the corners of Leanne’s eyes crinkled. “We do. I dream about her often.”
“She wants me to tell you that she enjoys those conversations immensely.”
The medium’s face darkened. “She also wants you to know that things are changing. You need to trust your abilities now more than ever. Because you can see what others can’t, you are more vulnerable to attack. Protect yourself.”
Leanne sucked in her cheeks. “Okay.”
Once more Madame Woods focused on the crystal ball in front of her. I studied the way her unblinking eyes watched the ball. Slowly her lids began to droop. Then they slid shut and her body went slack.
Somewhere in the room a clock ticked rhythmically. Students glanced at each other, no one sure what to make of the medium’s limp body.
The candles in the room flickered, and Madame Woods gasped to life.
Only, Madame Woods was no longer Madame Woods.
“Where is she?” The voice was unnaturally deep and gravelly. Unfocused eyes searched the room. The students shifted. A couple whimpered. Around the room I saw wide eyes.
“Where is the devil’s consort? I smell her.” The eyes roved around the room. Until they locked with my own.
“You.” The beast controlling Madame Woods strode towards me.
What had the thing called me? The devil’s consort? Ew. I mean seriously—ewww.
The chalk line was only two feet in front of me, and that white line was all that separated the medium from me. Right about now I was having trouble believing an invisible wall separated us. But I sure hoped one was.
“He’s watching you now, just as he always has.”
I stilled. It seemed that even my heart slowed. Whatever lingered behind those eyes was ugly and twisted. And it knew about the man in the suit.
Chapter 3
Harrison Moore didn’t much like the outdoors, yet his job always seemed to bring him back out here.
He picked his way through the graveyard. The graves here were so old that the names and years had mostly worn away. They leaned towards and away from each other like drunken revelers partying the afterlife away. At least that was how Harrison liked to think of death—as a party that got better the longer you were gone.
For all his knowledge of the dead, he still had no idea what truly lay beyond.
Behind him he could hear his gravedigger shoveling dirt into the hole. Only moments before, that grave’s occupant had whispered to Harrison secrets he’d taken to the grave. Secrets that would earn Harrison his next paycheck.
Once the ceremony was complete and the soul had once again been released from the body, Harrison’s job was over. And tomorrow, other than the dark brown stain where the goat’s blood had spilled, there’d be no signs that anything supernatural had occurred here.
He hated his job.
As he considered alternative careers—perhaps a job that didn’t require supernatural powers—the leaves around the graves rustled.
They crackled as Harrison stepped over them. It had been a long time since any graveyard spooked him. The dead were not so scary. The living were the ones you had to watch out for.
Out of his peripherals, the shadows cast by the headstones moved. Harrison’s head snapped to the movement, but when he focused on the grave, it stood motionless, its shadow firmly in place.
That’s what you get for working in cemeteries, he thought to himself.
In front of him two trees loomed, arching over the entrance to the cemetery.
To his side, Harrison heard leaves stir again, even though the air was still. The hairs along his arm rose.
It might’ve been a long time since a graveyard had spooked him, but this cemetery on this evening had managed to set his nerves on edge.
He picked up his pace. Behind him he heard a chuckle. He never had time to run. Someone rammed into his back, sending him sprawling to the ground. The bag he carried spilled open next to him. Some vials rolled out.
He flipped over. And he only had a moment to scream before the thing descended on him.
***