Graveminder

Chapter 40

REBEKKAH WATCHED THE SHERIFF LEAVE WITH A MIXTURE OF SYMPATHY and astonishment. Her skin felt almost uncomfortably prickled by the things she could feel in the tiny trailer. She made sure that the sheriff was well outside the trailer, out of earshot, before she turned to face Byron.

“It’s cold where she walked. Over there”—she pointed at a spot near the refrigerator—“she stood still longer. It’s like ice against my skin the closer I walk to it. I don’t know for sure that it’s Daisha, but”—Rebekkah walked toward Byron, following the trail that wanted to tug her right out of her skin—“I know that a dead person walked here.”

Byron kept his distance, giving her space to maneuver in the tiny room. “Can you find her out in town?”

Rebekkah shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just know that she killed people here. I feel her here.” She pointed toward the sofa. “One of them died right there.”

“It’s bloody, so that makes—”

“No.” Rebekkah walked to the edge of the sofa. She bent down to touch the air just over the tattered cushions. “She was here. Sat here. The blood might be from the attack that killed the ... whichever of them it was ... but there’s plenty of blood other places that there’s not death. Here.” She ran her hand through the air in a diagonal, as if she were tracing down the back of someone who was bent forward. “Right here.”

“You can feel her death?” Byron stepped closer.

“Or his. I don’t know which.” Rebekkah looked away from the almost black stain on the cushions. “It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. She matters.” Rebekkah folded her arms over her chest as if holding on to her own body would keep her from floating away. She wasn’t sure, though, if it would. Part of her felt like she could close her eyes and drift into the air. “Daisha is strong from killing people. Not just dead. Not vacant. She’s stronger than a newborn dead girl should be. I feel it. I feel her, and she’s strong.” Rebekkah put a hand over her chest as she stepped past Byron into the hallway. She drew in several breaths, wanting to fill herself up with air, weigh herself down with this world .

There were only a few drops of blood on the carpet in this part of the trailer, like dark tears had stained the dingy pile. The trail of cold was far more obvious than the blood. That she could see: it stretched out toward her like wisps of smoke from a barely smoldering fire. She pointed into the bathroom. “The other one died in there.”

“If we step outside, can you follow the same trail?” Byron was still behind her. His voice was low, but it felt strange to her.

Not dead.

She looked over her shoulder. The smoky trails of death weren’t touching him; they wound into the air around him, but he didn’t see them. They were for her to follow.

“The bodies need to be taken from here,” she whispered.

He nodded. “I know, but you ... Bek? Your eyes aren’t ... they’re different.”

She looked at the cracked mirror that hung on the bathroom wall, but it wasn’t herself that she saw reflected in it. Instead of the features she knew as her own, a silvered shape looked back at her with blacked-out eyes. It was okay. She got it. To find them, to lead them home, to keep them in their graves, she needed to be kin to them. She wasn’t part of the living world anymore, not truly, but she was tied to it. Through Byron. He was her tether.

“I’m not here,” she whispered to herself.

“Bek?” Byron touched her shoulder, and in doing so, he became visible in the mirror. Unlike her, he was vibrant. His eyes were fiercely green, and she had the sudden sense that right then she could’ve seen him in the dark.

Like a light to lead me home.

“You’re here, Rebekkah,” he assured her. He didn’t come any closer, however; he stood apart from her with his hand on her shoulder.

She couldn’t speak, didn’t know the words to make the whispery thoughts in her mind come clear to him. She nodded. It was the best she could do for a moment. His hand on her shoulder seemed to reduce her feeling of detachment. He was the rope that bound her to the world of the living.

And I need to keep him safe.

That meant finding Daisha.

Rebekkah closed her eyes for a moment. Her tongue felt too thick for her mouth, and the voice that she heard as her own somehow wasn’t right, but she needed to explain things to Byron.

“Daisha was here ... or someone like her.” She opened her eyes and met his gaze in the mirror that reflected her still-hollow eyes. “Daisha needs me to help her find her way home.”

Byron took his hand away. “I need to take care of the ones she killed. That’s my job too.”

Mutely, Rebekkah nodded.

“Chris!” Byron yelled. “We’re ready.”

Then Rebekkah went outside while Byron and Christopher sealed the two dead people into the body bags. These wouldn’t walk. At their wake, she would say the words, and then she would visit their graves over the next few months. Byron would handle the details of the living world, the wake and the burial, and when the bodies were in the earth, she would make sure that they stayed there.

Like Maylene should’ve done for Daisha.

If Daisha had been buried and tended to, she wouldn’t have woken up. Which means she wasn’t minded. Was there an accident? Why hadn’t someone reported it? Was she killed? There was a reason the dead girl awoke, a reason she wasn’t still resting where she should’ve been, and Rebekkah needed to figure that out.

After I take care of Daisha. Or maybe as part of taking care of her.

Rebekkah’s first duty was to the dead, and as she stood in the brown grass outside the trailer, she understood that the dead girl who’d killed and partially eaten the couple inside needed something she hadn’t been given: Rebekkah’s job was to give her the peace she’d been denied.