One Grave at a Time
Page 4

I almost bit the sides of my cheeks to keep from laughing. Fabian had a crush on the lovely ghost! His lame explanation for remembering the exact month and year they had met when ghosts didn't even feel temperatures was topped only by the cow-eyed look he darted her way before schooling his features to faux blandness.
Yep, he had it bad, all right.
"Okay, you two have been friends for a while, but you're not here just for a social visit, so what brings you, Elisabeth?"
I assumed it had something to do with the ghost she wanted to kill, but if so, she'd be shit out of luck. For one, I wasn't a contract killer of any species, and Bones had long since retired from that business himself. For another, I couldn't even help my uncle willingly find a way to the other side. So offing a phantom was way outside my abilities even if I did have a sudden urge to go ghostbusting, which I didn't.
She folded her hands in her lap, fingers twisting together. "Back in 1489, at the age of twenty-seven, I was burned at the stake for witchcraft," she began softly.
Even though that was over half a millennium ago, I winced. I'd been burned before, and both times had been excruciating experiences.
"I'm sorry," I said.
Elisabeth nodded, not looking away from her hands. "I wasn't a witch," she added, as if that made any difference in the horrific nature of her execution. "I was a midwife who challenged the local magistrate when he accused a mother of deliberately strangling her baby with its own cord. The fool knew nothing of the complications that birthing often wrought, and I told him so. Soon after, he sent for Heinrich Kramer."
"Who was he?"
"A murdering bastard," Bones replied before Elisabeth had a chance. "He wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches, a book responsible for several centuries' worth of witch hunts. According to Kramer, anyone in a skirt was like as not to be a witch."
So Elisabeth had been killed by a homicidal zealot with a serious case of misogyny. I knew what it was like to be singled out by a zealot, and that made me even more sympathetic toward her.
"I'm sorry," I said with even more sincerity this time. "However Kramer bought it back then, I hope it was long and painful."
"It wasn't," she said, bitterness edging her tone. "He fell off his horse and broke his neck instantly instead of being stomped on and left to suffer."
"Not fair," I agreed, while thinking that at least Kramer would've gotten a taste of his own fiery medicine in hell.
Bones gave Elisabeth a long, speculative look. "Know quite a few details about his death, do you?"
Elisabeth met his gaze. In her half-hazy state, her eyes were medium blue, making me wonder if they had been as dark an indigo as Tate's when she was alive.
"Yes, I'm the one who spooked his horse," she replied defensively, oblivious to the pun in her words. "I wanted revenge for what he'd done to me, and to put a stop to the deaths of more women in the town he was traveling to."
"Good for you," I said at once. If she'd expected judgment, she hadn't heard much about me. Or Bones. "Wish I could shake your hand."
"Too right," Bones said, raising his whiskey in salute.
Elisabeth stared at both of us for several seconds. Then, very slowly, she rose and floated over, holding out her hand to me.
I shifted self-consciously. Guess she didn't know what a metaphorical statement was. Then I stuck out my hand, reminding myself that this was no different than all the other times I'd let ghosts pass through my flesh in greeting. But when her hand closed over mine, that usual tingling feeling followed by my fingers poking right through her didn't happen. Unbelievably, an icy-cold grip squeezed back with the same firmness and consistency as my own flesh.
"Son of a bitch!" I exclaimed, jumping to my feet. My cat hissed and leapt to the side of the couch, miffed at being unseated.
Elisabeth suddenly stood before me in vibrant color, like she'd been switched from being broadcast in a fuzzy channel to high def. Her hair, which I'd thought had been a nondescript brown, shone with rich auburn highlights, and her eyes were so deep blue that they looked like the ocean at midnight. Her cheeks even had a pink flush to them, highlighting a complexion that could only be described as peaches and cream.
"Bloody hell," Bones muttered, standing also. His hand shot out to grasp Elisabeth's arm, his expression mirroring my shock as his fingers closed around solid flesh instead of passing through vaporous energy.
"I told you some of my kind were stronger than others," Fabian murmured from behind Elisabeth.
You weren't kidding, were you? I thought numbly, unable to stop myself from squeezing Elisabeth's very cold, very firm fingers to verify once more that she was really solid.
But soon after I did, I felt a pop of energy in the air, like an invisible balloon had burst. Pins and needles broke out across my skin while the hand I'd been clasping vanished. In the next instant, Elisabeth's appearance dulled back into muted colors, and the arm Bones had been holding melted under his grip, leaving his fingers curled-like mine were-around nothing more than a transparent outline of flesh that was no longer there.
"The longest I can merge into solid form is a few minutes, but it is very draining," Elisabeth said, as if what she'd done wasn't incredible enough. "Yet Kramer is stronger than I am."
I felt like my brain was still playing catch-up from everything I'd just witnessed. "Kramer? You said he died centuries ago."
"He did," Elisabeth replied with frightening grimness. "Yet every All Hallows' Eve, he walks."
Chapter Four
If a pin had dropped in the room, it would have shattered the sudden silence with the same effect as a bomb. I had a good idea of what Elisabeth meant by "he walks" but because it was too far-fetched for me to conceive of, I had to make sure.
"You're saying that after the homicidal asshat died, Kramer became a ghost who could walk around in solid flesh every Halloween?"
Elisabeth's brow furrowed in confusion at asshat, but she addressed the rest of my query without hesitation.
"As far as I know, it has only been the past few decades that Kramer has been able to manifest flesh for an entire evening."
"Why just Halloween night?" Sure, it was the time where many people celebrated the idea of ghosts, ghouls, vampires, or other creatures, but most of them didn't believe such creatures existed.
"It's the time when the barrier between the worlds is the thinnest," Bones replied. "The celebration of Samhain harkens back long before humans made a candy and costume holiday out of it."
Elisabeth's mouth curled. "The irony that Kramer is strengthened by an evening dedicated to what he once considered heretic worship is lost on him. He still believes himself to be acting on God's side, as if the Almighty hadn't made it clear that He wants nothing to do with Kramer."
"And what does he do on Halloween?" I'd bet every drop of blood in my body that Kramer didn't spend it trick-or-treating.
"He extracts 'confessions' of witchcraft from three women whom he's coerced a human accomplice into kidnapping, and then he burns them alive," Elisabeth replied, a spasm of pain crossing her features.
It was official. I now wanted to murder a ghost, a notion I'd discarded as unlikely only twenty minutes before. Problem was, killing vampires and ghouls was my specialty. Not people who were already dead dead.
"How long beforehand does he get an accomplice to capture these women?" Bones asked.
"I'm not sure," Elisabeth replied. She glanced away as if ashamed. "Perhaps a week? I've followed Kramer as best I could these many centuries, trying to discover a way to end him, but he is wily. He evades me much of the time."
Yeah, that whole ability to disappear would make him hell to follow, even for another ghost. Tracking him would be like trying to put handcuffs on the wind.
Which brought up another question. "You said a lot of other ghosts consider you an outcast for trying to kill one of your own kind, who obviously had to be Kramer. How did you, ah, attempt to do it?" A mental image of two transparent figures trying to throttle each other flashed in my head.
"Over the centuries, I made contact with several mediums, convincing them of Kramer's evil in the hopes that one could banish him. They tried many different ways, but each attempt failed. Once word of what I'd done spread, I was shunned by many of my kind . . . except those like Fabian."
The smile Elisabeth gave him as she finished that sentence was filled with such poignancy, I felt like I was intruding just watching. Maybe his interest in her wasn't only one-sided.
"Kramer's a murdering sod. Why wouldn't other ghosts want him dead as well?" Bones asked, sticking to the practicalities.
"Think about it," Fabian replied, dragging his gaze away from Elisabeth's face. "Most humans can't see us, vampires and ghouls ignore us, and we've been rejected by every god ever worshipped. All we have is each other. Most might sympathize with Elisabeth's reasons, but trying to kill one of our own is considered abhorrent no matter the cause."
"But not to you," I said, proud of him for being one of the rebels against that warped spectral version of diplomatic immunity.
Fabian ducked his head. "Perhaps others like me cling to our lost humanity more than the rest of them."
No, I thought. Strongly principled people like you do the right thing regardless of whether you're made of flesh or fog.
"Kramer's only been killing for decades, yet you've attempted to destroy him for hundreds of years?"
Bones's tone was mild, but his gaze had narrowed.
"Oh, he killed long before he acquired the ability to burn people again," Elisabeth said flatly. "He would torment those who had the ability to see him, driving them to insanity or death. Then once he was able to manifest himself, he singled out the most vulnerable: children, the elderly, or the sick, driving them to the same bitter resolution. And no one believed them. Just like no one believed me when I was denounced as a witch and sentenced to burn."
Chills ran up my spine at the bleak resonance in the ghost's voice. If Elisabeth had watched this same brutal pattern play out all these years, unable to do a thing to stop it, I was amazed she was still sane. I couldn't always get the bad guys, but one of the things I clung to was the hope that one day, they'd get their just deserts whether it was in this life or the next. Yet Kramer had managed to escape punishment on every side of the grave. Even though I had enough to deal with from my unwanted powers from Marie, my uncle's quest to cross over, and the suspicions over the new operations consultant, the injustice of Kramer's wandering free to torture and murder more innocent people was too much for me.
Yet it wasn't just my anger that made up my mind. It was the way Fabian stared at Elisabeth. Then he turned his gaze to me, and the pleading in that single glance confirmed my decision.
"I'll help you," I said to Elisabeth, holding up my hand in anticipation of Bones's protest. Fabian had come through for me many times in the past, but the only way I'd been able to show my appreciation was a mere thank-you. Well, here was my chance to let Fabian know he was as dear to me as any of my other friends, even if he was the only one of them without flesh. Helping Elisabeth wasn't only the right thing to do; it was also important to Fabian. Really, what other choice did I have?
Cool fingers curled around my hand, squeezing once. I looked away from Fabian to meet Bones's steady gaze.
"You're not the only one who feels indebted to him," Bones said quietly. Then his mouth curled as he focused on Fabian. "Though you could've set an easier task before us."
"I'll do whatever you need to assist you," Fabian vowed, his expression brightening with such hope that my heart twisted. I might feel confident in our abilities to deal with Kramer's accomplice if we found out who the newest acolyte was in time, but I didn't even know if it was possible to kill a ghost. Bones had threatened exorcism on a couple of them before; but according to Elisabeth, that probably wouldn't work. Seeing Fabian's obvious faith made me afraid for more reasons than the idea of a murderer going free. I was afraid I'd let him down after all he'd done for me.
"We know you will, mate. You've already proven that," Bones replied.
"Thank you," Elisabeth said, her voice very soft. Something shone in her eyes that I'd swear were tears on any other person. "I came here with little hope. Your kind usually doesn't bother with mine no matter the circumstances."
"Yeah?" My smile was wry. "Just call me an equal opportunity ass-kicker, because Kramer and his assistant deserve to be taken out no matter what species they are."
"Perhaps it's best if you stay in Fabian's room while we determine our first course of action," Bones suggested, giving Fabian a slanted look before returning his attention to Elisabeth. "Safer if energy's emitting from a room in the house that other ghosts are used to its coming from."
"Of course," Elisabeth replied, smoothing her long skirt as she floated into a standing position. "I will be very discreet."
"Fabian can also fill you in on the house rules. We'll talk more once my wife and I have rested for the day."
Both ghosts took the hint, vanishing with more murmured thanks. I waited until I felt the energy in the room dissipate before turning to Bones.
"You sly matchmaker, you."
His grin held more than a hint of wickedness. "If I didn't give the bloke an edge, he'd likely spend the next century working up the courage to pay her a compliment."