Comes the Night (35 page)

“Is that a casket?”

Brooke glanced up at Maryanne, who’d crept close enough to peer into the pit. “Effectively, I guess,” she said. “Though don’t be expecting any satin lining.”

“Oh, thank God! I was worried about our shovels smashing into her bones.”

Brooke had thought about that too, but what the hell? It wasn’t like anyone could hurt the girl anymore.

“Step back,” Brooke said. “We’re on the homestretch, and the dirt is gonna fly.”

Within eight minutes, Brooke had entirely exposed the lid of the crate—now that she’d seen it, she refused to dignify that mean little box by calling it a casket. Face flushed from exertion, heart pounding from grim anticipation, she looked up at Maryanne. “Ready?”

“No,” Maryanne said. “But I don’t suppose I’ll ever be. Go ahead.”

Brooke moved to one side, wedged the point of her shovel between two planks and pried. The wood, surprisingly vital after all those years in the ground, protested against the nails that held it in place. She withdrew the shovel’s point, repositioned it closer to one end and pried again. This time, it came loose. Or rather, one end of it did.

Okay, Brooke. Showtime
.

Heart thudding so hard she could hear it in her own ears, she propped the shovel up, grasped the board with both hands and wrenched the other end free. She pushed the plank aside, and peered in.

“Oh, God, I can see her!” came Maryanne’s voice from up above. “She’s really in there.”

“Well, duh. Of course she’s in there.” On the words, Brooke expelled the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding, but when she inhaled again, she drew a very shallow breath, half expecting to be assaulted by the hideous odor of decay. But there was very little of that. At least, nothing that wasn’t overpowered by the earthy smell of the soil they’d been digging.

She’d also expected that after all these years, there’d be nothing left but a bare skeleton, but she was wrong. While the gleam of white bone was very evident, the body still appeared to retain some mummified tissue, especially around the joints. Ligaments, she supposed. They’d be tougher than other tissue, wouldn’t they?

“Okay, we found her. Get up out of there, Brooke! Let’s go get Connie.”

“Just give me a sec,” Brooke said. “I’m going to take the rest of this lid off.”

“I can’t watch.” The words came out thick, and Brooke knew Maryanne was battling nausea.

“It’s okay. Just move back. It’ll only take me a minute.”

It took a couple of minutes, actually. The last board was hard to raise, since there wasn’t much to leverage her shovel for prying. She had to resort to hooking the top edge of the shovel under the board and yanking upward. A couple of grunting reefs and the nails gave up their grip. Repeating the process on the other end of the plank, she pulled it free and stacked it on top of the others.

“Done,” she announced. Tossing her shovel up onto the soil pile, she levered herself out of the grave. She removed her gloves too, tossing them down beside the shovel as she peered into the pit. “God, that’s sad. She was just a kid.”

“Almost exactly our age, according to the diary,” Maryanne said.

“Well, guess we better go fetch Connie’s cast, huh?”

Maryanne bit her lip. “One of us should probably stay here, with the remains.”

Brooke slanted Maryanne a look. “Right. By which you mean I should stay here.”

“We could draw straws,” she said gamely.

“Forget it. You go and I’ll stay here. I’ll just go up and make myself an instant coffee and wait for you in the attic,” Brooke said.

“Oh, no! I meant someone should stay down here, with the bones.”

“Screw that. I don’t mind staying, but I’m not gonna do it down here. Those are just
bones
, Maryanne. They don’t need me hanging around for company.”

Maryanne’s lips thinned. “I’ll stay, then. You go get Connie.”

Brooke’s eyes shot open. “You’re
volunteering
to stay down here?”

“Someone should be here,” she said pointedly.

Brooke shrugged. “Suit yourself. Can I get you anything before I go?”

“No,” she said. “Just bring Connie back. Fast.”

“That I can do.”

Within minutes, Brooke stood in the attic, peering out the stained glass window. It was early yet—barely 5:30 p.m. The snow from two days ago had gone with the rain, so the ground was dark, and there was no moon to speak of as yet. Nevertheless, there was still a lot of diffused light in the overcast sky, as though the cloud cover caught all sources of light and bounced it back. Her black cast would stand out against the bruised, dull grey sky if any residents of the town were to look up as she soared past.

“Let them look,” she murmured.

Let them
all
look. And then let them run for the safety of their well-lit houses. The night was
hers
.

Smiling, she tapped on the window. “I want out, I want out, I want out!”

And then she was out, soaring off toward the tree by the river to retrieve a copper bracelet.

Maryanne

M
ARYANNE WATCHED THROUGH
the small basement window—the one that faced the river. She could barely make out Brooke’s cast against the evening twilight as she moved to the river behind the house, hurrying up the oak tree for the copper bracelets. Maryanne suspected—hoped!—she could only see Brooke’s cast because she was really looking for it. But Brooke was far from hidden in the early-evening darkness. She bit down on her lip, hoping Brooke would hurry back. For Brooke’s sake. For Connie’s. And yes, absolutely for Maryanne’s own. She just wanted to get this over with.

With a tight sigh, Maryanne turned. She couldn’t help but stare at the open grave where Connie’s remains lay. In one of those I-could-kick-my-own-butt moments, she wished she’d let Brooke stay after all. But it passed that quickly.

Brooke had been surprised when Maryanne insisted on staying with Connie’s body rather than leave it alone. Heck,
she
was surprised. How could she explain it to Brooke when she barely understood it herself? Well, not that it was based on a heck of a lot of logic. But it was the helplessness of Connie’s remains... that’s why she had to stay. To watch over them. And the poor soul had been alone for so long. To leave her alone again... as nonsensical as that thought was, it just about broke Maryanne’s heart.

Taking a wide berth around the grave as she crossed the room, Maryanne rubbed the chill from her arms. She’d been working up a sweat as she’d dug, and had shed her hoodie hours ago in favor of just the light grey t-shirt she’d worn underneath it. But now, even as she pulled her fleece sweater back on, it wasn’t just the cold of the basement that had her rubbing away at the goose bumps. Nor was it merely from being in the basement with the body.

She needed to cast. With the assault on Alex and the inevitable crackdown at the dorm, and the hours spent at the hospital, they’d not been able to cast out for days now. And she was more than longing for it. More than craving to tap on that window and soar into the night. Her skin was practically crawling with the need of it.

“Soon,” she said. “After Connie reunites with her body, before we call the police, I’m casting out. After today, I need it.” She’d battle Brooke over it if she had to, but knowing Brooke, Maryanne didn’t think too much arm-twisting would be involved.

What if Connie couldn’t reunite with her remains? What then?
That intrusive thought was never far away, but she couldn’t think of it now. They’d deal with it when the time came, if they had to.

Maryanne sat down on the basement stairs with her back to the door above her, and the grave off to her left. The old wood of the coffin planks now lay beside Connie’s grave. She shuddered as she looked at one heavy nail poking through the wood. Thank God, Alex hadn’t run into that when she’d slid her cast down there! It would have been very draining, slowing her down while she was under the earth. That would have been a nightmare.

Maryanne arched her back. It was just beginning to feel the stiffness settling in, while her shoulders had been feeling it for a good hour now. Though nervous about being down in the basement, at least she could rest. At least it was quiet. Too quiet. Scary quiet. And as she did so often, she broke the silence with the sound of her own voice. “Here I am, in this angry basement with a corpse.”

Way to break the silence, Maryanne! Not!

Usually Harvell House was filled with noise—too much of it. What she wouldn’t give to hear someone shouting right about now in the kitchen above her. Or pots clanging as Mrs. Betts started supper. Wow, even the phone ringing would be a welcome intrusion.

But then Maryanne did hear something, and the noise was far from welcome and comforting. Fear of a different kind rode through her.

A door creaked open, and slammed closed. Boots thumped on the doormat. Automatically she turned and looked toward the basement door as someone crossed the kitchen floor above her. Maryanne jumped to her feet.

Brooke? It couldn’t be. No way in heck could she have gone to get Connie and returned that fast—not even at caster speed. And Brooke would be coming down the stairs from the attic when she returned, not walking in through the kitchen door! Was it Mrs. Betts? John Smith? One of the girls? If Alex used to stay in town and party while pretending to be home in Halifax on holiday weekends, what’s to say one of the other girls wouldn’t do the same?

Maryanne’s hand flew over her mouth as she gasped. Oh crap! What if it was the man who’d attacked Alex? Here to find another victim... A line of light shone through the crack below the basement door, as the kitchen light snapped on and the footsteps fell again.

Heart pounding, pulse hammering, Maryanne raced away from the stairs to the other side of the basement. She didn’t just take a wide berth around the grave now, but in a wild, fleeting, fear-fueled fantasy, pictured herself in it. Dammit! There was no place to hide! Palms tight to the hard stone, she pressed herself flat against the basement wall furthest from the stairs. And, she realized too late, far away from the shovels that lay mockingly out of reach at the edge of Connie’s grave. Crap! She didn’t even have a weapon!

The crack of light spilled further down as the basement door slowly opened. She heard the sound of footsteps thumping, then suddenly stopping. Fear rose up in her throat as she saw the booted feet on the step. And the horror nearly consumed her completely, as those feet again started descending down into the basement.

Brooke

B
ROOKE THOUGHT FINDING
Connie would be the easy part. Not so much. Perhaps the caster had grown tired of looking for them night after night and gone back to her solitary haunts. Brooke could all too easily imagine how she felt. After having grown accustomed to hooking up nightly, she’d be feeling abandoned all over again. That sucked. But how could she not? It had been days and days since they’d been out, thanks to Mrs. Betts’ watchful eyes, and the snow, not to mention the long hours spent at Alex’s bedside, relieving Alex’s exhausted mom.

Oh, crap. They hadn’t been out since before the attack on Alex. Which meant the task of telling Connie would fall to Brooke. Great. Add that to the things she was ill equipped to do, like persuading Connie to come back to the house.

Maryanne should be here right now. She’d be so much better at this. But no way was Brooke gonna give in. No way would she hang around that dirty basement standing guard over something that was already dead.

Sighing, Brooke called Connie’s name again, as she had been doing for the last fifteen minutes. And why not? No one else could hear her but Connie. Unless there were other casters out and about... Oh, man, wouldn’t that be neat? What if there were others like them who—

“Brooke? Is that you?”

Brooke whirled to see Connie floating toward her across the meadow, the same one the three girls had chased that moose across so many weeks ago.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Alex?” Connie asked, coming to a stop a few yards away. “Maryanne?”

“Maryanne’s back at the house. But about Alex... Connie, there’s something I have to tell you.”

Connie shot forward until she was practically right up on Brooke. “What’s wrong with Alex?”

“She’s in the hospital. In a coma, actually.”

Connie fell back as though stricken. “Coma?”

“They think she’ll recover,” Brooke hastened to assure. “Probably. I mean, with any luck. But the longer it goes on, the trickier it gets. We’ve been sitting by her bedside these evenings, talking to her and trying to get a response.”

Connie made a small, wounded cry.

“Don’t worry,” Brooke said. “I’m sure she’ll be all right. Apparently her head injuries aren’t as bad as we first thought when we found her.”

“Head injuries?” Connie zoomed close again. “Tell,” she commanded. “
Everything
.”

Brooke shrugged. “There’s not a helluva lot to tell. One night last week—actually, the last night we’d come out to see you—Alex cast out again, this time by herself, after Maryanne and I had gone to bed. She snuck up to the attic and cast out on her own. At least that’s what we think happened. That’s where we found her, anyway. At first, we thought she just hit her head, you know? From the force of casting back in. But then we saw the bite mark on her shoulder, we knew—”

Before Brooke could get another word out, Connie started keening. Not Heller shrieking, but wailing, as in weeping and moaning.

Great.

“It’s okay, Connie.” Brooke laid a clumsy hand on Connie’s back, feeling the strange solidity and weird heaviness of the other caster’s form beneath her own hand. “He didn’t rape her, if that’s what you’re thinking. She fought him hard. Hard enough to wake us up with the noise of the struggle. I think we might have scared him away when we came to investigate, but damned if I can figure out how he got out of there without going down the stairs. There’s only one door.”

“Dumbwaiter,” Connie said dully.

Brooke’s eyes widened.