Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet
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Authors: Darynda Jones
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.
For Quentin,
part-time pimp, full-time ninja, who,
even at his age, still says things like,
“Thank you, Easter Bunny! Bok, bok!”
Acknowledgments
This book owes a lot of things to a lot of people, not the least of whom are my amazing
agent, Alexandra Machinist, and my incredible editor, Jennifer Enderlin. Thank you
guys so much! You are both awe-inspiring, and I’m convinced each of you lead secret
lives as superheroes.
Thank you to everyone at Macmillan Audio and a special shout-out to the ever-so-lovely
Lorelei King for breathing life into my characters. Literally. Speaking of which,
thank you to all at St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan, and Janklow & Nesbit Associates.
A special thanks to Jacquelyn Frank and Natalie Justice for naming this book while
waiting for a shuttle, war-torn and tattered after a lively three-day conference where
the effervescent Natalie mastered mechanical-bull riding and Jacki won my heart over
a game of X-rated Round Robin. You guys are the bomb.
Thank you so much to Mary Jo, Mary Ellen, and Bette for the consultations and advice
on PTSD. You guys went above and beyond to help me, especially considering the fact
that I only had three days to turn in the book. I am so grateful.
Thank you to Danielle “Dan Dan” Swopes for brainstorming with me even when your brain
was almost as mushy as mine, and to your wonderful family whom I consider my own.
And thank you to my actual family—you know who you are—for being so supportive and
understanding when I miss holidays and birthday parties in the name of all things
writerly. As soon as I make my next deadline, we are so having a cookout.
A
huge
thanks to Cait Allison for reading this book in its infancy, painful as it must have
been, to give me feedback. I appreciate it more than you can know.
And, sadly, I have to say that at least three of the best lines in this book did not
come from my own warped … er, vivid imagination, but that of the enlightened and sometimes
terrifying musings of Jonathan “Doc” Wilson and Quentin “Q” Eakins. You guys are like
crazy on whole wheat: fun and good for the digestion.
And most of all, thank
you,
esteemed reader, for making all my dreams come true. Or most of them. I have this
one where I’m naked at an airport and … no, you’re right. That’s better left to the
professionals. Either way, thank you so much! I hope you enjoy reading this as much
as I enjoyed writing it.
Contents
1
Only two things in life are certain.
Guess which one I am.
—
C
HARLEY
D
AVIDSON, GRIM REAPER
I sat watching the Buy From Home Channel with my dead aunt Lillian and wondered what
my life would’ve been like had I not just eaten an entire carton of Ben & Jerry’s
Chocolate Therapy with a mocha latte chaser. Probably about the same, but it was something
to think about.
A midmorning sun filtered through the blinds and cut hard streaks of light across
my body, casting me in an ultra-cool film noir effect. Since my life had definitely
taken a turn toward the dark side, film noir fit. It would have fit even better if
I weren’t wearing
Star Wars
pajama bottoms and a sparkly tank top that proudly proclaimed
EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY
. But I just didn’t have the energy that morning to change into something less inappropriate.
I’d been having lethargy issues for a few weeks now. And I was suddenly a tad agoraphobic.
Ever since a man named Earl tortured me.
It sucked.
The torture. Not his name.
My name, on the other hand, was Charlotte Davidson, but most people called me Charley.
“Can I talk to you, pumpkin cheeks?”
Or pumpkin cheeks, one of the many pet names involving the fall fruit that Aunt Lillian
insisted on calling me. Aunt Lil had died sometime in the sixties, and I could see
her because I’d been born the grim reaper, which basically meant three things: One,
I could interact with dead people—those departed who didn’t cross over when they died—and
usually did so on a daily basis. Two, I was super-duper bright to those in the spiritual
realm, and the aforementioned dead people could see me from anywhere in the world.
When they were ready to cross, they could cross through me. Which brought me to three—I
was a portal from the earthly plane to what many refer to as heaven.
There was a tad more to it than that—including things I had yet to learn myself—but
that was the basic gist of my day job. The one I didn’t actually get paid to do. I
was also a PI, but that gig wasn’t paying the bills either. Not lately, anyway.
I rolled my head along the back of the sofa toward Aunt Lil, who was actually a great-aunt
on my father’s side. A thin, elderly woman with soft gray eyes and pale blue hair,
she was wearing her usual attire, as dead people rarely changed clothes: a leather
vest over a floral muumuu and love beads, the ensemble a testament to her demise in
the sixties. She also had a loving smile that tilted a bit south of kilter. But that
only made me adore her all the more. I had a soft spot for crazy people. I wasn’t
sure how the muumuu came into play, with her being so tiny and all—she looked like
a pole with a collapsed tent gathered about her fragile hips—but who was I to judge?
“You can absolutely talk to me, Aunt Lil.” I tried to straighten but couldn’t get
past the realization that movement of any kind would take effort. I’d been sitting
on one sofa or another for two months, recovering from the torture thing. Then I remembered
that the cookware I’d been waiting for all morning was up next. Surely Aunt Lil would
understand. Before she could say anything, I raised a finger to put her in pause mode.
“But can our talk wait until the stone-coated cookware is over? I’ve been eyeing this
cookware for a while now. And it’s coated. With stone.”
“You don’t cook.”
She had a point. “So what’s up?” I propped my bunny-slippered feet on the coffee table
and crossed my legs at the ankles.
“I’m not sure how to tell you this.” Her breath hitched, and she bowed her blue head.
I straightened in alarm despite the energy it took. “Aunt Lil?”
She tucked her chin in sadness. “I—I think I’m dead.”
I blinked. Stared at her a moment. Then blinked again.
“I know.” She sniffled into the massive sleeve of her muumuu, and the love beads shifted
soundlessly with the movement. Inanimate objects in death carried an eerie silence.
Like mimes. Or that scream Al Pacino did in
The Godfather: Part III
when his daughter died on those steps. “I know, I know.” She patted my shoulder in
consolation. “It’s a lot to absorb.”
Aunt Lillian died long before I was born, but I had no idea if she knew that or not.
Many departed didn’t. Because of this doubt, I’d never mentioned it. For years, I’d
let her make me invisible coffee in the mornings or cook me invisible eggs; then she’d
go off on another adventure. Aunt Lil was still sowing her wild oats. A world traveler,
that one. And she rarely stayed in one place very long. Which was good. Otherwise,
I’d never get real coffee in the mornings. Or the twelve other times during the day
I needed a java fix. If she were around more often, I’d go through caffeine withdrawal
on a regular basis. And get really bad headaches.
But maybe now that she knew, I could explain the whole coffee thing.
I was curious enough about her death to ask, “Do you know how you died? What happened?”
According to my family, she’d died in a hippie commune in Madrid at the height of
the flower power revolution. Before that, she really had been a world traveler, spending
her summers in South America and Europe and her winters in Africa and Australia. And
she’d continued that tradition even after her death, traveling far and wide. Passport
no longer needed. But no one could really tell me how she died exactly. Or what she
did for a living. How she could afford to do all that traveling when she was alive.
I knew she’d been married for a while, but my family didn’t know much about her husband.
My uncle thought he might’ve been an oil tycoon from Texas, but the family had lost
contact, and nobody knew for certain.
“I’m just not sure,” she said, shaking her head. “I remember we were sitting around
a campfire, singing songs and dropping acid—”
I used every ounce of strength I had to keep the horror I felt from manifesting in
my expression.
“—and Bernie asked me what was wrong, but since Bernie had just done a hit of acid
himself, I didn’t take him seriously.”
I could understand that.
She looked up at me, her eyes watering with sorrow. “Maybe I should have listened.”
I put an arm around her slight shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Aunt Lil.”
“I know, pumpkin head.” She patted my cheek, her hand cool in the absence of flesh
and blood. She smiled that lopsided smile of hers, and I suddenly wondered if she’d
perhaps dropped one hit too many. “I remember the day you were born.”
I blinked yet again in surprise. “Really? You were there?”
“I was. I’m so sorry about your mother.”
A harsh pang of regret shot through me. I wasn’t expecting it, and it took me a moment
to recover. “I—I’m sorry, too.” The memory of my mother’s passing right after I’d
been born was not my favorite. And I remembered it so clearly, so precisely. The moment
she parted from her physical body, a pop like a rubber band snapping into place ricocheted
through my body, and I knew our connection had been severed. I loved her, even then.
“You were so special,” Aunt Lil said, shaking her head with the memory. “But now that
you know I’m a goner, I have to ask, why in tarnation are you so bright?”
Crap. I couldn’t tell her the truth, that I was the grim reaper and the floodlights
came with the gig. She thought I was special, not grim. It just sounded so bad when
I said it out loud. I decided to deflect. “Well, that’s kind of a long story, Aunt
Lil, but if you want, you can pass through me. You can cross to the other side and
be with your family.” I lowered my head, hoping she wouldn’t take me up on my offer.
I liked having her around, as selfish as that made me.
“Are you kidding?” She slapped a knee. “And miss all the crap you get yourself into?
Never.” After a disturbing cackle that brought to mind the last horror movie I’d seen,
she turned back to the TV. “Now, what’s so groovy about this cookware?”
I settled in next to her and we watched a whole segment on pans that could take all
kinds of abuse, including a bevy of rocks sliding around the nonstick bottom, but
since people didn’t actually cook rocks, I wasn’t sure what the point was. Still,
the pans were pretty. And I could make low monthly payments. I totally needed them.
