The Sinner

“I only get into town once or twice a week. The cemetery occupies most of my time. It was in really bad shape when I first started.”

“You work alone?”

“Yes. I’ve put out feelers for local help, but I haven’t had much luck. Just a couple of college kids early in the season, but they didn’t last long.” I bit my lip and turned away with a frown. It wasn’t like me to ramble or volunteer more information than was requested. Evidently, the discovery of the mortsafes and the sight of those hands had left me more shaken than I realized.

“Can’t say I’m surprised about the lack of local help,” the officer said politely. “There’s a lot of superstition surrounding that old church and cemetery.”

“Such as?”

He shrugged. “The usual stuff. Both have been abandoned for as long as I can remember. Kids used to hang out in the ruins late at night after drinking beer and smoking weed, but I don’t think anyone goes there any more. Not after...”

“Not after what?” I prompted.

He glanced down at his notes. “Not after the place got so overgrown. Too many snakes and God knows what else lurking in the bushes. It’s too bad, really. The cemetery used to be beautiful.”

“It will be again.”

He turned back to the circle, his gaze moving around the cages. “I’ve lived here my whole life. Grew up in a house not five miles from where we’re standing. I thought I knew this area like the back of my hand, but I sure never knew these things were here. Have you ever come across anything like them before?”

“Not around here. Mortsafes were mostly used in Europe.”

“Mortsafes?” I saw him shiver.

“They kept grave robbers from digging up fresh remains to sell to medical schools.”

His expression turned grim as he trained his gaze upon me. “Looks like they were used here to keep something in.”

I’d thought of that, as well, of course, but I didn’t comment.

“Will you be around this afternoon?” he asked. “We may have more questions once we get her out of the ground.”

“I’ll be working in the cemetery. I never leave before sundown.”

He gave a vague nod as he went back to his partner. I hung around watching them. They didn’t seem to mind. Maybe they were glad for the company. The place seemed more desolate than ever and the trill of the loon made us all turn anxiously toward the marsh. I couldn’t help remembering the officer’s broken thought: Not after...

Not after what?

The palmettos rustled in a mild breeze. An insect droned in my ear. And from the woods, that presence still watched me.

Who are you? I wondered. What are you?

Still no answer.

For the next several minutes, the cops huddled over the second mortsafe, talking in low tones and making a few notes until more personnel arrived on the scene, including a plainclothes detective, a forensic team and the Beaufort County coroner.

A brief discussion ensued about possible ownership of the land and how best to open the cage so the body could be removed. That dilemma brought Officer Malloy back over to me.

“Who hired you to restore the cemetery?”

“It was a joint effort by some of the families and a local historical society,” I told him.

“Do you have a contact person?”

“Annalee Nash.”

A brow shot up. “Annalee Nash?”

“Yes, why? Do you know her?”

“Everybody knows Annalee. I guess I’m just a little surprised to hear she’s involved with that cemetery.”

“Why wouldn’t she be? She’s secretary of the local historical society.”

“I don’t keep up with that sort of thing. How did the two of you meet?”

“She first contacted me through my website and we’ve kept in touch ever since. She’s the one who made sure all the permits were in order so there wouldn’t be any delays once we signed the contract.”

He slapped at a mosquito on the side of his neck. “I don’t suppose she ever mentioned anything about ownership of the property adjoining the cemetery?”

“This property, you mean? No, she didn’t. As I understand it, Seven Gates is located on public land, but nothing I’ve found in the archives suggests these graves are connected to the cemetery.”

“They look like they’ve been here a long time,” he said.

“I’m guessing the mortsafes are only a few decades old, but the dirt underneath the first cage is sunken, which could indicate that the burials are older. If the original graves are over a hundred years old, the state archaeologist would have jurisdiction regardless of property ownership.”

The detective came up just then, and after we were introduced, I repeated everything that I’d told Officer Malloy.

Detective Lucien Kendrick looked to be in his early thirties, a man of indeterminate ethnicity with light brown skin and topaz-colored eyes that tilted exotically at the corners. The intensity of his scrutiny took me aback. Not since my first encounter with Devlin had I experienced such an unsettling focus. Even when he addressed Officer Malloy, Kendrick’s gaze remained hard upon me until I had to fight the urge to take a step back from him.

He was just shy of six feet, lean and sinewy. By no means a large man, but his bearing gave him an air of toughness and invincibility. I didn’t consider him handsome in the traditional sense of the word, but he was one of the most striking men I’d ever met, from the strange color of his eyes to the razor sharpness of his cheekbones.

His attire was casual, but his jacket and boots were of good quality. Not custom like Devlin’s wardrobe, but certainly several cuts above what one might expect from a small-town police detective. Sometime in the not too distant past, his left eyebrow had been pierced. I could still see the tiny holes and, once noticed, I started to search for other bits of unconventionality. The tattooed skull on the back of his hand. The raised scar tissue of a brand on the side of his neck. He was an enigmatic man, one who undoubtedly marched to his own drummer, and I found him fascinating in the way one might admire the coil of a cobra or the crouch of a tiger.

Nonconformity aside, my heightened senses warned me that he was no ordinary “cop.”

“You say you’ve been working here since the end of May.” His voice was deep and lilting with the barest hint of an accent that I couldn’t place. But the nagging familiarity of some of his inflections made me curious about his background. Where had he come from and what had brought him to this part of the world? And how had he ended up as a detective with the Ascension Police Department?

“Miss Gray?”

I started at the sound of my name, dragging my focus from the brand snaking up over his shirt collar to lock gazes with him. “I’m sorry. What was the question?”

His gaze zeroed in on my cheek. “Are you all right?”

“What? Oh, that. It’s just a scratch. A hazard of my profession, I’m afraid.”

“I know all about those,” he murmured. “You should put something on it. You don’t want to risk infection.”

I lifted my head in a small act of defiance. The detective’s caution had sounded strangely like a threat. Which was absurd, of course, and overly defensive. “I’ll take care of it later. Right now, I’d rather answer all your questions and be on my way.”

He nodded, his gaze cool and assessing. “I understand you’ve been working in the cemetery since late May.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What time do you usually get to work in the morning?”

“Just after sunrise.”

“That early every day?”

“I like to get the more strenuous tasks accomplished before the heat of the day sets in.”

“That would put your arrival this morning around six-thirty, correct?” Another quirk of his eyebrow, another bold stare.

I swallowed hard. “Thereabouts.”

“You didn’t notice any suspicious activity? Dogs barking? Strange vehicles parked on the side of the road? Anybody going into or coming out of these woods?” He searched my face. “Anything at all unusual?”

“No, nothing. There’s very little traffic on Cemetery Road, especially at that hour. If there had been anyone about, I’m certain I would have noticed. I haven’t seen anyone all day except for a group of kids with fishing poles and crab traps heading toward the marsh.”

He paused as if carefully evaluating everything I’d told him. “So you worked in the cemetery until around three when you decided to take a walk. I’m surprised. That’s generally when the heat of the day sets in,” he said, throwing my own words back at me. “Why not rest in the shade?”

“I’d been kneeling and bending for hours cleaning headstones. I needed to work out the kinks.” The half-truth slipped out easily because I’d spent a lifetime keeping secrets. Concealment and discretion had become second nature to me.

“And the reason you came all the way back here? The trail from the cemetery is rugged and overgrown. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been this way in years.” His gaze slid to the cages. “Until recently, of course.”

I gave another shrug. “No particular reason. I just like exploring new places.”

“Well, I guess that was a lucky break for us. What can you tell me about these cages?”

There was an odd note in his voice that set off another alarm. My guard came up instantly and now I did take a step back from him as I turned toward the circle. “They’re called mortsafes. As I explained to Officer Malloy, such devices are uncommon in this part of the world. In fact, I’ve only ever seen similar cages in Edinburgh, Scotland.”

“And yet here they are, a dozen of them in Ascension, South Carolina.”

“As I said, it’s an unusual find.”

Our gazes collided once more before he glanced away. He knew something about the mortsafes, I thought. Maybe not the ones in the circle, but he’d seen something like them before, I was certain of it.

I tried to empty my mind again, but before I could absorb any of the detective’s thoughts or emotions, he spun back to face me as if sensing my tentative probe. For a split second only, I heard the chanting in the woods. That same indistinguishable word repeated over and over. I cocked my head, trying to decipher the mantra, but the sound was either too far away or buried too deep in Kendrick’s memory.

I resisted the urge to try and push past his defenses. For some reason, I felt it important that I not give that particular ability away to him.

“This is a small town so word tends to travel fast,” he said. “You can expect a lot of gawkers over the next few days. Since the quickest and easiest way to get a look at those cages is through the cemetery, you’ll need to keep the gates locked.”

“I will.”

Shadows crisscrossed over us as more vultures circled. I didn’t glance skyward, but instead put a hand to my eyes as I scanned the treetops where the sun would soon start to slide.

Kendrick handed me a card. “You think of anything else, here’s my number. Call any time, day or night. Whatever happened here...” His gaze lifted, tracking the buzzards. “I don’t like the feel of it.”

“It’s disturbing,” I agreed. Beyond disturbing. It was the stuff of nightmares. Arms rising up out of a fresh grave. Hands clinging to the locked grid of a mortsafe that was designed to keep grave robbers out, not the dead in.

“We’ll begin the excavation once we get the cage opened. It won’t be pleasant,” he warned as he nodded to the trail behind me. “You may want to head back up to the cemetery before we get started.”

“Don’t worry about me. I used to work for the state archaeologist’s office in Columbia. We were sometimes called in to move whole cemeteries. If there are older remains beneath the victim, it’s very important to preserve the integrity of the original grave site.”

“Are you offering your services?”

“I wouldn’t be so presumptuous,” I said, once again startled by the intensity of his focus. I suddenly realized that I could no longer sense the presence in the woods and I had to wonder if Detective Kendrick had somehow scared away the watcher. The notion that he possessed that kind of power was hardly reassuring. “I recommend you call in the state archaeologist,” I rushed to add. “Her name is Temple Lee. If she doesn’t have time to come herself, she can suggest someone locally to assist you.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Kendrick said. “She was on the news during those Charleston excavations sometime back. As I recall, a torture chamber was uncovered beneath a mausoleum in an old cemetery connected to Emerson University.”

His expression never wavered but I knew that he was gauging my response. Either he’d recognized my name or he’d done his research on the way to the scene.

“You’re referring to Oak Grove Cemetery,” I said easily. “I was involved with that case, as well. I’d just been commissioned to restore the cemetery when the first body was found.”

His gaze moved over my features, searching my eyes, my pulse points, the corners of my mouth for a flicker or twitch or some other guilty tell. I didn’t so much as flinch. If I could hold myself steady in the presence of ghosts, I could surely keep my cool with Detective Kendrick.

“Seems an odd coincidence. Another body found buried in an old grave near a cemetery you’ve been hired to restore.” His accent had vanished in the cool delivery of what I considered an accusation.

“I can see how you’d think so, but it was pure chance that I decided to take a walk down here to stretch my cramped muscles. And if I’d never left the cemetery, the body and those cages may have remained undiscovered for decades.”

“You don’t have any immediate plans to leave town.” It wasn’t a question.

“No, of course not. I have several more weeks of work left in Seven Gates.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’ve rented a small house near the cemetery. Annalee Nash is my landlady.”

“Annalee Nash.” A frown flitted across his brow. “I understand she’s the one who hired you for the restoration.”

“She is. The house I’m renting from her is just down the road a quarter of a mile or so. It’s the white one on the right.”

“I know the place well. Screened porches, lots of fruit trees. A tire swing in the yard.” He hesitated. “Used to be an old storage shed behind the orchard.”

“It’s still there,” I told him.

“If you’ve been here all summer, I’m guessing you’ve heard the rumors about that place.”

“What rumors?”

Before he could answer, one of the officers called over to him. “Hey, Detective! The locksmith just pulled up. Malloy’s headed up there now to show him the way back.”

Kendrick nodded and started to return to the grave, but before I could stop myself, I reached out and grasped his arm. “What rumors?” I asked, my voice far more breathless than I would have liked.

Another hesitation. “It’s probably just talk. Nothing for you to worry about.”

Then why had he brought it up?

I pulled my hand away, embarrassed by the contact.

His eyes glinted darkly. “I’ll take your advice and give the state archaeologist a call. But regardless of her schedule, we can’t wait to recover the body. I don’t know how long the weather will hold and the sooner we get her out of the ground, the sooner we can get an ID. Maybe you’ll be able to help us with that.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. I don’t know many people in town. Just Annalee and a couple of college kids I hired early on. As I told Officer Malloy, they didn’t last long.”

“You fired them?”

“No, they left of their own accord. Cemetery restoration is backbreaking work.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll need their names and a way to reach them if you have it.”

“I’ll make sure to get you their information, but I can’t imagine they had anything to do with this.”

“It’s just routine. I’ll be in touch,” he promised as he strode off to join the others.

I stared after him for a moment, more shaken by our encounter than I could logically explain. Perhaps it was the penetrating quality of those peculiar eyes or the notion that he might know more about me than he’d let on. That he might even know about those cages and the watcher in the woods. Whatever the reason for my disquiet, I had no intention of ignoring my instincts about Detective Lucien Kendrick.

* * *

A little while later, the chatter around the graves rose as the locksmith finally arrived. He was a wiry, ponytailed man named Martin Stark. Unlike the young police officers first on the scene, Stark displayed not the slightest hesitation as he strode through the grass toward the graves. I admired his economy of words and motions even as something about his impervious approach tripped an alarm bell. If the hands surprised or repulsed him, he didn’t let on. Maybe he’d seen worse during the course of his career, but there was something about him that bothered me. A kind of latent excitement that made me search his face in much the same way that Kendrick had scrutinized mine.

Despite my wariness, I edged closer so that I could hear what Stark had to say about the cages.

“...an owl’s head,” I heard him explain.

“What’s the significance of that?” Kendrick asked.

“Most of the locks with these emblems were manufactured before the turn of the last century, but this one is newer. Back in the late nineties, the company resurrected the design to commemorate their centennial. Someone must have bought up a supply and hung on to them. They’re good locks,” he added. “Hardened steel body and a tubular key cylinder. Difficult to pick, but I’ve yet to come across a padlock of any kind that couldn’t be opened with bolt cutters or a drill.”

“You brought the necessary tools?” Kendrick asked him.

“Of course. Just let me know when you’re ready.” He was still talking to Kendrick, but suddenly his gaze vectored in on me, as though he’d been aware of my presence the whole time. His unblinking stare seemed oddly hostile and I glanced away, keeping my gaze focused on the caged grave.

By this time, a small army of personnel had gathered. More discussion ensued and a number of phone calls were made. After another half hour of inactivity, I finally gave up and went back to the cemetery to finish my workday.

As I went about the usual chores, I tried not to think about those delicate hands clinging to the grate or that unseen presence watching from the woods. I did my best to tune out the voices drifting up from the clearing.

And hours later as I lay awake in the hammock, my dog, Angus, curled up nearby, I even managed to convince myself the remains inside that caged grave had nothing to do with me. Nor did Detective Kendrick. I would finish my job in Seven Gates Cemetery, return to Charleston to prepare for my next restoration and that would be that.

But any hope I’d had of escaping unscathed vanished the next day when I caught sight of an old nemesis lurking in the shadows of the church ruins.

Four

It was midmorning and I’d already been cleaning headstones for hours. The police had arrived sometime earlier to search the area surrounding the mortsafes. Other than an occasional shout as they scoured the woods, the day had been quiet. I was surprised that the curious hadn’t come yet, but maybe word was just now getting out about the murder. In any case, I welcomed the solitude because I had a lot on my mind. I did not welcome Darius Goodwine.

He stood so deeply in the shade of the church ruins that I thought at first I had imagined him. After a restless night, perhaps exhaustion and my subconscious had decided to play a cruel trick on me. The longer I stared, though, the more substantial he became, like a fully manifested ghost.

But Darius Goodwine was no ghost, even though there was a fantastical element to his sudden appearance. He seemed so dreamlike against the backdrop of crumbling brick arches that I found myself biting down hard on my bottom lip to make certain I was fully awake.

Nearly two years had passed since our last living-world encounter, and in the ensuing months I’d prayed that I would never see him again. I’d hoped he wouldn’t come back to collect on the bargain that I’d foolishly and desperately struck with him. At the time, my only concern had been to save Devlin’s life, but Darius Goodwine was not the type of man who granted altruistic favors. I’d always known there would be a price to pay for bringing Devlin back from the other side. Now, as I felt Darius’s gaze upon me, I shuddered to think what dark compensation he’d come to extract.

A breeze blew across the graves, billowing his loose clothing. Where his shirt parted, I could see an amulet resting in the hollow of his chest and another hanging from a leather cord wound around his wrist. He was a very tall man, nearly six and a half feet. His height alone commanded attention, but it was the magnetic quality of his presence that kept my gaze riveted.

Devlin had once insisted that Darius Goodwine’s ability to manipulate and control his followers stemmed from the power of suggestion rather than the magic he claimed to have divined from his time studying with a powerful shaman in Africa. But Devlin was wrong. I’d learned the hard way that Darius Goodwine not only had the ability to cross over to the other side and converse with the dead, but he could also enter the dreams of the living and influence their thoughts.

Once a respected professor of ethnobotony, he’d let his greed and obsession transform him from healer to tagati, a dangerous witch doctor who used his knowledge and power to bring harm to others. I knew better than to underestimate him. Unlike Detective Kendrick, whose character I had yet to discern, I was all too aware of Darius Goodwine’s treachery and so I steeled myself against his insidious magnetism.

Turning back to the headstone, I continued to scrape away at the layers of moss and lichen while tracking him from my periphery as he wove his way through the headstones. Despite his height, he moved with an uncanny grace. If I hadn’t known he was a flesh-and-blood man, I might still have thought him a specter, so ephemeral and floating was his presence.

As he neared, a faint trace of ozone wafted on the breeze, leaving me to wonder if a sudden storm had sprung up or if the scent came from the man himself. A moment earlier, the day had been clear and sunny, but now a shadow fell across the landscape. I shivered in the premature twilight, keeping my gaze averted because I didn’t dare look up into those hypnotic eyes.

“Amelia Gray.” Despite his cultured manner of speaking, there was something in the low timber of his voice that reminded me of a tribal drumbeat. Amelia Gray. Amelia Gray. Amelia Gray. “It’s been a while since last we met.”

I inclined my head slightly, slanting a glance up through my lashes into those mesmeric eyes for only a split second before shifting my gaze to the talisman that hung around his throat. It was made of some thin metal, intricately engraved with hieroglyphics. I stared at it for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I lost track of the moments ticking by. I suddenly felt very disoriented, as if I had become lost once more in a dream of Darius Goodwine’s making.

I didn’t try to empty my thoughts to allow his emotions to enter. I was too afraid to trifle with such a cunning mind. So instead I focused on strengthening my defenses and on keeping him out of my head. I visualized a door slamming shut as I chanced another glance at his arresting visage. His lips curled in amusement, but I saw something that might have been surprise—or annoyance—flicker in his eyes, leaving me with a momentary triumph.

Boldly, I lifted my chin and met his gaze. “The last I heard, you were in Africa. What brings you to Seven Gates Cemetery?”

“I’ve come to see you, naturally.”

There was nothing natural about his presence or his timing, I felt certain. “Why?”

“All in good time. We have some catching up to do first.”

I scowled up at him. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Your powers have grown stronger since our last encounter. They leave a trail.”

Was that admiration I heard in his voice? A touch of wonder, even?