Jeaniene Frost - One Grave at a Time

“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.”

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?