Page 47 of From Hell

“What do you mean, move them?” I ask in a low voice, pouring hot water into a cold black tea to revive it.

Nola glances my way, reaching for the hours-old coffee pot. “You know what I mean.”

Nola’s lone eye seems to bore into me, and she motions with her head to follow her outside for a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but Nola vapes. After she’s inhaled her mint vapor, she takes out her phone and flicks through the screen until she gets what she’s looking for. She hands it to me without saying a word.

It’s an article about the old cemetery and new developments planned for the area. The project will involve relocating every single grave.

A chill cuts through my insides. Suddenly, everything is colder and darker.

“Oh, Hell,” I say under my breath.

“I told you that was a shit place to dump them.”

“It’ll take me a few nights.” Three bodies are a lot to move in one attempt.

When we go back inside, Sage, trapped between Greg and Patty, nodding at whatever they say, looks over—a rabbit caught in headlights. As everyone leaves, I rescue her and make her walk me to the parking lot. She usually takes a taxi, but I convince her to let me give her a ride to the station and then tell her what Nola told me.

“I need your help,” I say, holding my breath in case she turns me down. “I need to move them. They’re too heavy to move alone. I struggled last time,” I admit. I won’t say outright what they are. None of us do. It helps not to think of them as dead bodies.

Sage thinks about it for a few seconds. “Sure…I can sneak out.”

Relief surges through me. “Pick you up around midnight.?” I say as I drop her off a few blocks from her parents’ vast mansion that she must rattle around alone in. They’re never home. She nods as she gets out. “Thank you. I owe you one, Sage. The second you want to get rid of your shit for brains, fiancé, say the word.”

Nola explicitly said we weren’t to get involved with each other’s murders, but I don’t care. I know how hard it was to kill my first.

Sage smiles, one of those haunted ones that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “When it’s River’s time, I want to be the one to cut him up into little pieces.”

I nod at her, gnawing at my lower lip, understanding exactly how she feels. As Sage heads toward her mansion, not a falter in her stride, I kick the engine into gear and drive off.

Nola said Sage was having a wobble. It sure doesn’t seem like that.

18

LAINE

Abody is missing.

How could that happen? I glance at Sage, and she gives me a worried look, half hidden in the torchlight, dirt smudged on her cheeks like one of those scenes from a movie where the heroine has been baking cakes and accidentally got flour on her face. Only digging in graveyard mud is a far cry from making innocent fairy cakes. We’ve been hauling soil for hours trying to find the body of Henry Wickham, only to come up short.

“Are you sure you left it here?” Sage asks in a hopeful voice. “Could it be in some other grave?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I specifically chose this tombstone.” I gesture to it, staring down into the four-foot hole we’ve dug. We’ve found nothing but worms, rocks, and the remnants of the coffin initially buried in the plot over a hundred years ago.

Sage wipes her brow. “Maybe we have to dig deeper.”

I take a seat on a fallen tree, letting my lungs deflate. “Honest to God, I did not go deeper than this. This is where I put him. I remember because it was raining and lightning lit up this damned tre—” A chill snakes through my insides, sucking the heat from my entire body.

I stare at the tree, the one that moved that night.

“What is it?” Sage asks.

With Sage here, it doesn’t feel as ominous as it was…but as the darkness stretches out, surrounding us like an endless pit of Hell, the cold air plays over my skin and slithers down my spine, kick-starting my heart with a dangerous warning. “He took it.”

Sage’s brow furrows. “Who? The person who was following you?”

Trying not to hyperventilate, I get to my feet, scanning the shadows. “Yes…I don’t know.”

“Hetook the body? Who is he and why would he do that?” Her voice is higher pitched than usual, as though what I’m saying is ludicrous. And really, it is when you think about it. Why would anyone take a body? Any sane person would call the police. All I can think about is the knife in my dishwasher. It’s still there at the bottom. Even though it’s a murder weapon, I can’t bring myself to touch it.