Graverobber

If witches were half as good as they thought they were, one of them would’ve figured out how to bottle a perfect May afternoon so I wouldn’t have to wait around for nature to dole them out.

Maybe they didn’t bother because they knew it could never beat the real thing.

I was sitting on the fresh grass, feeling the coolness of the ground through my jeans and the sun on my bare arms. The soft breeze carried the lush smell of the mountains over the short gray stone wall that divided the civilized part of the Noctis yard from the wilderness beyond. I could hear the green leaves of the trees rustling. The evergreens were silent, but the way their branches swayed made it look like they were waving to each other. A few birds swooped through the blue sky while, high above them, puffy white clouds lazed their way across it.

Then, into this peaceful scene, a brutal murder intruded.

The dragonfly was hovering about six feet over the yard. Sensing that its life was in danger, it rose by an inch. The cage of Kappa’s fangs snapped closed over nothing but air.

“Eww!” I cried. “Kappa, no! Don’t—don’teatit!”

But the pint-sized butcher was too intent on his prey to listen to me. He launched himself from the ground to the short stone wall, then used it as a springboard to take another flying leap toward the dragonfly.

“Kappa!”

The small bog-monster landed in front of me. His evil smile revealed the dragonfly’s long bright-blue butt and the two wings that had escaped the Great Munch. He opened and closed his teeth a few more times, until only flecks escaped.

I threw my hands up over my eyes. “That’s disgusting,” I said to my palms.

“How is it any more disgusting than what he normally eats?” Conrad asked.

The wolfman was bent over the newly planted vegetable garden, doing whatever it is gardeners have to do to coax food out of the dirt.

“Because I don’t usually have to watch,” I said.

“You should be praising him,” Conrad said. “He’s supposed to eat bugs.”

“You brought him out here to eat snails and caterpillars—garden pests.”

Conrad paused to extend his fluffy fist toward Kappa. The bog-monster hopped over and bumped his own tiny fist against it.

“Number one garden partner,” Conrad said.

Kappa grinned and padded at the dark soil beneath his webbed hands.

“What did that dragonfly do to deserve an end like that?” I huffed. “The poor little thing probably wandered away from the koi pond and got lost!”

“You call that thing little?” Conrad said as he went back to work.

I hesitated. The dragonfly had looked small compared to the yawning abyss of Kappa’s mouth, but that wasn’t saying much.

Conrad added, “It was damn near the size of a bird.”

That was an exaggeration, but I wasn’t going to correct him if, instead, I could use it as part of my Crusade Against Senseless Slaughter In Front Of Me—CASSIFOM.

“Exactly!” I said. “What’s next on the menu? The sparrows? The robins?”

Kappa tilted his head. The smooth area between his two big black eyes crinkled in confusion.

Conrad stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “Mera, he already eats birds.”

A full second passed before I spoke.

“You mean…”

Conrad nodded.

I motioned to the trees. “Like, the little…”

The edge of his black lips lifted in a smile.

My head rolled back in disgust. “Oh no—oh, geez! That’s…ugh! Barf!” I stuck my tongue out in an effort to eject a bunch of imaginary feathers.

Kappa grinned at me, shamelessly, and patted the ground. Conrad indulged in a quiet chuckle before bending back over his work.

He raised his voice so I’d be sure to hear him: “You didn’t seem to mind the idea of eating birds last night.”

“That was chicken!” I said.

“Chick-chick-chick-chicken,” Kappa chanted as he hopped in a circle.

“Last I checked, chickens are birds,” Conrad said.

“Chick-chick,” Kappa muttered.

I hated to even think it, but Conrad had a point. Despite my wailing and retching, the only difference between me and Kappa was that he had enough integrity to catch the food himself. And I ate fewer bugs.

Conrad went on, “You’re not allowed to give Kappa a hard time about what he eats. Anything he can catch is fair game, and he knows the rules.”

“There are rules?” I said.

“Kappa, what did Igor tell you about what you catch?”

Kappa didn’t stop hopping to answer. “Catch it outside, eat it outside!”

The edges of my mouth quirked up in an unwilling smile. “Okay. Yeah. That’s a good rule.”

“He’s a predator,” Conrad said. “Even if he gets enough to eat from Igor, he’s happier when he can hunt.”

I uncrossed my legs, brought my knees up to my chest, and wrapped my arms around them. I rested my chin on my knees while gazing at the wolfman who was using his claws to pick through his garden. His muzzle was pointed toward the ground, and his ears swiveled to follow the sounds of the world around him.

“What’s that word that means when you put two things side-by-side because they shouldn’t make sense together but they kinda do?” I said.

Conrad chuffed. It was the wolfman version of a short, huff-style laugh. “What?”

“Darius uses it. Something about contrasting elements.”

“I have no idea. Why?”

“No reason,” I said with a grin. “What about you, wolf-boy? You like steak, right? Have you hunted any wild cows lately?”

Conrad grunted. “Can’t get the permit. But I do know how to hunt if I have to.”

I tilted my head. “How does that…work?”

“Huh?”

“Do you, like, run them down on two legs, then go for the jugular?”

I could imagine a poor moose, chomping down on some greens, casually glancing over his shoulder to see a fully dressed, two-legged wolf booking it toward him. It was kind of funny, but it was also, in a much more gritty and stark way, absolutely terrifying.

“I usually use a thirty-aught-six,” Conrad said.

“A thirty-aught…? Oh! A rifle! Right, right. A rifle. That makes more sense.”

“What about you, zombie-girl?” Conrad’s smile expanded until I could see the long curve of his canines. “Have you ever gone hunting?”

He’d only asked the question to tease me. He might as well have called me “city-girl” instead of “zombie-girl”—it would’ve been equally accurate.

That rankled. But he was right. I’d never been hunting. I’d never had to pluck a chicken or eat bugs. Ihadgone hungry before—more than once—but that’s not the same thing as ripping the hide off a deer.

I’d never thought of that as a weakness before.

I wanted to say something to wipe the smirk off his face, but I had to avoid lying. Conrad tended to call me out whenever I did that.

I mustered some unwarranted confidence. “I think I could—you know, if I had to.” I looked up at the trees beyond the stone wall. “Hunger is really motivating.”

When I looked back down, Conrad was watching me. He was still smiling, but all the smirkiness was gone.

Crap. He was taking me seriously again. There had to be a way to get him to stop doing that.

I felt a change of subject was in order.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’d rather eat whatever you’re growing.” I nodded to the garden. “I’d chop up all the vegetables myself. No mercy.”

Conrad gazed over the neat rows of plants with an air of fondness. “Yeah. I hope some of them make it.”

“I thought you said they were looking good.”

Kappa got bored of hopping and wandered over to sit in my lap.

“They are right now,” Conrad said, “but this is my first vegetable garden, and they’ve got a lot going against them. I’m not sure if the soil chemistry is right. We’ve got all kinds of animals out here—rabbits, deer, mice. Then there’s the cold snap.”

“What cold snap?” I asked.

“This’ll be my fifth year down here. Each May, for a day or two, and for no reason I can figure out, the temperature drops below freezing at night.”

“What! No! It barely started warming up!”

Conrad shrugged. “It’s only for a night or two.”

“That’s easy for you to say! You’ve got a fur coat! I’m going to have to get out that quilt I put away.”

“Get two,” Conrad said. “Darius has already turned off the furnace for the season.”

I groaned and let my head drop.

Never let a vampire set the thermostat. They don’t get cold either.

Behind me, I heard one of the French doors that led into the kitchen bang against its frame. They did that if you weren’t careful as you closed them. The sound was followed by a quiet “oop!”

I glanced over my shoulder. Kappa stood on my legs so he could look over my shoulder too.

“Hey, Mrs. Park,” I called.

Mrs. Park kept house for Big Jacky, but she didn’t look like a housekeeper. She dressed like an aged bohemian fashionista on her way to a poetry recital: white hair swept up into an ornate jewel-toned head wrap, oversized hand-made earrings, flowy clothes.

She was wearing her typical style that day, but she’d been working since early that morning, so it looked like she’d made a frazzled escape from an eight-hour business meeting that she’d walked into thinking that it would be a poetry recital.

“Emerra, dear,” she said as she came toward us. “I have a favor to ask you.”

Kappa ran to meet her, but all he did was dance around her legs, then walk-hop beside her. I didn’t know whether Kappa had been trained not to jump on certain people, or if he had some internal sense of who he was and wasn’t allowed to launch himself at. Either way, I’d been stuck on the “allowed victim” list.

“You aren’t done working?” I asked.

“Not yet. Or, rather, I don’t want to stop yet. As soon as I get into spring cleaning, I tend to find a flow.” Mrs. Park stopped a few feet away and looked down at me with an expression of profound wisdom. “And, you know, you should never interrupt a good flow.”

“Believe me,” I said, “I get it.”

“I thought you might. I was wondering if you’d be willing to help me with some work. I wouldn’t normally ask, but it goes so much faster when I have someone around to help with the lifting.”

I bounced a bit as I blurted out, “Yeah! No, totally! I’d love to help.”

Around the mansion, I had a bad reputation when it came to cleaning. Once upon a time, I’d tried to explain to Conrad that picking stuff up and cleaning were two totally unrelated skills. I was good at cleaning. Picking up? Not so much. He’d stared at me for a long time before saying, “Then you aren’t good at cleaning”—thus proving that you can’t teach a stubborn wolfman new tricks.

Mrs. Park, however, was aprofessionalhousekeeper. She understood. She hadn’t written me off as a hopeless case. My hidden talents had been seen and recognized. Why else would she be asking for my help?

“Oh, thank you,” she said with a sigh. “What with Olivia gone and Conrad working on the garden, I really didn’t have anyone else I could ask!”

My ego deflated like a balloon released without a knot. The farty whistle of escaping pride echoed through my soul.

I heard Conrad chuckle. He had probably smelled my disappointment. Or heard the farty whistle. One of the two.

“Kappa,” Conrad called.

Kappa looked at him.

“You’ll stay with me.”

Kappa’s eyes slid over to me. Reflected in the giant black fishbowl of his gaze was a sense of dismay. He loved Conrad as much as he loved me, but Conrad had a bad habit of doing hard work, which was no fun at all.

“Sorry, buddy,” I said. “If we’re doing spring cleaning, it’s probably going to be dusty.”

Big Jacky didn’t differentiate between Kappa and any of the other residents of the mansion; the bog monster was allowed to go anywhere he wanted as long as it wasn’t a private room. Long before I had arrived, he’d explored the third floor and learned all about the rooms that were shut up most of the year. When he’d found me in one, looking for some thread, he’d let out a loud squawk, bounded inside, and tried to drag me out.

I’d humored him because of his obvious distress.

When we were outside the room, I did my best to keep a straight face while thanking him for rescuing me.

“But why are you so upset?” I asked.

“Dust!”

“Dust?”

He stuck his tongue out as far as it would go. Maximum yuk. The boy would sooner eat a whole bar of chocolate. Dust wasbad. “Iss sticky!”

I laughed, bent down, and scooped him into my arms. “I don’t think it’s the dust that’s sticky—”

But as I straightened up, he rose into the beam of light coming in from the window at the back of the room. Large patches of his smooth skin, normally glossy with moisture, were coated in a thin, matte muck of wet dust.

I glanced back at the room. He’d only been in there for a few seconds!

I tried to wipe off one of the patches. The dust scooted along his skin, gathering into a thicker line of muck.

Kappa scowled at me. “Iss sticky!”

“Okay, buddy. I get it. I’ll be careful. Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

While he took an indignant bath in my tub (Kappas didn’tneedbaths, Kappas werealwaysclean), I tried to explain to him that dust slid right off me. It was one of my superpowers. He seemed dubious. Of the two of us, I took way more baths than he did.

No matter how much he loved me, the threat of dust would probably be enough to get him to relinquish his claim on my company.

“Stick with me,” Conrad said, “and you can eat all the bugs and birds you want.”

Kappa’s grin showed off his fangs, still flecked with dragonfly bits. He scuttled over and planted his butt on the ground next to Conrad while gazing up at the wolfman adoringly.

So much for loyalty.

I stretched as I got to my feet. My butt and legs tingled from sitting on the hard ground for so long.

“All right, Mrs. Park,” I said. “Let’s go do some spring cleaning.”

Maybe I could do something about that reputation of mine.