No Good Comes When You Dig Up the Dead, page 1
No Good Comes When You Dig Up the Dead
No Good Comes
Book One
Inka York
Book One: No Good Comes When You Dig Up the Dead
No Good Comes series
by Inka York
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Paperback edition ISBN: 978-1-915708-40-3
E-book edition ISBN: 978-1-915708-39-7
Published by Inklore Books
v.20251020
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Copyright ©2025 Inka York
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any format whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Inka York asserts the moral right to be identified as the sole author of this work.
This book is not available for AI training. No part of it may be fed into AI/LLMs by anyone.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously or satirically. Any resemblance to actual events, organisations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Products/brands referred to in this work own their trademarks, and inclusion does not imply endorsement.
Cover design by Inka York
Editing services by Esther Rae
Contents
Content Note
No Good Comes When You Dig Up the Dead
Prologue
1. Real Words
2. That’s What I Am to You?
3. The Beige Place
4. Tests
5. The Last Night
6. The New Bloodborn
7. The Cairo Suite
8. Theo’s First Meal
9. Easter Eggs
10. The Last Witness #1
11. The Last Witness #2
12. The Mindbender
13. Going Under
14. Who is Robert Winters?
15. The Rules
16. The Fixer
17. Bodysnatcher
18. The Easter Picnic
19. The Goth Prince
20. Blackmail
21. Pigs and Bunnies
22. Theo Gets the Munchies
23. Doctorly Advice
24. The Truth About Oz
25. Theo’s Promise
26. Stephen’s Final Phone Call
27. Not the First Murder in the Family
28. The Consequences of Holding On
29. Hot and Humid
30. A Night at Limbo
31. Erin’s Battle Aura
32. First Day at the Phone Shop
33. Terrible Friends
34. Theo’s Flashback
35. Facing Margo
36. Theo’ New Theory
37. The Surprise Guest at Carrie’s Birthday Drinks
38. Something Soft and Sweet and Real
39. Unexpected Dating Advice
40. The Red Room
41. The Elephant in the Room
42. Catfishing
43. Medusa House
44. Laying Old Ghosts to Rest
45. A Memory Resurfaces
46. So Unexpected
47. New Feature Unlocked
48. Ghost Periods and Gorgonzola
49. Theo’s Cheese Knowledge Comes in Handy
50. Everything Comes Flooding Back
51. Revelations and Connections
52. The Predator
53. Erin Figures It Out
54. Theo’s Proposition
55. The Murderer’s House
56. Theo’s Date
57. Sometimes They Don’t Stay Dead
58. Purges
59. Tish Thinks She’s Won
60. Good Friday: Theo’s First Vampire Birthday
61. Gaga Returns
A Message from Oz
A Message from the Author
The Cast and Where to Find Them
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Also by Inka York
Content Note
This story is M/F paranormal romance suspense set in the Cascade Apocrypha storyworld of vampires, angels, demons, witches, hybrids, and shifters, so if you’ve read any of my other books, you’ll probably recognise some crossover characters even if I don’t explicitly name them.
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This story features two MCs on the asexual spectrum, specifically grey ace (Stephen/Theo) and demisexual (Erin). I would rate this as mildly spicy, but most of the focus is on the platonic aspects of the relationship between the MCs. You’ll love these two, I promise you that.
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Here’s your regular reminder that I’m a British author, writing British characters in British English.
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It was pointed out to me by my American critique partner that folks from the US usually have ID on them. For now, in the UK, there is no requirement to have photo ID on your person unless you’re driving a vehicle. I don’t drive, so there’s nothing in my wallet with my photo or address on it. This information will come in handy later!
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Pronunciation Note:
CasID (Cass-eye-dee): Cascade Investigation Department (basically the supernatural police)
Eidolon (EYE-doh-luhn)
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Content Warning:
Vivid descriptions of murder, including visceral reminiscences from the newly raised bloodborns. Mild gore and blood drinking. Childhood trauma through hypnosis. Instances of fat phobia. While there is no cheating in this story, there is a MM sex scene between Theo and a friend.
For the Lionesses and the Red Roses
You did us proud.
Chapter Dedications
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Chapter 3
To Janay, who would like Theo to know that this is a Wendy’s.
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Chapter 19
To James, whose joke I may have stolen because almost everything out of Theo’s mouth sounds like you now. I’m not sorry.
“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”— Émile Zola
No Good Comes When You Dig Up the Dead
Thirty years ago, Erin was murdered and resurrected a bloodborn vampire. Now she works as a handler for Cascade, preparing freshly raised bloodborns for their new lives. Theo is her latest case.
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When Theo discovers Erin’s murder is unsolved, and that she’s prohibited from investigating her case by her employers, he resolves to pick up the trail where it went cold—in their shared home town, where his own murder took place.
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As they negotiate Theo’s awkwardness, the expectations of Erin’s job, a mountain of hair dye, and their year long co-living arrangement, this pair of aces dig deeper than either of them expected.
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But what they discover is this : some truths are better off buried.
Prologue
Nobody expects to be murdered, but Stephen King could expect it less than most. He never made an enemy in his life, which doesn’t alter the fact that he’s now dead.
Before anyone gets too carried away, this isn’t about that Stephen King. This one never wrote a terrifying bestseller, though his imagination was dark for a human who was equal parts clown, marshmallow, and awkwardness. He didn’t do anything remotely Stephenish at all. No stints in jail for fraud, no chequered acting history, no musicals, no genius brain, no sainthood. Maybe you’re wondering why this story is even about him.
Perhaps you’re asking yourself if his murder was thrilling. It wasn’t. It was swift and uncomplicated, and he didn’t see it coming even as it happened.
But the truth is this: no story is ever about just one person.
Stephen’s handler—because that’s what she prefers to call herself—is not like him at all. She makes enemies in her sleep. The beginning of this story would’ve happened much sooner if it was all about her.
She is me, Erin Nixon. Glorified social worker and vampire babysitter.
If I hadn’t been back in my hometown when my parents died, Stephen King’s case would never have landed in my lap. And by landed… Well, let’s just say I made a call I shouldn’t have.
I figured I’d grave-sit for a week at most, for reasons I really don’t want to think about, but Stephen and I bonded over bird shit doodles and I-Spy. I think I’m going to keep him.
Bonding before recovery is against the rules, but there’s something very awake about Stephen King… something that drew me in even though it could ruin me in more ways than one. He has something I need, so fuck the rules. That’s what I tell myself as I linger night after night in the county of my birth.
Fuck. The. Rules.
A ten-minute drive would’ve found me on the doorstep of the house I grew up in—the house my parents gambled away chasing ghosts. From there, a few minutes’ walk past a church and through a graveyard would’ve landed me at my primary school, where new concrete flats grow like bold and brutal weeds from the old school field.
My secondary school is a bus ride from the house, thirty minutes on the top deck, smoking with Oz, sticking chewing gum to the driver’s periscope mirror, so all he saw when he looked upstairs was a galaxy of black spots. Art college was a ten-minute walk at either end of
Oz left me behind.
We left each other behind, as the dead and the living always do.
This is the first time I’ve been back to my hometown since the summer I died.
1
Real Words
POV: Stephen
The woman has been watching my grave for weeks.
Every time I leave my coffin to feed, she’s there. It didn’t occur to me until the tenth night that she’d make a tasty meal. She doesn’t look overly tall sitting there on the bench, but there’s plenty of her to sink my teeth into. If I even have teeth.
Bench. Bench. Is that a real word?
I can’t really remember how big women are, or how they compare to benches in size. Size. Size.
My brain still feels fuzzy, which I suppose could be normal for a dead person. Am I a zombie now? Or is this just what it’s like to be dead? I should probably be panicking more. After all, it’s not every day I wake up dead. Except now it is. Every day, or rather every night, I wake up dead.
I spend all day in the ground, in a tight, womb-like coffin. The lid is clear with dirt piled on it, and even in the consumptive darkness, I can see the tiny spaces between each grain, and the seeds of other ungrown things. Nothing wriggles or crawls through the dirt above. I’m like a sugar-free lolly, loaded with aspartame and avoided by ants. Why is the woman just sitting there? Aspartame. Aspartame.
She’s young—early twenties at a guess—and very pretty, even with her acidic lime hair and matching eyebrows. She’s bold and alive—the precise qualities I do not have. In truth, I wasn’t bold and alive even before I died.
I don’t try to eat her. Even if I figured out how to do it—how to fit something so large into my face, assuming I still have one—I can’t bring myself to hurt her.
On the sixteenth night, I move closer than I ever dared before. I stand in front of her, examining her outfit. She’s wearing a lilac dress with embroidered cupcakes—one of those fifties style dresses, all floaty and triangular at the bottom, and tight against her breasts at the top. With one leg crossed over the other, her cowboy boot bounces back and forth, drawing attention to the embroidered trinkets weaving in and out of her fishnets—stars, flowers, feathers, ribbons. Hanging over the arm of the bench is a denim jacket, and scrunched on her lap is a dark purple cardigan, which reminds me that weather exists. Shouldn’t the woman be cold? She doesn’t look cold.
A dreamy look washes across her pale face as she peers down at the phone in her hands. Someone is making her happy. Her thumbs fly over the screen, and I peek at the back and forth of brief messages.
Bodysnatcher. That’s who’s making her happy. It’s not the sort of nickname that should inspire happiness in a young woman who sits alone night after night in a graveyard. Unless that’s why she’s here.
To steal my body.
Sure, Stephen. She’s here to steal your body. You, as the most interesting and important person in this cemetery.
I try to roll my eyes at my ridiculous thoughts, but I’m not sure I managed it, on account of not being sure if I still have eyes.
Even if the woman does have ulterior motives, there’s no point worrying about it. My body doesn’t do much. Even now, it’s still in the ground. This part of me that escapes the coffin at night… Well, it’s not a body. It’s all shadow and hunger and pain. Tonight, I can add curious to its list of attributes.
The moon looks full again tonight, the sky a brilliant, inky blue, pierced with stars. A symmetrical stone church, small and picturesque, squats in the grass like a cottage in a fairy tale. The moon makes it blue. The gravestones are uniformly square, unlike any graveyard I’ve ever seen in England. England. England. There’s something very off about them.
I ramble back to the graves, suddenly aware that I don’t know which one is mine. Panic rises where my gut should be. What if I’ve lost my ability to read? What if my own name is forever lost to me, going unrecognised on my headstone? What if I can’t get back into my coffin? Would I roam forever, trapped in a world I should’ve experienced more of?
My grave isn’t far from the tree; I remember that much. But when I look, there are five trees near graves. How could something that had been intuitive before now suddenly be beyond my grasp? I glance down at the nearest stone, but there’s no writing at all. I check the other side of the grave—nothing there either. I check the other graves. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. No names. No writing at all.
I wonder if the woman knows where I am, or why there are no names on the headstones. Why am I more panicked about being unable to find my grave than I am about being dead in the first place?
The urge to feed hits me again as I move closer. I won’t hurt her though. I like the sound of her laugh, and the way her head tips to the side when she smiles.
She looks up, green eyebrows raised. “Don’t even think about it.”
I look around, wondering if the frown crumpling my forehead is really there. Maybe she’s talking to her phone.
I feel stupid asking. “Are you talking to me?”
She smirks. “Yes, I’m talking to you.”
“Am I dead?”
“Yes,” she says, without any of the respect such a brutal response requires.
My lungs crumple, even though I’m not sure oxygen does anything for me anymore. “Oh.”
“But it’s not permanent,” she says, tone dubious.
“Good?”
“Can be.” She shrugs her tattooed shoulders. “That’s up to you.”
“Nothing is ever up to me.”
“You wanna watch that attitude.” Then, without irony, she adds, “It’ll get you killed.”
“Am I naked?” I’m not sure what made me say it. Or why I thought it was a good idea to say it out loud.
Her gaze swipes up and down my… being, lingering on my crotch, then a smile kicks her face into a laugh that bubbles over. And despite the heat and embarrassment, I want to laugh too. And though I can feel the echo of a smile—the shape of it, the shadow of lips and teeth and amusement—I can’t remember how to do it, and the moment falls flat.
“Calm down,” she finally says. “I can’t see anything.”
“I’m dressed?”
“You’re a shadow, a silhouette.” She crosses her legs. “I knew you’d be more awake tonight, so I brought you a sandwich.”
“I’ve been awake every night. I’ve been counting.”
“Have you?” she asks, like I’ve told her a thousand times already. Maybe I have.
“This is the sixteenth night,” I tell her.
She raises her eyebrows. “It is. That’s quite unusual, you know. Most of you are at least three or four days out… sometimes as many as ten. Ten days, Stephen.”
