A Spell to Wake the Dead, page 12
The woman in the picture is May.
“Hey!” A man’s voice calls out from somewhere on the other side of the hill. “Who’s over there?”
The three of us freeze. Nora’s eyes flick to the mausoleum.
“No,” I hiss. Hiding inside that hellhole is not an option. “Shut the door!”
Elliot tugs it closed, and I pull the key from the lock.
“Hello!” comes the man’s gruff voice again. “I know you’re back there, so you better come out. I saw you on the cameras and I found your car.”
“The cemetery has cameras?” mutters Nora.
“This way,” I say, gesturing around the opposite side of the hill. We skirt back through the graves, then cut up the driveway, trying to look nonchalant—which is difficult when you’ve just been inside a tomb.
Under a gnarled old oak tree, a man stands holding a shovel. His face is covered with a surgical mask, and a wide-brimmed hat is pulled low over his eyes. I don’t know why he’s wearing a mask all alone in a cemetery, but maybe he has allergies. Or maybe he put it on when he discovered we were here.
“I’m not going to find any spray paint on the graves, am I?” His voice is weary. “You kids have no respect for the dead.”
We have more respect than we probably should, I think.
“We, uh, were just visiting my grandma’s grave,” says Nora.
The groundskeeper takes in my long black coat, the steel spikes in Elliot’s ears, Nora’s multicolored hair. He grunts. “Shouldn’t you be at school right now?”
“It hasn’t started yet,” says Nora. “We just wanted to stop by for a quick visit before we go.”
The man folds his arms. “What’s your grandmother’s name?”
“Ffflorence,” says Nora. “Florence…Welch.”
She presses her mouth into a tight line, refusing to look at either me or Elliot, and I desperately hope this groundskeeper has never heard of Florence and the Machine.
He lowers his shovel. “I better not find any trash or graffiti back there. This isn’t a party spot.”
“Trust me, we were not having a party,” I say. Nora chokes back a laugh, and I’m so close to laughter too, even though this is deeply unfunny.
“We’re leaving now,” says Elliot.
As we pass through the cemetery gate, I mutter, “Florence Welch,” and Nora and I break into quiet giggling that quickly turns into full-blown, high-pitched laughter. That man is going to think we were taking drugs in his graveyard. For some reason, this makes me laugh harder, until tears are dripping down my cheeks. We’ve got dead bodies missing from drawers and skull keys and coffins and deep, dark holes. Polaroids that magically appear on the ground, right after we almost get locked in tombs. It’s getting wilder and stranger and more dangerous by the second. I’m sure if I stop laughing, the panic will flood in, so I don’t stop.
“Keep it together, you two,” Elliot mutters.
I’m wheezing, Nora keeps tripping on the hem of her dress, and I’m not sure if we look more like drug addicts or two Victorian ladies having a hysterical breakdown.
“Bye, Grandma!” calls Nora from the middle of the road, waving over her shoulder.
“Watch out!” I tug her backward as a delivery van zooms past, narrowly missing her. The driver beeps but doesn’t slow, and the laughter dies in my throat as the taillights disappear down the road.
The near miss is a stark reminder—nothing about this is funny, and it’s dangerous to even pretend it is.
CHAPTER 23
As I pull out onto the road, Nora is scrolling on her phone and Elliot’s busy examining the Polaroid in the back seat. I can’t believe we’re supposed to go to school right now and act normal.
“Who else thinks that wasn’t really the cemetery groundskeeper?” he says.
I glance at him in the mirror. “Really?”
“That shovel was lying on the ground when we got there,” he says. “I bet he just picked it up and pretended it was his.”
“Right after he tried and failed to shut us in the mausoleum.” My skin is crawling. “Or do you think May did it?”
“She wouldn’t do that,” says Nora.
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” It sounds exactly like May’s brand of creepy behavior.
“Is it possible the groundskeeper was actually that guy from Delaware?” asks Nora. “I couldn’t see his neck or any tattoos.”
“His SUV wasn’t on the road or in the graveyard,” says Elliot.
“I think it’s safe to assume that whoever tried to shut the mausoleum door also left the Polaroid,” I say.
“Or they dropped it by accident,” says Elliot.
“No, the Polaroid is from May,” says Nora.
“But you don’t think she tried to shut the door?” I ask. “Why?”
“Well, we agree that this is a photo of her, right?” says Nora.
Elliot shrugs; I nod.
“And we know May wants us to help her,” Nora continues. “So this must be a clue that she wants us to have. We need to figure out where the picture was taken and then go there.”
“Why wouldn’t she just yell at you where to go, like she did yesterday?” I ask. “Why start leaving cryptic clues all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know, but she’s been muttering something about honey and flies today,” says Nora.
“As in, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?” says Elliot. “Does that make us the flies?”
Like flies on a corpse. I force the mental image out of my head.
“Whoa.” Nora points to something ahead. “Look.”
Parked on the side of the road is a black sedan that looks awfully familiar. I slow to a crawl as we pass, and the person in the driver’s seat looks up. Her dark eyes lock on mine, and my teeth clamp together.
Nora sucks in her breath; I swear and hit the gas.
“That nosy, skulking stalker,” mutters Nora, checking her mirror.
“Who?” says Elliot. “What just happened?”
“That,” says Nora, “was Detective Freaking Huld.”
“What was she doing there, though?” I ask. “Did she know we were at the graveyard?”
“Maybe she’s the one who tried to shut us in the mausoleum,” says Nora, and my neck starts to prickle.
“If she did, why would she run off and then park right where we’d see her afterward?” says Elliot. “Anyway, cops don’t usually go around locking people in tombs.”
“But she’s not a normal cop,” says Nora. “She’s hiding something. And I’m just saying that if she were in the Hand of Nephthys, locking us away in a mausoleum would be a quick and easy way to get us to stop meddling in their business.”
Elliot groans. “But why would she leave the photo outside? Why give us extra clues?”
“I told you, the photo’s from May,” says Nora.
“Or it was the groundskeeper’s, and he didn’t mean to drop it,” says Elliot.
“Hmm.” Nora pulls a white feather from her pocket and twirls it in her fingers.
“Where did you get that?” I ask.
“I found it in one of the coffins,” she says. “Don’t worry, I asked permission from the dead before I took it out of the cemetery.”
“Let me guess—that’s from May too?” I can’t keep the biting tone out of my voice. Taking things from random coffins is not a smart choice, whether you asked permission or not. Nora’s never been the most sensible person I know, but this is stretching it, even for her. She knows better.
“Possibly.” Nora tucks the feather behind her ear.
“Anything else you’ve taken that you want to share?” I say. “Because that’s two things now, and neither of them was a good idea.”
“Can you just drop it?” snaps Nora. “I’m allowed to take things I find in public.”
“Actually, you’re not,” I say. “We’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole, and stealing things from tombs isn’t—”
“Guys, hey.” says Elliot. “Look at this. There are some letters over the door.” He holds the Polaroid up. “I-Q-U-E-S.”
“I bet that’s antiques.” I flick on my blinker. “Do either of you recognize the store?”
“Nope.” Nora folds her arms over her chest and stares out the window.
“We can probably use a reverse image search to find it,” I say. “I’ll do some research at lunch.”
Nora pulls out her phone, and I wonder if she’s already searching for the antique store or if she’s just using it as an excuse not to talk to me. I feel a little bad for yelling at her about the feather, but I’m starting to wonder if I even know her anymore.
As we pull into the school parking lot, the morning bell is ringing, and the last few stragglers are hurrying inside. Thankfully, there’s an open parking spot near the back, and we throw our bags over our shoulders and race across the pavement.
“Let me know what you find out,” Elliot calls as he veers off toward his homeroom.
Frowning at her screen, Nora gives us a distracted wave as she heads to class.
CHAPTER 24
I’m sitting alone in the back corner of the cafeteria with a bagel, an open calculus book, the Polaroid, my phone, and a massive headache. It turns out that balancing a heavy load of AP classes—along with solving the mystery of two murdered women and dealing with the undead spirit of one of them—is a lot.
Someone drops onto the stool beside me, and I startle, then immediately break into a grin when I realize it’s Elliot, holding a library book.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. It’s been the bane of my existence that none of us have the same lunch period this year.
He waves a bathroom pass. “Thought I’d stop by and see if you found anything.”
“Not yet,” I say. “I tried taking a picture and reverse image searching, but nothing matched. So now I’m looking up all the antique stores on the Cape one by one and checking their street views.”
“That’s going to take forever.” Elliot leans in closer, and I tilt my screen so he can see. A strand of my hair static-sticks to his shoulder, and a warm sensation spreads like sunlight across my skin. He notices it too but doesn’t brush it away.
“Hopefully not,” I say, forcing myself back to reality, where it would definitely not be acceptable to bury my face in Elliot’s paint-flecked hoodie and inhale. “It’s just super boring. Look what else I noticed, though.”
I point to the white border under the image, where a letter is written in smeared black ink.
“Is that a V?” asks Elliot.
“Or an M that the edges got smudged off,” I say. “Obviously this woman’s real name isn’t May, but that’s kind of interesting, don’t you think?”
Elliot nods. “Speaking of letters, I went to the library during my free period, and I saw this.” He holds up the book so I can read the title: Ancient Egypt and the Afterlife. “There’s some interesting stuff about Nephthys in here.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Does this mean you finally believe us about everything?”
“I’m working on it,” he says. “Want me to read this to you while you look for antique stores?”
“Sure,” I say. If nothing else, it’ll keep me from falling asleep.
Elliot opens the book to a scrap of paper he’s tucked into the pages and clears his throat. “Nephthys, one of the earliest goddesses of Egypt, was a member of the Ennead of Heliopolis, a group of nine powerful deities. Often called the Mistress of the House, she is associated with both death and childbirth, as well as healing and magic. She is traditionally depicted as a hawk or kite—the bird, not the toy—or a woman with wings.”
He flips the page.
“The book talks about a lot of stuff we already know, like how she was the sister of Isis and the mother of Anubis, and how she welcomed the recently dead and helped them travel to the afterlife. She’s quoted in The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys as saying, ‘I am with you, your bodyguard, for all eternity.’ ”
A shivery sensation whispers through me as I tap a photo of an antique shop in Chatham to enlarge it. But the storefront is all wrong, with narrow windows and red brick walls. “What does it say specifically about the afterlife?”
Elliot flips back to the index, then shuffles through pages. “There isn’t much about Nephthys in the actual afterlife, but when someone dies, they travel to an underworld called the Duat. They stand before Osiris and forty-two divine judges, and they recite something called the Negative Confession.” Elliot skims the page for a few seconds. “It’s a list of sins you have to say you’ve never done—stuff like stealing and murder and adultery, but also some really specific things like interfering with cattle that belong to the gods and diverting the flow of water. Also, no eavesdropping.”
“Yikes, we’d never make it to the afterlife,” I say, and Elliot laughs.
“Then they take the dead person’s heart and put it on a scale, with the white feather of truth, called Ma’at,” he says.
“Nora just found a white feather,” I say, nerves crawling. “What do they use it for?”
“If the heart is lighter than the feather, the person gets to go to a place called Aaru, or the Field of Reeds, where they’ll spend their eternity in happiness. If the heart is heavier than the feather, then the goddess Ammit eats it with her crocodile mouth, and the person is stuck in the Duat forever.”
“Ouch,” I say.
“That’s why the heart always got left in the mummies of ancient Egypt, even though they took out all the other organs,” says Elliot.
“But it seems like the Hand of Nephthys are removing their victims’ hearts,” I say. “Why would they do that?”
Elliot shrugs. “They must be using them for something else.”
“I’m working on a theory that May and her sister were looking for the Hand of Nephthys before they got murdered,” I say.
“Why would you think that?”
“I just keep coming back to the fact that two sisters got murdered and then washed up in very similar ways,” I say. “It’s strange, right? And May had a key to that mausoleum, which is also strange.”
The side of Elliot’s mouth quirks up. “We hang out in cemeteries too. But we are pretty strange.”
I groan. “Playing Ghost in the Graveyard and owning the key to a mausoleum aren’t exactly the same thing.”
He takes my phone and starts scrolling. “I still don’t get how this is all connected.”
“Now that May’s in her head, Nora can do spell work that’s way beyond her normal abilities,” I say. “That makes me think May practiced witchcraft before she died, and she was good at it. So my theory is that May and her sister were searching for the Hand, possibly trying to join.”
“So they were sociopaths too?”
“I mean, look at the way she was screaming in Nora’s brain,” I say. “It’s definitely plausible. But the saying goes, ‘Nobody finds the Hand of Nephthys. They find you.’ They don’t want to be found. If May and her sister got too close to finding them—especially if they started uncovering some of their secrets—I bet the Hand killed them. And what better way than to sacrifice them in a ritual? Then they sunk the bodies in the ocean and in Scargo Lake, but something made them—”
The rest of my sentence disappears as I spot the image Elliot has just opened on my screen. I grab the phone, my fingers wrapping around his.
“Oh my God, that’s it,” I say.
The text above the image says The Magpie’s Nest: Curiosities and Antiques. In this image, there’s no woman walking through the front door, but the windows are the right size and shape. Elliot holds the photo up beside it, and we compare the details. The same flowers are carved into the peeling paint on the doorframe, and the lettering on the sign matches perfectly. The umbrella stand is there too, although it only holds one walking stick.
Elliot extricates his hand from under mine, and my cheeks go hot as I tap the link under the photo, then scroll through the website. “Fifty-six Hallet Street in Eastham,” I say. “They’re open until five. We can go there after school.”
Elliot groans. “I just got a message from the grocery store. Somebody called in sick, and they want me to pick up the shift this afternoon.”
“What time do you finish?” I say.
“Not until seven,” he says. “I’ll call them back and say I can’t do it.”
“No!” I don’t mean for it to come out sounding quite so frantic, but the last thing I want is for Elliot’s family to run out of money and have to move. “Nora and I can go, and we’ll catch you up as soon as you’re done working.”
“Are you sure?” He chews his lower lip, and I so badly want to kiss that mouth, even though we’re in the middle of the cafeteria and our lives are in absolute chaos.
“I think we can manage on our own. No umbrellas necessary today.”
Elliot laughs as I bump my shoulder against his, and I wish I could keep making him laugh forever.
The bell rings, and the noise of the cafeteria rises to a crescendo as everyone starts packing up.
“Shit, I lost track of time.” Elliot jumps up and grabs his book. “Mr. Markham is going to take away my bathroom privileges.”
“Sorry to get you in trouble,” I say, even though I’m not actually sorry for distracting him.
“You’re worth losing bathroom privileges over.” He holds my gaze for a beat too long, and I lose all my words.
“That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me,” I finally manage, and it’s meant to be sarcastic but comes out sounding mortifyingly sincere.
Elliot grins. “Talk to you later.”
I watch him join the mob leaving the cafeteria, and I wonder if I’ll ever find the courage to tell him how I feel. It’s just that I’ve imagined the scenario with a tragic outcome so many times. He learns the truth but doesn’t like me back, and so he starts avoiding me. Then when we’re forced to interact at school, he gets this look on his face, this excruciating blend of embarrassment and pity. A world where Elliot feels that way about me is simply not an option.
