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“Look for anything out of the ordinary—animal bones, a pentagram, charms or other offerings. They’d probably want to venerate his grave,” Will instructed.

Evie stuck close to Jericho. Her heels sank into the soft ground, and she tried not to think about what was buried beneath that ground. She wished she had on her woolen stockings; it was much colder here than it was in the valley. Their breath came out in small gray puffs, their lungs expelling ghosts of air. The last of the light had slipped from the sky, like a hostess shutting the door on lingering guests. A smattering of early stars twinkled awake. The beam of Evie’s flashlight bounced over gravestones made ghoulish in the glare.Advertisement

“What if we can’t find it?” she said.

“We’ll have to dig up every grave until we do,” Will answered.

The wind whistled over the mountain again. It felt like fingertips brushing her skin, turning her about in some child’s game where she was blindfolded.

“Over here,” Jericho called. Will came to his side and held the lamp over a spot marked by a simple wooden cross hung with charms. The skull of some small animal had been left at the base of it.

“Do you suppose this is it?” Evie asked.

Will wiped a smudge of dirt from the cross, revealing initials carved into the wood: YHA. “Yohanan Hobbeson Algoode,” Will said. “Let’s start digging.”

Will parked the lantern by the cross. He and Jericho removed their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and got to work with the shovels. Evie’s job was to keep the flashlight trained on them and keep alert for sounds. She jumped at everything, swinging the flashlight wildly.

“Just hold it on us if you would, please,” Will advised.

Evie needed something to keep her mind occupied, and so she watched Jericho’s forearms working the shovel, paying attention to the pull of muscle, the strength of his grip. She remembered the feel of his hand over hers, like a shield. He was a mystery to her in many ways, and she found that she wanted to know his secrets—not ripped from him via a wallet or favorite pen, but given to her as a gift. She wanted to prove trustworthy. Special. There was something about him that unnerved her. He was slightly dangerous; so was she. It would never work for her to be with a man who didn’t understand that about her, the darkness behind the devil-may-care facade, who flirted with it but who would run scared if faced with the storm inside. She watched Jericho’s large hands work and imagined those hands caressing her bare skin, imagined the taste of his mouth, the press of his body against hers.

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Just as quickly, she tried to rid herself of those images. Jericho was Mabel’s fella. Evie thought of her friend’s many letters on the subject. But they were romantic schoolgirl fantasies. Jericho and Mabel weren’t right for each other. If they had been, it would have happened already, wouldn’t it? Evie couldn’t take away what Mabel never had, could she?

Silently, Evie scolded herself for even thinking it. Jericho probably needed someone like Mabel. Good, steadfast, sensible Mabel, who would remember to turn off the lamps and bring in the milk. A girl who would take care. Evie had the terrible feeling that she, herself, was the careless sort: Clothing left on the bed unfolded. Books stained with coffee spots. Tabs not paid until the last possible second. Boys kissed and then forgotten in a week’s time. She understood this, but understanding it did not bring comfort.

A hollow thump echoed from the grave as Jericho’s shovel struck wood. Despite the cold, he and Will were soaked in sweat. Jericho hopped down into the hole. He jimmied the thin edge of the shovel around the edges of the coffin’s pine top, loosening the seal. With a grunt, Jericho pried off the lid, exposing the rotted corpse of John Hobbes.

They’d had no body to bury when James died. Nothing to commemorate his passing. There was a grave, which they visited every year on his birthday, but it held no bones, no uniform, no essence of her brother.

The body of John Hobbes lay quietly in his wooden trough in a plain woolen suit, the Pentacle of the Beast pendant shining around his neck. His lips had been stitched together with thread that had sprung free in the corners, revealing long, yellowed teeth. His body was as hollowed of life, as decayed and ruined, as the abandoned cabins of Brethren. He was a thing. Inert. Like a stone. Like a memory. This, then, was what death looked like. Irrefutable. And Evie felt a strange relief that she’d not seen James’s body after all, as if in that refusal, she could pretend he had never died.

Jericho reached in and removed the pendant, handing it up to Evie, who held it like she would hold a lizard by the tail. He climbed out and brushed his palms against his pants—a useless gesture, as his pants were as filthy as his hands. pqdm.com