“I called the police,” I said, craning my neck. “They’re on the way.”

She scoffed and turned her back to me. “I need more light. Where could that thing have got off to?”

“They killed me?” Harper asked, still in a daze.

I reached out to her and put my hand on her knee. “Yes. I’m not sure who exactly. Do you remember what happened?”

“She’s talking, Grandma.”

“Well, sit harder.”

He took her advice and bounced, and all I could think was, Oh. My. God. Where was Uncle Bob when I needed him?

Feeling like I was in a horror movie, waiting for evil clowns to appear from under the stairs, I tried to focus on surviving this freak show.

“What are you doing?”

I turned to my other side to see Angel. He wore a scowl of disapproval.

“I’m trying to breathe,” I said, trying to breathe. But darkness crept into my periphery.

“Why is that guy sitting on you?” Then he saw Harper. “Oh, hey.” He nodded an acknowledgment, but she was still in shock. She raised her hands and looked at them, turning them over and over.

“I don’t suppose you could push this guy off me?” I asked him.

“I guess I could try.”

“So, like, soon?”

Angel frowned, then focused on Dewey and concentrated. After a few seconds, he pushed. And Dewey went head over heels.

Sweet potato pie.

I scrambled for the stairs again while fighting the tilt of the Earth. It kept throwing me against the wall, and I realized I probably had a concussion. Unfortunately, Dewey recovered and reached over the stairs, grabbing my leg and pulling it out from under me.

This was going to hurt.

Yep. My chin hit a step, clashing my teeth together. This was so much like a thousand horror movies I’d seen.

Dizziness played a huge part when I tumbled right back down the stairs.

I held up my hands and said, “You need to calm down.”

That was when Dewey wrapped his large hands around my throat. Someday I’d realize telling people to calm down had exactly the opposite effect.

“Hold her still, sugar. I can’t find that danged ice pick. I’ll have to use the skillet.”

“You need to stop thinking like a human,” Angel said.

“You are not helping. Go get Reyes.”

“I’m here,” Reyes said from a corner. “Watching you get your ass kicked. Again.”

His thick black robe undulated around me, not helping at all with the sudden onset of motion sickness. This was definitely the incorporeal Reyes. The Beechers couldn’t see him.

When Dewey’s grip slipped for a split second, I said to Reyes, “Do something.”

“Can I break her neck?”

“No.”

“Can I break his neck?”

I had to think about that one.

Mrs. Beecher was headed my way, skillet at the ready.

“You have to … save … Fred and Barbara,” I said. With Dewey’s hands around my throat, I sounded like a cartoon character. A fact that could not possibly be appealing. Really, how long was he going to let this go on?

“I’m trying to let you come into your powers.”

“Fuck my powers. Do something.”

Reyes dematerialized and rematerialized beside me. I heard the sing of his blade; then Dewey’s grip relaxed, his expression morphed into surprise, and he fell to the floor. Reyes had severed his spine, though it would take the doctors a little while to realize it. There would be no outside trauma. Reyes cut from the inside out.

Mrs. Beecher stopped, her face just as shocked.

“Mrs. Beecher,” I said, coughing and sputtering like a Yugo, “put that frying pan down this instant.”

19

When life hands you lemons say,

“Lemons? What else have you got?”

—BUMPER STICKER

Uncle Bob showed up in his own sweet time and ordered a team of investigators as soon as he got to the Beechers’ house and saw me wrestling with Mrs. Beecher. That woman was so much stronger than she looked. Reyes kept wanting to sever her spine, and Angel kept telling me to stop thinking like a human, whatever the hell that meant.

After watching Uncle Bob tackle her to the ground—an image I would cherish forever—I gave my statement to him; then he drove me to the Lowells’ mansion. Harper was in the backseat, still stewing in her own astonishment. Two patrol cars followed behind us, and another detective from Ubie’s precinct was en route to the scene. The Lowells were about to be scandalized.

I still wasn’t exactly sure who had done the terrorizing—Mrs. Beecher or Dewey on Mrs. Beecher’s orders—but it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Neither would be able to do it again.

Uncle Bob put a hand on mine. “Now, just tell them that Dewey told you where the boy’s body was, okay?”

“You say that like I haven’t done this a thousand times,” I said, cringing at the sound of my own voice. It was odd what a crushed larynx did to the midtones.

“I know. Sorry, pumpkin.”

“It’s okay. Harper says she remembers where the suitcase is. The only place it could be. Dewey had started a new garden when they got back. It has to be there.”

He turned a worried expression on me. “This is not going to be pretty, hon. If you need to leave—”

“Oh, hell yeah, I’m leaving. The minute Harper shows us the grave, I’m out of there.”