Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel Read Online Free Page A

The term’s a lot older, but yeah.” The kid probably didn’t want a lecture on ghost hunting in the eighteen forties right then. “If we let those burn awhile”—she gestured to the smudge sticks behind her—“they’ll clear it up. Sort of like sunlight killing mold.”
    Cinda bit her lip. “Will it be gone before my mom gets home? In like an hour?”
    “Enough of the way that she won’t notice it, at least. Let’s pick up the stuff she
will
see.” Really, Elly wanted to bolt. To gather her things, get out of here, and go look up that sigil. Someone had raised that ghost, and whoever did it had been fighting her attempt at exorcism. She wanted to know why, and who.
    But Justin had been trying to instill some degree of social skills in her, and if she bailed on Cinda now, she had a feeling he’d be disappointed when she recounted the story later. Plus, the kid was all right in Elly’s book. She’d done as she was told—mostly—and kept a cooler head than most people would have when faced with a haunting.
    So she stayed.

2
    C HAZ BOTH WAS and wasn’t a fan of October in New England.
    About midway through the month, the weather got squirrelly as fuck—crisp fall days bookended by raw, cold, and rainy on one side and summery surges on the other. Not that his apartment was ever what you might call orderly, but the piles of clothes on his bedroom floor (what Val had once referred to as his
floordrobe
) had to serve three seasons at once.
    There usually came a week when the temperature took its final dive, where you couldn’t just throw an extra blanket on the bed and ignore the chill any longer. When you had to grit your teeth and turn up the thermostat, and brace yourself for next month’s heating bill. Some years it held off until November, but Chaz was pretty sure this year, wearing shorts at Halloween meant you’d be risking frostbite on your bits.
    He wasn’t one for leaf-peeping. He resented how the stores broke out their holiday decorations before trick-or-treaters’ candy-overload stomachaches faded. In fact, he’d long ago imposed the “Not one fucking jingle bell until Black Friday” rule at Night Owls.
    The good thing about October, though, the best thing, was how sunset crept earlier and earlier every day. Sure, it’d been doing that since late June and all, but October was when it really got obvious. Night stole in, leaching away the illusion of summer, and that meant Val was around a lot more. Vampires rose when the daystar set, after all.
    So his reasons for digging October were pretty selfish, and screw anyone who had a problem with that: Chaz got to see more of his best friend.
    His best friend, his boss, and oh, also his master, though she curled her lip at the term. These days, if one were counting, he technically served two masters, though he had no intention of ever taking actual orders from Justin.
    It had been easier, they’d decided after Justin’s turning a month ago, to let him stay with Val while he got used to his fangs.
    And figured out what, exactly, the fuck he ought to tell his parents.
Mom, Dad, I’m a vampire
was right out: they’d either have him committed or donate him to science.
    It wasn’t at the crisis stage yet, at least. The kid had a bit of breathing room: Thanksgiving break was a month away, and Justin had stayed on campus for it last year rather than flying home to Oregon. He could probably stay again this year, recycling the excuse that Night Owls needed him to work on Black Friday. The real reason, back then, was that his girlfriend lived on this coast and they’d been in that clingy-cute stage. He’d stuck around in the Ocean State so he could spend his long weekend necking.
    The girlfriend was long gone, left him for jockier pastures last spring, but, well.
He’ll still be doing some necking on Turkey Day, just a different kind.
Chaz snorted to himself and checked the time. Another couple hours or so before Val would be around for him to share