Gravediggers Read Online Free

us one after another (let it be noted that PJ’s face, frozen in a look of hardened depression since the terrifying phone call from O’Dea, softens considerably, his eyes closing and his nose burying into the girl’s shoulder), she waves for us to follow her down a hallway of the hotel, and we scurry along behind her.
    â€œYou’re not warm in all of that?” asks Ian.
    â€œIf anything, I’m still freezing,” says Josefina, shuddering.
    â€œHow are the zombie tourists?” asks PJ.
    â€œSleeping soundly at the bottom of the ocean,” says Josefina. “After we resealed their resting place, we’ve not seen so much as one trying to crawl onto shore. Even before you arrived, one or two would try to reach the island. Now, nothing.”
    â€œI’m impressed you made it here so swiftly,” I tell her.
    â€œIt was surprisingly easy,” she says with a smile. “My yaya has recently been teaching me spells of deception, making people see what you want them to see. My boarding pass was a shop receipt, and my hotel room was charged to a sand dollar.”
    â€œNice,” says PJ, but part of me cannot help but feel at least somewhat unsettled by the methods we’re being forced to employ. As much as Josefina’s magical trickery isn’t harming anyone—O’Dea thought of it as “Wardening your way” somewhere—it’s still, technically, stealing, which is something I feel conflicted about. We three Gravediggers are perhaps no better, having to lie to our parents about going to see a movie together so we could abscond to this airport hotel. Just because we’re karmically assigned zombie assassins doesn’t mean lying and cheating should become our tools of the trade.
    Sorry, Kendra, but you need to get over that. Part of the training O’Dea has given you over the phone is an emphasis on the present, on figuring out, at any given moment, the single best way to destroy your enemy without getting caught up in your own thought process. Right now, your enemy is whatever attacked O’Dea.
    After rushing down this hotel hallway, Josefina stops at a conference room and ducks into the open door, placing us in a spacious, well-lit room with a large wooden table in the middle and an intercom and speaker­phone system.
    â€œThis is the room where I was told to meet you,” says Josefina. “From what rumors I’ve overheard, it seems that O’Dea’s kidnapping is part of a larger problem.”
    â€œDo all Wardens’ Council meetings take place in hotel conference rooms?” I ask, a little skeptical.
    â€œIt’s a tradition,” says Josefina. “When gathering in nature, Warden meetings were often ambushed by those who thought they were holding an ‘unholy Sabbath.’ Hotels provide layers of security to keep anyone from infiltrating our ranks. And there is often free coffee.”
    â€œHow much do you know about what’s going on?” asks PJ, sitting down at the table and leaning forward on his elbows like a successful businessman.
    â€œVery little,” says Josefina. “When I contacted the Council, they informed me that they would be sending someone out to area forty-seven to see what happened.”
    â€œArea forty-seven?” I ask.
    â€œThat’s the number of O’Dea’s area of cursed earth,” says Josefina. “Each area has a number. Isla Hambrienta and the surrounding sea is area one-oh-two. Wardens never use them, except when talking to the Council.”
    â€œDo you think they’ll help her?” asks Ian, kneading his hands. “I mean, they have to, right? That’s their job.”
    â€œNot quite,” says Josefina. “What you must understand is that the Council is very official. All they care about is containment, keeping the balance pure. For Council members to even appear here means our situation is serious—”
    The