PEACOCK

36

LOCATED ON THE OUTSKIRTS of the city, Elmhurst sat on a pretty piece of land that was quite sprawling despite having lost a significant portion of its acreage to the continuing expansion of the city’s streets. Elmhurst, like the Lebanon or Olive cemeteries, was one of the few places they were allowed to bury their dead.

It was also the scene where many of Hetty and Benjy’s inquiries ended, and, on one occasion, started.

As they approached from the road, the iron gate towered over them, as did the peak of the chapel contained inside. The gates were barred for the night. Hetty had just started to draw a sigil to unlock the gates when Benjy strode away, ignoring her and the gates. He walked the length of the brick wall, their lantern illuminating the way ahead.

“What are you looking for?” Hetty asked.

“Wheel ruts.”

Hetty turned her eyes to the ground as well. While she couldn’t see anything, there was something strange about the ground. Places that were lumpier than they should have been. Daylight would have made it clearer, but there was a path here, a path that wound to the very back of the cemetery.

Hetty nearly bumped into Benjy when he stopped in front of the wall. He swung the lantern over it.

“Here’s the opening,” he said, pointing to what looked to be part of the wall. “You first.”

The gap was light trickery. Looked at directly, it seemed to be a crack that Hetty could barely squeeze through. But when entered at an angle, it was wide enough to not just comfortably stride through, but to drive a decent-size wagon through with little trouble.

Now standing inside the cemetery, Hetty studied the gap from this side. Others had slipped in here. With a wagon. But why?

The answer to that swirled in her mind for only a few moments before the pieces fell into place.

“Charlie got himself involved in a grave-robbing scheme!”

Hetty knew she’d guessed right from the brilliant smile that spread across Benjy’s face.

“How did you piece it together?” he asked.

“Charlie needed money. That was evident from everything we found so far. He had debts he couldn’t pay, so he found a way to make it possible. Those willing to be grave robbers can make a tidy sum.”

Benjy’s gaze fell on the nearest headstone, a plain slab with half-filled bowls of water and other tokens surrounding it. “Charlie was a merciless landlord and a reckless gambler . . . and had mighty big aspirations. A grave robber isn’t too far of a leap. What’s the benefit of killing him for digging up and selling the dead?” Benjy wondered, more to himself than to her.

“It puts a stop to the whole affair.”

“More than that,” Benjy mused.

“Charlie wanted to talk to us about something,” Hetty started, and encouraged by Benjy’s nod, she kept talking. “Which meant he wanted us to do something. If he’d gotten himself embroiled in a grave-robbing scheme that spiraled out of control, we’d be the only people who could help him.”

Benjy nodded. “He was killed for a reason, wasn’t he? He was either quitting, got in deeper than expected, or chose to reveal a secret that in the end cost him everything.”

“It was a secret,” Hetty said, thinking of her last conversation with Charlie. “He said no one was dying right away, but it was important. A secret would be—”

Benjy pressed his fingers into her arm, abruptly cutting off her words.

Silently, Benjy closed the shutters of the lantern and pulled her behind the headstone.

She ducked down next to him and ran a finger along the band at her neck. The glamour fell gently around them.

She didn’t hear whatever it was that had Benjy spooked, but from the way he was clenching her arm, she had an idea what it must have been. Yet all she heard was the pounding of her own heart.

But then—a clink of metal.

Hetty looked around for the source of the sound, but a flash of light filled the air.

Brighter than the sun, it seemed, and reminded her of the flares that slave catchers would toss into the woods to flush out runaways like rabbits. Not only did the flares illuminate hiding places, but they left a person momentarily stunned. By the time a person regained their senses, it was too late.

But this didn’t seem to be that—not quite. Hetty didn’t see anyone coming near their hiding spot, for one thing. In fact, judging by the pounding of footfalls that sounded in the air, whoever had sent up the flare was using it not to capture, but to escape.

After a few moments the brightness faded and darkness returned.

Blinking to adjust her eyes, Hetty whispered, “Did you see anything?”

Her answer was a soft thump as the lantern fell to the ground, and a rush of air as Benjy gave chase to the shadow sprinting through the cemetery.

She watched him, but decided there was a more sensible way to handle things.

Moving through the gravestones, she traced the opposite path of where she had seen the shadowy figure. She wasn’t surprised when, as she swung the lantern around, its light spilled over Charlie’s grave. It didn’t look like the dirt was disturbed, although it was hard to tell given how recent Charlie had been buried.

Although . . .

Before she could think better of it, Hetty knelt and pressed her fingers into the cold earth as deep as they could go.

And that was how her husband found her, in the dirt up to her elbows. Instead of asking why, he sat down on the other side of the grave, stretching out his legs as if they were at a midnight picnic.

“I see you didn’t catch them,” Hetty said.

“There wasn’t anyone, just a shadow. It ran through the gates. But I don’t think it was for us. It was meant for anyone who got too close to the grave we’re standing by.”

“Someone rigged it? That was risky, given there are rules against spells left here.”

“Well, Edward Christopher Degray never cared for those rules while he was living, I doubt being dead changes that opinion.”

“Degray?” Hetty echoed, and finally pulled her hands out of the ground. “Like the club?”

“Yes, like the club,” Benjy laughed. “You didn’t know it was named after someone? I never met the man, but he was pretty important in town. He started the Edmonstone Club, and did a number of important things.”

“Which you aren’t relating to me.”

“Because at the moment you wouldn’t care if the man invented a spell to fly to the moon.” He tilted his head towards Charlie’s grave. “Anything?”

Hetty shook her head. “No traces of magic. We should have brought a shovel with us.”

“I’m not sure I’m up to digging up Charlie.”

“Not even to see if he’s still in there?”

“He has to be. His body was marked with the cursed sigil, so he’s useless to the medical schools—no one would have robbed his grave. Whoever killed him did him that favor, at least.”

“Favor? It’s still the cursed sigil!”

“Have you considered that we might have been overly superstitious about it? Sigils have power not just in what they do, but how they are used.”

“Are you saying it meant nothing?”

“Power comes from belief. We believe in a curse. It becomes a curse. I think it was a warning to keep us away . . . or draw us in.”

“The last was more likely. Stars.” Hetty sat back onto the grass. “That’s a shade too clever for me.”

“It’s only a simple trick,” he said cheerfully. “Just think, it could have been more complicated.”

“How can you find any of this amusing?” Hetty grumbled.

“Because the pieces are coming together.” Benjy jumped up to his feet. He gestured around the cemetery and the gravestones that rose up around them. “All of this explains why we haven’t figured it out. We were looking in the wrong places. Seeking out the wrong things.”

“That’s because Charlie was not who we thought he was.” Hetty picked up the lantern and strode away from Charlie’s grave, putting as much distance between it and her as quickly as she could.

“He’s exactly what we thought,” Benjy said, matching her stride. “We just thought him better than that because we still considered him a friend.”

“And we like to think we surrounded ourselves with good people?”

“Interesting is the word I would use.” Benjy shrugged as they headed toward the cemetery gate. “But I suppose that does describe all of our friends.”

“Interesting,” Hetty repeated, amused at this description, but such a word suited all her friends in one fashion or another. Each who were more than what they appeared at first, with talents that she could only aspire to. “I suppose that is one more reason I stayed in Philadelphia. The people I met made it hard to leave.”

“Here I thought,” Benjy drawled, “you were just curious about the dead man we found floating in the Schuylkill?”

“I was curious about that,” Hetty admitted as she swung the lantern between her hands, “but the mystery was only a small portion of my interest.”

“And the rest?”

Hetty could practically see the smug smile that accompanied those words.

This would not do at all.

“I was bored and restless,” she said, deliberately giving an answer he would not expect to hear.

“The restless part I understand,” he said. “But bored? Didn’t you spend an entire season sewing dresses for weddings? When you weren’t doing that there were all those charity events and activities your friends insisted you take part in.”

“None of it was my choice,” Hetty replied. “I did all that to fill the time. But solving mysteries was something I wanted to do. It doesn’t hurt that I’m quite good at chasing after answers people like to ignore.”

“What about me?”

“You’re good at figuring out strange puzzles.”

He caught her arm and then twirled her around so they faced each other. This was the first time he done such a thing, but it felt like an old habit and something she could never tire of. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Hetty didn’t even try to hide her grin. “But don’t you know that answer already?”