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WATER, BLOOD, AND THICKER THINGS

I

LAST NIGHT

MERIT CEMETERY

VICTOR readjusted the shovels on his shoulder and stepped gingerly over an old, half-sunken grave His trench billowed faintly, brushing the tops of to as he went The sound carried like wind through the dark It s and her winter boots as she trudged along behind hiraveyard, both blond and fair enough to pass for siblings, or perhaps father and daughter They were neither, but the resemblance certainly came in handy since Victor couldn’t very well tell people he’d picked up the girl on the side of a rain-soaked road a few days before He’d just broken out of jail She’d just been shot A crossing of fates, or so it see to believe in fate at all

He stopped huhtly on a tombstone, and scanned the dark Not with his eyes sothat crept beneath it, tangled in his pulse He , but the sensation never did, keeping on with a faint electrical buzz that only he could hear and feel and read A buzz that told him when someone was near

Sydney watched hihtly

“Are we alone?” she asked

Victor blinked, and the froas gone, replaced by the even calravestone “Just us and the dead”

They made their way into the heart of the ce softly on Victor’s shoulder as they went Sydney kicked a loose rock that had broken off froraves She could see that there were letters, parts of words, etched into one side She wanted to knohat they said, but the rock had already tu briskly between the graves She ran to catch up, nearly tripping several tiround before she reached hirave It was fresh, the earth turned over and a temporary marker driven into the soil until a stone one could be cut

Sydneyto do with the biting cold Victor glanced back and offered her the edge of a smile

“Buck up, Syd,” he said casually “It’ll be fun”

Truth be told, Victor didn’t care for graveyards, either He didn’t like dead people, mostly because he had no effect on them Sydney, conversely, didn’t like dead people because she had such a htly over her chest, one gloved thu the spot on her upper ar a tic

Victor turned and sunk one of the spades into the earth He then tossed the other one to Sydney, who unfolded her arms just in time to catch it The shovel was almost as tall as she was A few days shy of her thirteenth birthday, and even for twelve and eleven twelfths, Sydney Clarke was small She had always been on the short side, but it certainly didn’t help that she had barely grown an inch since the day she’d died

Now she hefted the shovel, griht

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said

“The faster we dig, the faster we get to go home”