Chapter 4

Robert moved faster than I would have thought possible. He'd always been a swaying, shuffling skeleton, but he was sprinting now, his raggedy clothes strung out behind him, giving us glimpses of the bones underneath.

Sarge jogged beside me. "He's headed to the Hollows I think."

I nodded, because that was certainly what it looked like. Would Robert be able to actually help? I wasn't sure, but he was the only person with a direct connection to Evangeline. So, if there was something he knew, I wanted to give him the opportunity to communicate it.

The Hollows' gates reared in front of us, cracked open still. It felt like a year had passed since I'd been inside the graveyard, holding Bree close. Breathing her in.

"Easy, man." Sarge reached over and gave my shoulder a shake. "We'll find her."

"That obvious?"

"Your scent changed…sorrow and grief are pretty distinct in the world of shifters." He glanced at me. "Robert wouldn't have brought us here without a reason. There has to be something here."

"We're banking on it." I slowed to a walk and let Eammon down.

Robert was already inside the graveyard, and we followed. He'd stumbled down to a fast, shuffling walk. Weaving his way around the tombstones, he headed to the left, away from where the Hollows had set up their headquarters.

The sky ahead dimmed, a cloud going across the sun as Robert came to a stop at a grave. He tapped it with a bony finger. "Friend."

I stepped up beside him, then crouched so I could read the tombstone. "Evangeline. Just her first name. Nothing else." I ran my hands over the stone, thinking maybe the rest of the words had worn away from inclement weather and the passage of time.

Robert tapped it again, his voice almost frantic. "Friend!"

"She isn't here," Sarge said. "Robert, she isn't here, man."

He tipped his head back and dropped to his knees, digging at the ground. "Friend! Friend! Find!"

Sarge shot me a look, his brows furrowed. "Robert. She isn't here."

Robert growled and snapped his teeth at Sarge, ignoring him. Continuing to dig, the dirt flinging out behind him in sprays, a shallow hole slowly growing under his fingers.

Eammon puffed as he stood to my right. "Damn. I thought maybe…"

"Yeah." I nodded. "I did too. Robert. We need to go." I couldn't trust Bramble, but if she was really here for Bree then I would listen to her. Our time was running short.

He shook his head and…whimpered. "Friend."

I could feel his frustration, but I had no idea what to do about it. Obviously, he thought Evangeline should still be in the ground. He wanted maybe to prove that she wasn't the one who'd taken Bree.

I stood. "Leave him. If he needs to see an empty casket with his own eyes, then…so be it. I don't have time to help him."

I wasn't about to force him away from his wife's grave. Even if her body wasn't there.

I went to stand, but Robert grabbed me and jerked me back to my knees. His bony fingers were covered in dirt and bits of grass. "Friend." He pushed my hand to the loose soil and made as if I should help him dig.

"No, Robert. No. I have to find Bree." I pushed his hand off my wrist and stood as he lunged to grab me.

When he couldn't reach me, he grabbed Sarge's ankle. "Friend! Friend!"

"No, man. You're on your own here. Your wife isn't in the ground, and this isn't going to help us find Bree." Sarge was not as careful as I had been, shaking his leg hard enough to send Robert tumbling. His bones clanked, and he lay in a heap to the side of his wife's grave, his body shaking.

Crying.

Of all the things I would have guessed would happen here, Robert crying was not on the list. I crouched and put a hand on his shoulder. "Robert. I am sorry. Evangeline is still alive. She isn't here."

"Friend," he whispered through the sobs, his bones rattling and shaking.

I stood and took a step away from the grave. "We need to get back to the house."

"You say that like you have something more to say," Eammon grumped as I lifted him onto my back and started away from the grave, Sarge beside us.

"Someone who might be able to help is meeting us all there." I could still hear Robert, and now he was yelling at us as we walked away. "Friend. Friend. Friend."

A part of me felt like I was betraying not only him, but Bree too. He loved her, in his own way, and had been her best defender. He'd stood by her through everything. We were at the gates of the cemetery now, and he wasn't giving up.

"Friend! Friend! Friend! Frie?—"

He cut off mid-word.

Sarge and I spun around.

"Where'd he go?" Eammon barked and dug his heels into my ribs as if I were a horse. "Get back over there!"

I jogged back to where Robert had been only a moment before.

There was nothing left of him, not even a single finger bone left behind.

We circled the area, spreading out further and further. Nothing.

"You think he finally died?" Sarge asked. "Like he was pretty upset, maybe he finally gave up?"

I shook my head, crouched, and put my hand to the dirt he'd been digging at. What had he wanted us to see? The empty grave? Or to prove his wife wasn't really the one we were speaking of? Or something else?

Sarge rolled his shoulders. "I could shift and track him."

I shook my head; almost certain I knew what had happened. "He's gone to Bree. He's tied to her." What worried me more, was that she'd called to him at all.

"Well, damn it all! Why didn't one of us hang onto him?" Eammon yelled. Right in my ear.

"Doesn't work like that, Eammon, and you know it. She has a connection to the dead, but more than that, she has a connection to Robert. We shouldn't be surprised that he's been pulled to her when she is in the greatest danger of her life." Gods, let her be okay. Please let me find her in time.

I found myself pulling at the soil. "Maybe...we should have listened." I pulled handfuls of dirt out, and then Sarge dropped to my side and together we dug down.

"Desecrating graves! Ah, this is fun!" Nancy said. "Think she'll be a dry bony bitch, or all slimy?"

I grabbed the blade and began using it as a digging tool.

"Ah, I don't like this!" He bellowed but the blade cut through the hard soil like it was butter.

Three feet down, a hard thunk echoed. I looked at Sarge. "Shouldn't be that shallow for a grave."

"No." Sarge reached into the hole and worked his fingers around the edge. "It's a box. Not very big."

Working together we dragged the box out. The edges were soft, disintegrating in the moisture of the earth, the colors faded to brown and more brown.

"What is it?" Eammon poked at the box and the whole side collapsed.

"A clue," Sarge said quietly. "Damn it, I feel bad for kicking him off me."

"He led us here. We listened." Eventually. "Now we have something."

On the outside, even to my own ears I sounded calm and confident, but inside I was reeling. Robert might have been able to help us, and in this simple box there could be, as Sarge said, a clue.

Another thought had struck me as we'd dug. What if Evangeline had taken Robert somehow? I didn't see how that was possible…I hadn't seen a portal like what they'd snatched Bree through…which brought me to another possibility.

"Sarge." I turned toward the entrance to the Hollows' common room. I could just see the tip of the angel wings, from the guardian statue that overlooked the opening. Right where Bree had been snatched, right where the portal had been opened. "Think you can scent up something else?"

We madeour way over to the statue, and again I lowered Eammon to the ground. "This was where they snatched Bree." I saw the mark in the ground as I got closer. A deep score, like someone had burned the grass and blasted the soil, leaching it of color. It almost looked as though the earth had been salted.

Nancy shivered. "Smells amazing to me, which would mean some seriously bad shit for you. Blood. Fear. Something super dark. Death."

I motioned for Sarge to step closer. "I don't trust that the blade is picking it all up."

"Hey! I'm trying to help, you big dumb oaf!"

I clapped my hand over Nancy—something I'd been doing a lot of—muffling his grumbling.

Sarge approached the tear in the ground carefully, his nose wrinkling. "Smells like old blood, ocean…and something else, a flower I don't recognize. Super strong, like there was a lot of them."

"That's where the portal stood." I walked around it, trying to find any other clues. A piece of material from Evangeline's dress maybe, or something she might have dropped.

We scoured the area, but nothing had been left behind other than the scents Sarge had picked up initially.

"Nothing." Eammon kicked the ground, and a tiny flash of something flipped over. A coin?

Not an old coin either. He bent and scooped it up. "This ain't one of our coins." He rolled it in his palm. "Euro. It's a euro. That's a clue! I found a clue!"

He held it out to me, and I rolled it across my palm. "Sarge, can you tell who had this? Whose pocket it fell out of?"

Sarge took the coin and held it up to his nose, immediately pulling a face. "Remy dropped this here. Or at least he touched it at some point."

Eammon visibly slumped. "Damn. He could have dropped that at any point. Could have been from when he was in France with Bree and the rest of yous."

Eammon was correct, the clue wasn't really a clue. "It's a confirmation that Remy has been here," I said. "But we already knew that."

The coin confirmed he was with her. "Keep looking, maybe there is something else."

The three of us searched a little while longer, but there was nothing else, no matter how many clumps of dirt Eammon kicked up, no matter how much Sarge scented the place.

Before Eammon could protest, I set him on my back for a third time. "We need to go."

"You think this was a waste of time?" Sarge asked as we headed back to Haven House.

"No. We have the box and who knows what might be in it? But we don't have all the information, which makes it difficult to decide how to move forward, how to find Bree."

Eammon thumped me on top of the head. "Don't speak like we aren't going to find her."

We were going to find her.

Crazy to think that suddenly my hopes were pinned on Bramble, Bree's cousin, to help us find Bree, a witch I did not trust, and a box we'd dug out of an old grave.

But pinned they were, and I was throwing everything I had at one of them telling us where to go next.