Soul of the Wolves

“Sssh. Lower your voice.” Jesse looked around. “I swear to you, I don’t know what’s in the package but Zeke told me it worth five grand.”

“Forget it. Possession of marijuana of that amount is a freaking felony, on top of desecrating a grave. We’re not going to do this. We could go to jail for a long time.”

“But sis, if I don’t get that package, I’ll owe Zeke five grand.”

“Tell Zeke to dig up the grave himself. How is it your fault in the first place?”

Her brother looked sheepish under the bright ray of moonlight. “It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to think. Zeke gave me the package to hide it somewhere. I didn’t want to bring it home because you’d have a fit about it—”

“You’re damn right, I would!”

“See? I can’t bring it to school either ‘cause they frequently do locker checkups. So I decided to hide it in the funeral house.”

“Inside a casket? Did you forget to pay your brain bill this month?”

“I thought this was safe.” Jesse widened his puppy-dog eyes. “This casket is worth twenty-five grand. We rarely move a casket that expensive. When I found out Mr. Burke had moved the Savon—”

“The what?”

“The casket. Savon casket. It’s the Rolls Royce of the casket world. By the time I found out Mr. Burke had moved the Savon from the showroom, I was too late. It was a quick burial. The family didn’t even hold a wake or a funeral service. I was told the deceased has connections with the mob and the family wanted to hush the whole thing up.”

Great. Just fucking great. Oh Jesse, what am I going to do with you? Sookie swallowed hard. She had a bad feeling about this. Why wouldn’t she? They were about to become the grave robbers of a gangster family in this bones orchard. Desperation settled in. There was no easy way to get this one. “Can you talk to Zeke about this? Can Zeke recover this package himself?” Sookie tried to reason.

Jesse let out a deep consternation. “Don’t you think I haven’t already tried? He said either I dig it up or I pay him five grand.”

“You’re sixteen. How are you supposed to come up with five grand?”

Jesse’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry, sis. I had no other choice.”

Damn, damn, damn.

“Oh, Jesse.” Sookie counted to ten before she made her decision. “Fine. If we don’t get arrested when this is over, swear to me that you’ll stay away from Zeke.”

Her brother’s face lit up. “I swear. This is the last time I do something this stupid.”

“You’d better. ‘Cause I’m done bailing out your sorry ass. No more, Jesse. No more.” Sookie knew her threat was like a Chihuahua’s bark. Big noise, but no bite. She’d still bail him out no matter what kind of trouble he got himself into. To hell and back.

Bloods are forever.

She grabbed a gaslight lantern and a plastic bag that contained bottled water from the trunk and slammed the lid down. “Let’s go.”

Jesse eyed the plastic bag. “Do we really need those?”

“Have you seen Supernatural? Grave digging is a hard work. I’ll be lucky if I don’t break my back after this is over.”

“I’ll do all the house chores for a month to make it up to you,” Jesse offered. “I’ll even do the cooking.”

“No thanks. You can do the chores but there’s no reason for you to poison me.”

“Well, sor-ry. You never taught me how to cook.”

“I’ll teach you how to cook when you learn how to distinguish between cooking and science projects.”

“It’s called modernist gastronomy. Every young chef is doing it on Youtube. It’s cool.”

“Uh-huh. Turning a three-pound fish filet into something that looks like cat food isn’t cool. Let’s find this grave and get this over with.”

Jesse smashed his lips into a thin line and stalked toward the cemetery fence. The Sacred Heart Cemetery sprawled over a few acres of land on the outskirts of town. It was an old cemetery owned by a Catholic church. It used to have a small chapel right by the entrance, but the building was levelled two years ago. The city claimed that small chunk of property as eminent domain to build an overpass. The dispute was still going on between the city and the church.