Dead Silence (The Body Finder 4)

She wondered if it had really been the dead boy on the waterfront—the one she’d discovered all those months ago—who had brought her to the attention of Sara Priest in the first place. She wondered if she hadn’t been on their radar all along. She was the granddaughter of one of the Seven, after all. Surely they knew . . . or at least suspected what she could do.

And her grandmother had been trapped, just like she was.

When you grow accustomed to something, when it becomes part of your everyday life, you notice when it suddenly vanishes.

That was what happened when Violet sat bolt upright in the middle of the night. At first she didn’t understand why her pulse was racing even before she was fully awake. She had no idea why her ribs ached as her lungs struggled and gasped for breath, or why she couldn’t see or hear.

I’m dead was the first thought that found its way through her awareness. It was jarring to consider, but it made a certain amount of sense. This is what it feels like to lose consciousness and succumb to death.

She blinked, searching for some sort of bright light, or a tunnel that would lead her to the other side, the kind you always hear about in people’s near-death experiences.

But there was . . . nothing . . .

Nothing.

She blinked once . . . twice . . . and then her eyesight adjusted. She was still in her bedroom, and it was still the middle of the night.

Her breath finally found a place in her throat, and she felt the hitch as she gasped, a long choking sound . . . one that she most definitely heard. Her heart hammered too hard against the walls of her chest and she realized she must’ve been dreaming. That had to be it, she assured herself, it was all a bad dream.

But it was still eerily quiet around her. Spookily, frighteningly quiet.

And then she realized why that was.

It was gone. Her music-box imprint . . .

It was gone.

She shook her head, because surely her sanity had slipped, if only a notch. It wasn’t possible for an imprint to just . . . vanish. It wasn’t something you could just lose.

Yet here she was. Sitting alone in the dark, in total, complete, utter silence.

The phone, when it vibrated on the nightstand beside her, made her jump and caused her heart to start racing all over again. She lunged for it, pressing her hand against her chest as she took another breath and glanced at the screen.

“Rafe?” she whispered, her voice unsteady. “What’s wrong?”

Static poured through the line from the other end, and she thought at first he might not hear her, that they had a bad connection. Then his voice reached through the phone, finding her. “Hopefully nothing. That’s why I was calling. I wanted to see”—he paused—“how you were.”

“I’m . . .” She swallowed her word. She’d started to say “fine,” something she’d said so many times before it was nearly automatic now. Yet here she was, no longer sure whether that was true or not. Under the circumstances, I’m losing my effing mind might be more accurate. Instead, she settled for “confused.”

In the background she heard noises: metal banging against metal, maybe; the clang of buckles, probably. What was he doing?

“But better, right?”

“Bett—” Her mind whirled as she tried to make sense of their strange conversation. “What have you done? Did you . . . do this?”

She heard the distinct whooshing sound of a zipper. “Look, I only have a minute. I probably should’ve waited to call, but I wanted to see if it worked or not.”

Violet lifted her hand to her lips. “I don’t understand . . . how . . . ?” And then stopped pretending, because she did understand. She understood entirely too well. “You didn’t . . . ? You didn’t just dig him up, did you?” She lowered her voice to barely a breath. “You could get in so much trouble.”

Rafe actually laughed. “Well . . . I didn’t just dig him up, I had to do some other stuff too. Really gross stuff. And since you haven’t said otherwise, I assume it worked. You can thank me later. But for now, I’m cold and I’m dirty, so I’m gonna go.”

She tried to imagine Rafe going to the graveyard at night and digging up a body—Caine’s body.

She squeezed her eyes shut, wondering whatever had possessed him to do such a thing, to take such a risk.

But she knew. “This doesn’t change anything, you know?”

There was another brief pause, right before she heard him say, “Oh, I don’t know, V. I think it changes everything.” And then he hung up.

CHAPTER 9

WAKING UP THE NEXT MORNING HAD BEEN strange. And quiet.

And . . . well, strange.

Violet hadn’t slept much after hanging up with Rafe, but this time it had nothing to do with the ghostly imprint she’d become so accustomed to. Or rather it had everything to do with it. Its absence was palpable, and Violet kept waiting for it to reappear, kept searching for it in the darkness of her mind.

Odd how something she’d once thought she hated had become such an integral part of her daily life. Like breathing.

And without it, peace was nearly as hard to find as it had been with it.

But not impossible, and eventually Violet had found the silence comforting, letting it wrap around her, swaddling her in solitude.

In the morning, she thought about other things. Like Rafe, and what he’d done to make the spectral sounds vanish for good.

She wanted to tell everyone—or at least Jay and her parents. She wanted them to know what he did, that her imprint had been silenced. But she wasn’t sure she could . . . or should. What Rafe had done was criminal.