Phantom Kiss (Chicagoland Vampires 12.5)

Marley was Annabelle’s four-year-old daughter. Maddy, the newest addition to her family, was almost two months old.

“They’re good,” she said, grinning. “Hard to leave Maddy at her age, but duty calls.”

She led us to the gate in the rusted and wavy chain-link fence that surrounded the graveyard. We’d visited cemeteries with Annabelle before—lush gardens of roses and marble, where the living could pretend death was something secret and majestic. But there was no wrought-iron here, no overflowing urns of flowers. No fuss, no ornamentation, no apparent concern about easing the transition between life and death.

The gate was closed and locked, bound to its post with a thick silver chain. Annabelle pulled a necklace over her head, inserted a key into the lock, and when it unsnapped with an audible click, pulled the chain free and pushed the gate open. Magic flowed like water through the gap, perhaps released by the gate’s opening or drawn to Annabelle and her connection to the dead.

The energy of the deceased was unique among magicks, or at least those I’d experienced so far. It was thicker and, when it brushed against skin, felt tangible. But unlike the last time I’d been near a ghost, the magic was sharply cold—potent peppermint against the skin. It had been early spring then, the temperature already cold, so I probably hadn’t noticed the difference. Now it was midsummer, and the chill of magic was a shocking contrast to the warm night air.

Goose bumps lifted on my arms.

“The ghost is still here,” Ethan said.

Annabelle nodded. “Not just a spirit that needs to communicate; the energy is too strong. This spirit was purposefully called and manifested into our world.”

That meant intentional magic. “Is there evidence of alchemy?” I asked.

Annabelle’s eyes went cold. We weren’t the only ones who hadn’t liked Sorcha and her unusual brand of magic. “I’ve seen the grave, not the spirit yet. But I haven’t felt or seen anything that suggests this was her doing.”

Ethan nodded, gestured to the opening into the graveyard. “Let’s take a look.”

• • •

We strode in silence down the gravel path that bisected the grounds. Around us, crickets and katydids chirped with abandon, and the wind rustled leaves in the summer-full trees. Gravestones were few and far between. There were a handful of tall pedestals, a few granite slabs, and a lot of small metal plates hardly larger than plant markers.

“Some are mass graves,” Annabelle quietly said. “Some are individual. As you can see, the marking is spotty.”

I nodded. “We did some research on the way. Are the deceased differently active here? I mean, because of the way they died—or because they weren’t claimed?” It seemed that would lead to many more uneasy souls.

“Some probably were at the time of their death,” Annabelle said. “But most buried here died many years ago—many generations of necromancers before me. This place isn’t usually chatty. Watch out,” she added, pointing to dark tree roots that had pushed up through the path like arching snakes.

The lane bowed around an enormous tree, its branches heavy with summer leaves. The magic grew stronger—and more uncomfortably tangible—as we moved deeper into the cemetery. It wasn’t unlike walking through dangling spider webs.

“Here,” she said and aimed the beam of her flashlight at the ground. A long hillock of dark earth lay beside a rectangular hole. At the end of it was a small metal post with a tidy engraving: 1-CCU49-871.

“‘CCU’ stands for Cook County Unclaimed,” Annabelle said. “That means this individual was buried by the county. This particular area was used in the twenties and thirties.”

“There are burial records?” Ethan asked.

She nodded. “The county keeps them, but the cemetery’s old, so I’m not sure how good their records are.” She glanced at us. “There are bones in the grave. There’s no shame if you prefer not to look.”

It wasn’t a possibility that excited me, but it didn’t disturb me as much as the fact that someone had purposefully desecrated the deceased’s final resting place.

“I’d like to look,” I said, and took the flashlight she offered me.

Ethan and I stepped forward.

The deceased had been placed into a simple wooden coffin that hadn’t done much to protect against the elements or the passing years. The top had been lifted, was now tilted against the side of the hole, no longer protecting the person within.

Or what was left of him or her, anyway. Flesh and muscle were gone, leaving the bones in a jumble. Some were easy to identify—the pelvis, the long bones of the arms and legs, were scattered among tatters of dark fabric and what looked like the curved remains of a hat.

We weren’t forensic anthropologists, of course. But it was obvious something was missing.

“They took his skull,” Ethan said, crouching down, hands on his knees, as he looked at the remains. Pity and anger warred in his expression.

“Yeah,” Annabelle said quietly.

Ethan looked up at her. “Did they take the skull in order to summon the ghost?”