should have seemed strange—in Boulder, cemeteries were mainly visited by mourners. Then again, the cemeteries in Boulder didn’t look like this: lush and green and welcoming. I’d never seen a burial ground with so many trees, or so many statues that weren’t actually on headstones.
A hundred feet from the entrance, a small redbrick guard building caught my eye, mostly because it was shaped like a castle tower, with windows on several sides. A sign identified it as the Watch House, and the elderly African American guard inside raised a hand in greeting, which I returned. I wondered if Beau’s people used the Watch House at night, or if Oakland had a night guard that had to be pressed.
I followed the map on my phone to the visitors center, which took up the cramped ground floor of a pretty, whitewashed building with a bell tower. I purchased a visitor’s guide and opened it to study the more detailed map.
The entire cemetery was shaped like a trapezoid. I’d walked in through the oldest section, the Original Six Acres, which formed a rectangle at the southwest corner of the trapezoid. I doubted Beau would care much about that area, which had been filled well before the Civil War.
Bell Tower Ridge, where I stood now, was just north of the Original Six Acres. Beau might use this area—it was old enough, and the Bell Tower building was probably the largest one in the cemetery—but I also spotted a section in the center of the trapezoid called the Confederate Memorial Grounds. That seemed the most likely place for a Civil War vampire to spend time. I decided to start in that direction and try to get a sense of both sections as I worked through them.
Using the map to guide me, I left the Bell Tower building and started down the path, feeling a little self-conscious, like I was on some sort of scavenger hunt. I wasn’t the only one, though: there were a number of other people in this area who had purchased guides and were wandering around, peering at the map and then squinting up at the scenery. It probably would have seemed rude to any actual mourners, but I’d read online that Oakland rarely had any new burials. All the plots had been sold ages ago, so you needed to have a family mausoleum or a special role in the city to be interred here now.
I’d been half hoping to spot signs of recent magic use, but now that I was here, the idea seemed ludicrous—the cemetery was just too big, with too many places where someone could tuck away their supplies. There were gorgeous statues and fountains scattered throughout the nearly fifty acres of land, and that wasn’t even counting the mausoleums and graves that would easily hide small items. Assuming the boundary witch had been here, I wasn’t going to find her by stumbling on her stash of supplies.
I made my way along the walkways until I saw a group of tourists clustered around a small wrought-iron fence that blocked off a monument. It was a massive statue of a lion, lying on its stomach with its head resting on one paw. At first I thought the lion was asleep, but as I got closer I realized it seemed to be weeping. The inscription on the bottom of the monument read UNKNOWN CONFEDERATE DEAD.
When the group of tourists moved on, I approached the fence and wrapped my hands around the bars, leaning forward for a better look. The lion was incredibly expressive, even mournful, and after a moment I saw that it was lying on a draped Confederate flag. This, I realized with some disgust, must be how Beau saw the Confederacy—doomed and noble and dignified.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, making me actually jump. I fished it out and saw that Lily was calling. I hit “Talk.”
“Hey, Lily. Everything okay?” I glanced around, but there were no other people nearby.
“That’s pretty much what I was calling to ask you,” she replied. Lily’s voice was a little cool, and I wondered if she was still upset about the awkwardness at drinks. “I wanted to know how the meeting with the witch went.”
“Quinn filled you in?”
“Yup, he called Simon at the crack of early this morning, and Simon called me. He wanted someone else to know what you were up to in case there were problems during the day.”
I was a little surprised that she was calling and not Simon,