Ember X (Death Collectors) - By Jessica Sorensen Page 0,99
through the gates. “Put your hands up where we can see them.”
I obey, knowing I’m in trouble this time. Mackenzie’s body is in a grave and the only proof that I didn’t kill her flew away with the wind.
Raven sobs into my shirt and clutches onto me. “I want this to all be over. Please make it stop. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s almost over.”
A swarm of cops bustle through the gates, spotting their flashlights across the grass and cracked tombs, with guns and batons in their hands. The one that shouted at me approaches with caution, step by step, never looking away from us. When he reaches me, I let Raven stand on her own.
“Ember Edwards, I should have known,” Officer McKinley’s expression instantly turns biased as he remembers the night he picked me up from my house, after my car was found in the lake. “There was an anonymous tip that the body of Mackenzie Baker could be found at the Hollows Grove Cemetery.”
With my hands up, I shake my head. “I don’t know anything about that.”
He spotlights the flashlight in Raven’s eyes. “What’s she on? And why is there blood on her neck? Were you two doing some kind of ritual out here or something?”
“Like a vampire ritual,” I joke unenthusiastically.
He narrows his eyes and blinds me with the flashlight. “You don’t need to get smart. This is Halloween—all the crazies are out tonight.”
Raven blinks and shields her face with her hand. “We were taking a shortcut to our houses through the woods and I tripped and cut my neck on a branch.”
Internally, I sigh. “That’s what we were doing, just barely—heading to go find a phone and call the hospital, because neither of us have our phones.”
The cop reaches for Raven and checks underneath the piece of shirt she pressed to her neck. He pulls a revolted face, moving his hand away. “That’s going to need a few stitches.” He sighs and motions at us to walk with him. “Come on, follow me.”
As we head for the gates, the cops search the cemetery, the trees, behind headstones. A female officer, with her hair braided in the back, wanders toward the hole in the ground where Mackenzie’s body lies.
“Hey, I think I got something over here,” she shouts, with her gun poised in front of her.
A lanky officer, with a bald head, hurries over to the hole and beams the light down in it. I hold my breath and wait for him to announce he found the body.
“It’s just a hole,” he calls out to the others. “It’s probably some high school prank or new fad, like that grave that was dug up a few weeks ago.”
Cameron.
Officer McKinley stops us at the gate and shines the light in our eyes. “You two know anything about this?”
Raven and I shake our heads innocently. “Nope.”
He focuses in on me. “Are you sure that’s true?”
I wonder if he’s a real cop, or the same kind as Detective Crammer. “Yep, it’s true.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “Well, I’m still going to have to take you in for some questioning. We have to make sure your story adds up.”
We finish the walk to the police car as the rest of the cops keep searching for Mackenzie’s body, but I have a feeling her body may be gone forever. But the question is: who took it?
Cameron? Or Asher?
Raven and I climb into the back of the cop car, each on our separate side, divided by lies, secrets, and distrust. As the policeman drives with his lights flashing, I watch the cemetery disappear from my view, feeling the trail of death follow me.
Epilogue
I wake up to a bright sunny day, shining through my bedroom window. My cheek is resting on an open book, and my sweaty skin sticks to the pages. I stayed up all last night reading through pages about Angels and death, searching for answers and a way to bring an Angel of Death back to Earth.
I climb out of bed and get dressed in a ratty T-shirt and some cutoffs. The house is as quiet as a cemetery, but it’s not the comforting kind. My mom is in a drug treatment facility trying to recover from her addiction and when she gets back I have to decide how to ask her about Grandma and the necklace without putting stress on her.
Raven is on vacation with her mom, who got released from the same facility my mom’s at