The Gravedigger's Son - Darynda Jones Page 0,3

the next, then show up days later in North Carolina. There was no pattern to its activity. No method to its madness. And that made tracking it a bitch.

When the compass, along with whatever natural-born talent Quentin had inside him, had tracked it to New Mexico, Quentin’s pulse sped up with the possibility of seeing her again. It had yet to slow down.

It was bound to happen eventually. He would have had to come home at some point. The only home he’d ever known, anyway. At first, he’d taken solace in the fact that Amber was in New York. Now, he missed her more than ever, and a small part of him hoped she’d come home to visit her mom and stepdad. He just wanted to see her face. To touch her hair. To kiss her full mouth. But again, as hearing people would say: That ship had sailed.

“You’re doing it again,” Rune said.

Rune, the demon inside him—and, no, not metaphorically—had possessed him while Quentin was in college. Rune was an old demon living in the bowels of the dorm. Quentin had felt him the day he moved in. During his second semester, he and a few friends, who’d sworn the dorm was haunted, took a trip to the nether regions beneath their rooms, and Quentin had come face-to-face with the ancient demon.

That was the last thing he remembered. He’d woken up two days later in the hospital with Amber, and her mother, Cookie, by his side. They’d flown up from Santa Fe, and he remembered how he thought she’d looked like a fairy princess from one of his video games.

At first, Quentin didn’t think much about the event, other than to stay the fuck out of the basement. But the more time went on, the more he felt the entity inside him. A wiggling here. A settling there. Because of his abilities, he’d been possessed before. He did not like it. Turned out, Rune was different. An orphan in hiding, much like himself. He needed Quentin as much as Quentin unwittingly needed him.

On the bright side, Quentin had aced his history final. Rune had lived through it all.

That was about the time the Vatican came knocking. One day, he was home from school making love—at last—to the girl he’d loved for years. And the next, he was whisked off to Italy to begin training. It was the part of him he didn’t recognize that’d made him accept the Vatican’s offer. The violent part. The part he chose to block from his mind, unsure if it was the demon inside him or the darkness that had always lurked beneath the surface that made him hurt her.

“Stop thinking about her already. We’re hungry.”

Quentin ground his teeth, got out of the truck, and walked to a coffee shop near the house he was there to scope out. A house that had a shop in the front part. A house that also had two police units parked in front, lights still blazing, and had been cordoned off with police tape. Cordoned. Another word he’d only recently learned. He liked that one for some reason.

“The latest victim died only a few hours ago,” Quentin said to Rune.

“Yes. We hope we haven’t missed him again.”

“Me, too.”

The fact that the demon spoke better English than Quentin did irked, even after all these years. Of course, he’d been alive a lot longer than Quentin had.

It was still early, and he had his choice of tables when he stepped inside the small establishment—not that there were many. He stood eyeing a high-top near the front window where he could study the house. A forensics team was packing up. He would kill to get his hands on their report. Not that it mattered how the woman, a Dora Rodriguez according to a news report, had died.

Someone spoke to him from a short distance away. A woman. “Welcome to Java Junction.”

He turned, and a redhead in her early thirties stood behind the counter, her brows raised in question. He stepped up to the counter and ordered an Americana.

“Room for cream?”

Even though he could hear her—in a way—he watched her mouth for backup. He shook his head. He’d gotten used to Italian coffee the consistency of motor oil. This would be nothing in comparison.

She punched a couple of buttons on the register. He liked the sound it made. The first time he’d realized that registers made a sound, he’d been so intrigued, the kid behind the counter had to tell him