BOOK EXCERPT

Mistress of the Bones

by T.J. MacGregor

Tango Key, Florida
Saturday, September 2
10:30 PM

The wind gasped across the deserted intersection and swept through the windows of his pickup, a scent that promised rain. Blade usually loved this odor, part sky, part earth, part ocean—the island’s perfume. But tonight it seemed excessive, wrong, somehow. He longed for sunlight that was bright, hot and blinding.

Overhead, the traffic light swung like the hands of a grandfather clock, ticktock, ticktock, marking the passage of seconds that would never be reclaimed. Tomorrow he would be seventeen. At six A.M. exactly. Did his mother remember that? Did his old man? He doubted it.

But Lou would remember; Lou was his family now. Tomorrow morning they were going to take the houseboat to one of the smaller keys and spend the rest of the Labor Day weekend fishing. They hadn’t gone fishing in months, not since the weirdness had started at the house.

But he didn’t want to think too closely about any of that.

When the light turned, Blade sped through the intersection. A shimmering wall of green rose on either side of him now, pines and mango groves, the southeast side of Lou’s property. Seconds before he reached his turnoff, a car exploded from the tress on his left, a blur without headlights, an airborne missile of glass and aluminum aimed straight at him.

Blade swerved violently to the right, onto the shoulder of the road, his pickup clattering, the tires kicking up gravel. He slammed on the brakes and the engine died with a pathetic shudder. Dust floated through the windows and covered his arms like a second skin. Shaken, his heart still hammering, Blade snapped around in his seat. The car was long gone.

Probably high school dipshits. They wandered back here sometimes to smoke reefer or drink and got spooked whenever they saw headlights. He knew how it was; He used to be one of them.

The truck started on the first try and Blade patted the steering wheel. Tasha wasn’t new or fast or even much to look at these days, but she was dependable, more dependable, in fact, than most of the people he knew. Blade backed up, swung across the road, and nosed into the barely visible indentation in the trees where the car had come from.

It was an unpaved county easement, riddled with ruts and holes, which paralleled the fence that surrounded the grove. Blade followed it for better than a mile, Tasha rattling, her tires spitting out clumps of dirt.

The back gate stood open, as it usually did. A quick, warm wind rustled through the trees. Leaves fluttered from the branches, drifting across Tasha’s hood. The mango season was almost over, but the fruit’s rich, earthy odor lingered in the air.

The property was located on the western edge of the island, six hundred feet above the Gulf of Mexico. On a clear day, the view from the cliff was magnificent, blue as far as you could see, a band of violet where sky met water. The house should have been built here. Instead, it stood smack in the center of the grove, where there was no view at all, except of the pond, which didn’t count.

The house had occupied this spot since pirate ships had sailed these waters. Only two rooms of the original house remained; the rest of the place had been expanded and rebuilt dozens of times. Every generation of Lou’s family had added to it. Blade couldn’t keep all the details straight, but Lou knew them by heart. The house was Lou’s connection to his roots.

Blade had no such roots.

Thunder rumbled and lightning unzipped the sky. He could hear the birds—honks, quacks, shrieks, distress calls about the storm that was headed this way. Blade thought of the birds as his extended family. Wood storks, burrowing owls, Muscovy ducks, herons, egrets, crows, blackbirds, doves: He knew them all now. A year ago he couldn’t tell a heron from an egret.

He parked next to Lou’s battered Camaro, grabbed his pack from the passenger seat, and got out. The porch light wasn’t on; the windows were dark. Lou rarely went to bed this early, especially on a weekend, but they were supposed to leave at sunrise tomorrow.

As usual, Lou hadn’t locked the front door. Blade stepped into the yawning blackness, the total stillness, and stopped. Wrong, something was wrong, he felt it in the air. "Lou?" he whispered.

The hiss of the air conditioner answered him.

The car.

Blade slapped the wall for the light switch. When the floor lamp in the corner flared, he simply stared at the blood pooling on the tile, oozing along the grout. Lou, curled on his side next to the couch, knees drawn against his chest, twitched like a dying frog.

A low, terrible noise rushed from Blade’s mouth. He flew across the room, dropped to his knees beside Lou, and lifted his head. Lou coughed, spraying blood.

"Jesus, Lou, hold on, just hold on." So much blood. He grabbed a throw pillow off the couch, slipped it under Lou’s head, and turned him gently onto his back. His hands fell away from his chest, from the knife that protruded from it.

His knife. A switchblade Lou had given him. The four-inch blade was jammed in to the hilt and he was afraid Lou would bleed to death if he pulled it out. "Don’t move," Blade said hoarsely. "I’m going to call an ambulance."

But Lou’s fingers dug into his arm and his eyes fluttered open. Don’t leave me, whispered his eyes, bright and slick with pain. Then his lips moved again, a broken rasp, a word in Spanish that Blade didn’t understand. "I’ll be right back, Lou, I’ve got to call an ambulance, you’ll be okay, just hang on."

But the wheezing stopped.

"Lou?"

His head went slack.

No.

Blade shook him, begging him to say something, to move, please please. He felt frantically for a pulse in Lou’s neck, but there was nothing, nothing at all. A black hole tore open in the center of his chest, his head emptied. Sobs exploded from his mouth. Half a lifetime passed as he cradled Lou’s head in his arms and cried.

Sound gradually penetrated his awareness: rain, the moan of the wind, a branch scraping across a window somewhere, and a noise here in the room, very close, a soft rustling like leaves blowing across asphalt. And now he could smell a faint scent of jasmine.

Blade’s head snapped around. No one was there, but the rustling grew louder, the scent deepened, and the temperature in the room plunged. Blade scrambled to his feet, his terror suddenly as extreme as his grief.

Run, run while you can.

He scooped up his pack and stumbled away from the body, his breath erupting from his chest like gunfire. The rustling pursued him, surrounded him, and the scent rushed around him, thick as a liquid.

He didn’t stop running until he reached his pickup.