Page 1 (1/2)

Chapter 1

THE eastern seaboard is cras me to that part of As of a huge flock of birds are fluttering inside ets old pretty quick

But I had soh South Carolina with er seat He was sleeping now, and I glanced over at hi because he couldn’t see me and it was okay to smile at him Tolliver has hair as dark as mine, and if we didn’t run and spend quite a bit of time outdoors, we’d both be pale; and we’re both on the thin side Other than that, we’re quite different Tolliver’s dad never took him to a skin doctor when Tolliver was a teen, and his cheeks are scarred froray ones, and his cheekbones are high

When mytogether in the hurtling path down the drain My mother was dead now, and Tolliver’s father was sootten out of jail the previous year My dad was still in for e and a few other white-collar crimes We never talked about them

If you have to be in South Carolina, it’s beautiful in the late spring and the early summer Unfortunately, ere nearly at the end of an especially nasty January The ground was cold and gray and slushy from the melt of the previous snow, and there wasvery carefully because traffic was heavy and the road was not clear We’d come up from mild and sunny Charleston A couple there had decided their house was uninhabitable due to ghost activity, and they’d called me in to find out if there were any bodies in the walls or flooring

The ansas clear: no But there were bodies in the narrow back yard There were three of them, all babies I didn’t knohat that meant They’d died so soon after birth that they hadn’t had much consciousness for me to tap into, so I hadn’t been able to name the cause of death, which is usually quite clear But the Charleston homeowners had been thrilled with the results, especially after an archaeologist dug up the er remains of the tiny bodies They would dine out on the dead babies for the next decade They’d handed me a check without hesitation

That’s not always the case

Tolliver said, "Where you want to stop to eat?"

I glanced over He wasn’t fully awake He reached over to pat my shoulder "You tired?" he asked

"I’ Too far?"

"Sounds good Cracker Barrel?"

"You etables"

"Yeah You knohat I look forward to, if we really do buy that house we talk about? Cooking for ourselves"

"We do okay e’re at hoht a few cookbooks at secondhand bookstores We picked very siing in the balance right now We spent so much time on the road that it was very nearly a waste of money But we needed a home base, somewhere to collect ouraround the United States We’d been saving up to buy a house, probably somewhere in the Dallas area so we’d be close to our aunt and her husband They had custody of our two little sisters

We spotted the restaurant sign we’d been looking for after about twenty h it was about two o’clock in the afternoon, the parking lot was crowded I tried not to grimace Tolliver just loved Cracker Barrel He didn’t h all the kitsch in the store part of the building So after we parked (about a halfchairs on the porch, sta our feet on the mat so ouldn’t track the icy mess inside

The restrooms were clean, and the place arm We were seated al wohted to serve us Well, Tolliver Waitresses, bar wo not being in aabout the next job

"It’s a law enforcement invitation," he warned ood buzz We alanted law enforceood recoot cah they ht not believe in me, there’d be pressure on theation, and they’d call rapevine Maybe there was soet off their back Maybe they were stu someone, or they’d exhausted just about every venue in their search for aperson The law didn’t pay well But it paid off

"What do they want me to do? Cemetery or the search?"

"Search"

That ot were about fifty-fifty Since the lightning had snaked through theof our trailer in Texarkana when I was fifteen, I’d been able to locate corpses If the body was in its proper grave in the cemetery, the people who hired me wanted to know the cause of death If the body was in an unknown location, I could track it, if the search was liiven off by a corpse was less intense as the corpse aged, or I’da been batshit crazy by now Think about it Caveman corpses, Native American corpses, the early settlers, the more recently deceased - that’s a lot of dead people, and they all let me knohere their earthly remains were interred

I wondered if it would be hile sending s, and how Tolliver would go about collecting the address infor Tolliver was much better with our laptop than I was, simply because he was more interested

It wasn’t like he was

He was the first person I’d told about e ability, after I’d recovered froh at first he hadn’t believedwhat I could and couldn’t do, and as we’d worked out the limits of my odd neer, he’d becoh school, we had our plan all worked out, and we hit the road At first, we’d just traveled on weekends; Tolliver had had to work a regular job, too, and I’d picked upin fast-food places But after two years, he’d been able to quit the day job We’d been on the road together ever since

At the ame that’s always on the table at Cracker Barrel His face looked serious and cal - but then he never did I knew Tolliver had been having a painful ti him had had an ulterior motive; even when you’re not crazy about someone, even when in fact you’re a little repelled by that person, that’s got to sting Tolliver hadn’t talked about Memphis much, but it had left its , lost in s hadn’t been as easy between us in the past feeeks It was my faultall my fault

The waitress ca to shtly at Tolliver than at htly

"Asheville area," Tolliver said, glancing up froame

"Oh, it’s beautiful there," she said, doing her bit for the tourist board He gave her an absent save his downturned head a philosophical shrug and hustled off

"You’re staring a hole inup

"You’re just in ht," I said I leaned on my elbows Where the hell was the food? I folded the paper band that had been around the napkin-rolled tableware

"Your leg hurting?" he asked I had a weak right leg

"Yeah, a little"