Chapters (50)
- Cover
- Roc Books by Jacqueline Carey
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
Sometimes it was the ones I couldn’t have anticipated, like the ghost of a Potawatomi Indian woman who manifested in the middle of a Pemkowet city council meeting, clad in a buckskin dress adorned with elaborate quillwork. She carried the fur-wrapped bundle of a stillborn baby in her arms and pleaded softly with the horrified council members in a tongue none of them spoke, her eyes dark and sorrowful in her gaunt face.
I don’t know her story. I’m guessing she died in childbirth, but it wasn’t recorded in Bloody Pemkowet. Somehow it felt unfair to silence her voice forever.
In terms of sheer volume, the worst day was the one when the dead of the old hospital rose, haunting its empty corridors. Cody and I laid the spirits of almost a dozen men, women, and children to rest that day, me confronting the wandering dead with the blaze of the spirit lantern, throwing their shadows behind them down hallway after hallway, while Cody grimly pounded nail after nail into those same shadows in the worn linoleum.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, it was after that incident that we hooked up for a second time.
In between manifestations, I logged every encounter in my database and looked for correspondences, trying to find a pattern. Other than the fact that the dead appeared to like an audience, I couldn’t find one. And they certainly did seem to like an audience. Thank God for Stefan and his ghoul squad. I was judicious about calling on him for assistance, but without them, I don’t doubt there would have been a lot more panic and a lot less voyeuristic giddiness.
Three days before Halloween, it stopped. Just . . . nothing. An ominous nothing. A calm-before-the-storm nothing.
And in three days, Pemkowet would see its biggest crowds of the season.
Just the thought of it made my skin itch. Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, and between that and our new notoriety, the PVB was making the most of it. Corn-shocks and stacks of pumpkins donated by a local farm decorated every street corner. An all-day celebration was planned for downtown Pemkowet, with face painting, bobbing for apples, and a pie-eating contest in the park for the kids, and live music and a beer tent for the adults, followed by a children’s costume parade throughout the town, at the end of which a reading of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” would be staged, including an unannounced appearance by the Headless Horseman.
Which, by the way, is a badass costume.