“Not a bomb, I’m guessing,” I said as I came close.

“Death-related but not death-causing.”

It was a grave, its marker set so deeply into the ground that it was almost as if whoever planted it there hoped it would soon be covered.

I looked around. “That’s what this is. A cemetery.”

“For those who didn’t have family willing to claim them. A necessary part of the hospital, but obviously not one they cared to advertise to the other patients.”

That’s why it was hidden away back here. No path to the gate, tucked behind buildings, without standing stones to advertise its purpose.

Interesting, but did it mean anything? I’d heard someone call my name. Was that to get me here?

Gabriel always told me to follow my instincts. Well, he did before he decided that my instincts were all in my head.

I eased back on my haunches and looked around.

“Want me to start clearing the stones so you can read them?” Ricky asked.

“And you say you’re not psychic.” I forced a smile, but my heart wasn’t in it. The same sense of foreboding that niggled at him pressed down on me, the darkness closing in despite the bright moon.

I searched for an omen. Even a raven or an owl gliding overhead would have been a sign that everything was all right, that I was under someone’s protection.

“Do you have your tusk?” Ricky asked. “As much as I can’t believe I just said that.”

He got a real smile for that. “Yes, I have my handy-dandy evil-repelling tusk, which has never actually been proven to work, but since I didn’t have it when we were attacked by elves, I’ll presume it does. You have yours?”

“Yep.”

“Then let’s start clearing.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

There were eleven graves in the small cemetery.

The first six names meant nothing to me. I noted them, in case they turned up in our investigations. Then I hit number seven.

Given the date, it was actually the last stone set in the cemetery: 1970. The date of birth was 1901. And the name? Isolde Carew.

The Carew house. My great-great-grandmother’s house. Her first name had been Glenys. Welsh, like her granddaughter, Daere. I didn’t need to look up Isolde to be pretty sure it came from Wales, too.

“Liv?”

“I think . . .” I brushed my hands over the stone. “This one might have been a relative of—”

The gravestone dropped into the earth, and I tumbled headfirst, falling through darkness. I hit something hard and sharp that cut into my knees. Hands scooped me up.

“Ouch,” a man’s voice said. “That must have hurt.”

“Are you all right, baby?” A woman’s voice now.

I looked to see them towering above me. A dark-haired man and a woman with lighter hair, somewhere between brown and blond, her bright red lips pursed with concern as she squeezed my bare leg.