One Grave at a Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

very cold, very firm fingers to verify once more that she was really solid.
    But soon after I did, I felt a pop of energy in the air, like an invisible balloon had burst. Pins and needles broke out across my skin while the hand I’d been clasping vanished. In the next instant, Elisabeth’s appearance dulled back into muted colors, and the arm Bones had been holding melted under his grip, leaving his fingers curled—like mine were—around nothing more than a transparent outline of flesh that was no longer there.
    “The longest I can merge into solid form is a few minutes, but it is very draining,” Elisabeth said, as if what she’d done wasn’t incredible enough. “Yet Kramer is stronger than I am.”
    I felt like my brain was still playing catch-up from everything I’d just witnessed. “Kramer? You said he died centuries ago.”
    “He did,” Elisabeth replied with frightening grimness. “Yet every All Hallows’ Eve, he walks.”

Four
     
    I f a pin had dropped in the room, it would have shattered the sudden silence with the same effect as a bomb. I had a good idea of what Elisabeth meant by “he walks” but because it was too far-fetched for me to conceive of, I had to make sure.
    “You’re saying that after the homicidal asshat died, Kramer became a ghost who could walk around in solid flesh every Halloween?”
    Elisabeth’s brow furrowed in confusion at asshat , but she addressed the rest of my query without hesitation.
    “As far as I know, it has only been the past few decades that Kramer has been able to manifest flesh for an entire evening.”
    “Why just Halloween night?” Sure, it was the time where many people celebrated the idea of ghosts, ghouls, vampires, or other creatures, but most of them didn’t believe such creatures existed.
    “It’s the time when the barrier between the worlds is the thinnest,” Bones replied. “The celebration of Samhain harkens back long before humans made a candy and costume holiday out of it.”
    Elisabeth’s mouth curled. “The irony that Kramer is strengthened by an evening dedicated to what he once considered heretic worship is lost on him. He still believes himself to be acting on God’s side, as if the Almighty hadn’t made it clear that He wants nothing to do with Kramer.”
    “And what does he do on Halloween?” I’d bet every drop of blood in my body that Kramer didn’t spend it trick-or-treating.
    “He extracts ‘confessions’ of witchcraft from three women whom he’s coerced a human accomplice into kidnapping, and then he burns them alive,” Elisabeth replied, a spasm of pain crossing her features.
    It was official. I now wanted to murder a ghost, a notion I’d discarded as unlikely only twenty minutes before. Problem was, killing vampires and ghouls was my specialty. Not people who were already dead dead.
    “How long beforehand does he get an accomplice to capture these women?” Bones asked.
    “I’m not sure,” Elisabeth replied. She glanced away as if ashamed. “Perhaps a week? I’ve followed Kramer as best I could these many centuries, trying to discover a way to end him, but he is wily. He evades me much of the time.”
    Yeah, that whole ability to disappear would make him hell to follow, even for another ghost. Tracking him would be like trying to put handcuffs on the wind.
    Which brought up another question. “You said a lot of other ghosts consider you an outcast for trying to kill one of your own kind, who obviously had to be Kramer. How did you, ah, attempt to do it?” A mental image of two transparent figures trying to throttle each other flashed in my head.
    “Over the centuries, I made contact with several mediums, convincing them of Kramer’s evil in the hopes that one could banish him. They tried many different ways, but each attempt failed. Once word of what I’d done spread, I was shunned by many of my kind . . . except those like Fabian.”
    The smile Elisabeth gave him as she finished that sentence was