The Edge Of The Cemetery Read Online Free PDF

closed take-out container on the nightstand between the beds. I edged into a sitting position and put the container in my lap. She'd brought me a PB&J and french fries. I looked over at her and said, “Really, this is the best you could do?”
    “Your lips are swollen and split in two places. It was thin, and the only thing I could think of besides soup that wouldn't make you reopen those wounds.” She glanced at me and grimaced. “You look like shit, by the way.”
    “Thanks…on both counts.” Billy was hardly ever considerate of my injuries, but tonight was probably the worst we'd come across, and in her own little way, she was trying to be nice,
and
acknowledge I'd taken the worst beating between the two of us.
    “Any word on the teenager?” I asked between bites. She shook her head. “Billy, that kid was doing what you did in Germany, right?”
    Billy's mother, Julie, was raised by Justine because her own mother, Wilhelmina Wilkinson (Grandma Billy) wasn't able to handle her ghost killing abilities and for the most part, was quite insane. However, Julie was a spoiled little rich girl, who didn't even bother to attend her mother's funeral, took her inheritance, and disappeared. A few years later she showed back up, broke and with a toddler in tow. Justine agreed to help, but there were rules, which Julie followed, at least for a while. When Julie had reached the point that she no longer wanted to follow the rules, or wanted to be a mother any more, her father approached her with a monetary deal she couldn't refuse. All she had to do was turn custody of her daughter over to the man. That man was Frederick Vokkel, and he wanted his granddaughter so he could study her. He was convinced she'd be like her grandmother, who, despite her mental problems, had been one of the most powerful ghost killers alive.
    Vokkel ended up taking Billy away to Germany where he could monitor her more closely and without interference from Justine, who was constantly suing him to regain custody of her beloved Billy. When Billy was a teenager, she knew she had more power than most ghost killers and she knew she could use that power to escape her deranged grandfather. While on a field trip to town with her bodyguard, Billy “communicated” with a demon, and when she held the hand of her bodyguard, the demon “took” Billy's hand and the same type of electroplasmic electricity the teenager had used earlier in the night shot through Billy and into the bodyguard, killing her. Billy hadn't done it again, but she knew she could and knew how dangerous it could be, as evidenced by her willingness to put herself in mortal peril to save the woman earlier in the evening.
    “Yeah, that's pretty much it…,” she said quietly.
    “Something wasn't right about him…I mean, aside from his demon buddy. Did you get the impression he wasn't…all there? Like he wasn't in complete control or something?” I asked.
    “He was in control. I watched him kill one of those people, and he knew exactly what he was doing!” she replied fiercely.
    “Okay, calm down. I was getting tossed off a cliff, and I missed that part.” I tried to sound contrite, but she didn't care. I asked, “So he has to be a ghost killer, right?”
    “Yeah, and I'm guessing a pretty powerful one…a lot like I was at that age,” she said mournfully. I'd only broached the subject of the German bodyguard's death once, and it hadn't gone over well. The time she was imprisoned by Vokkel were the worst years of her life, and in my opinion, one of the main reasons she was so adversarial all the time. Well, that and what her mother did to her.
    “Billy, that last guy tried to grab you, didn't he?”
    She nodded. “Yeah…I guess, but I managed to kick him in the family jewels and he went down for a second.” She glanced at me…was that fear I saw?
    Before I could say anything else, her cell phone rang on the nightstand and she leaned over to get it. Looking at the screen, she said,