Logan nodded. They climbed out of the truck and the packed dirt sounded hollow under their feet. The stone key stood resolute at the front of the graveyard, unflinching in the wind, the names etched into the stone almost as indistinguishable as the graves themselves. Beyond the key, the graveyard was black.
Ashley turned on her phone flashlight. Logan handed her the ThermoGeist.
At the back of the cemetery, the shadows moved. Not like the wind, but like an animal. Like some great, lumbering thing. Ashley narrowed her eyes, trying to track the shape of it.
The ThermoGeist lit up.
“Oh my god, look!” Ashley shouted over the wind. The ThermoGeist flared brighter than her phone, streaking the muck of the graveyard in blue. The light tugged her toward the back of the cemetery plot, toward the moving dark, with a magnetism she couldn’t explain.
Ashley suddenly understood that she was standing alone.
“Logan?”
She whipped around. The white light from her phone glinted off Logan’s hair. Logan, who was still standing at the front of the cemetery with her eyes trained on the stone key. Logan, who looked like a ghost herself. Logan, who was so still Ashley wondered if she was breathing. In the murky black of night, she was a shadow of a person. Her expression wasn’t right—brows furrowed, eyes wide, neck strained forward as if she couldn’t read the etched words. The ThermoGeist continued to flare, begging Ashley to follow it to the back of the cemetery.
“Logan?” Ashley called again. “What are you looking at?”
“I…” Logan glanced up, hauled out of her trance. The wind whipped her hair into a flurry of black at her shoulders. “There’s a name on here, but it’s…”
Ashley pocketed the ThermoGeist and made her way back to the key. They didn’t have time for this. Logan’s gaze was fixed on the engraved names in front of them, and Ashley followed her gaze to one in particular. For a moment, it didn’t register, and then her heart snagged on the hyphen.
ORTIZ-WOODLEY, 2003–2007
“Wait, like…” Ashley breathed.
Logan pushed a hand into her hair to keep it out of her face. “I don’t get it. What does this mean?”
Every device in Logan’s tote bag began screeching.
Ashley cupped her hands over her ears. The wind through the graveyard picked up, piercing through the black night with a bite sharp enough to draw blood. The darkness at the back of the cemetery transformed. It was two masses now, both hunched over and swaying in the wind. They gathered at the very edge of the cemetery where the dirt met tufts of yellow grass, circling one mound of dirt just off the Pioneer Cemetery plot, hidden from the main walkway.
The ThermoGeist flared again, but instead of flashing the blue light, it was a steady, unflinching red.
It was the color of blood.
“Logan,” Ashley said tentatively.
Her voice echoed back in the wind. She swung her flashlight back over the darkness behind her, and Logan shielded her eyes, face washed in the ThermoGeist’s red.
“I’ve never seen it do that before.”
They followed the light to the back of the cemetery. Ashley’s hands shook, but she kept her grip on the ThermoGeist. It was as though Tristan stood directly behind her—she heard his breath, felt his hand hovering just above her shoulder. The truth was in front of her now, if she could just be brave enough to see it.
Ashley’s jaw clenched. “What do you want me to do?”
“What?” Logan asked, before realizing that she meant Tristan. Logan showed Ashley the Scripto8G. “It says DIRT.”
Ashley’s breath caught in her chest. She could almost see him now, squatting in front of her, brushing his hand along the crumbling dirt. She could almost see his eyes, begging her to just do this one thing. She understood, but it was too much to ask. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and shook her head.