The Kingdom tgqs-2

  The Kingdom

  ( The Graveyard Queen Series - 2 )

  Amanda Stevens

  Deep in the shadowy foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains lies a dying town…

  My name is Amelia Gray. They call me The Graveyard Queen. I've been commissioned to restore an old cemetery in Asher Falls, South Carolina, but I'm coming to think I have another purpose here.

  Why is there a cemetery at the bottom of Bell Lake? Why am I drawn time and again to a hidden grave I've discovered in the woods? Something is eating away at the soul of this town—this withering kingdom—and it will only be restored if I can uncover the truth.

  Amanda Stevens

  The Kingdom

  One

  The breeze off the water carried a slight chill even though the sun had barely begun its western slide. It was still hours until twilight. Hours until the veil between our world and the next would thin, but already I could feel the ripple of goose bumps at the back of my neck, a sensation that almost always signaled an unnatural presence.

  I resisted the temptation to glance over my shoulder. Years of living with ghosts had instilled in me an aberrant discipline. I knew better than to react to those greedy, grasping entities, so I leaned against the deck rail and stared intently into the greenish depths of the lake. But from my periphery, I tracked the other passengers on the ferry.

  The intimate murmurs and soft laughter from the couple next to me aroused an unexpected melancholy, and I thought suddenly of John Devlin, the police detective I’d left behind in Charleston. This time of day, he would probably still be at work, and I conjured up an image of him hunched over a cluttered desk, reviewing autopsy reports and crime scene photos. Did I cross his mind now and then? Not that it mattered. He was a man haunted by his dead wife and daughter, and I was a woman who saw ghosts. For as long as he clung to his past—and his past clung to him—I could not be a part of his life.

  So I wouldn’t dwell on Devlin or that terrible door that my feelings for him had opened. In the months since I’d last seen him, my life had settled back into a normal routine. Normal for me, at least. I still saw ghosts, but those darker entities—the Others, my father called them—had drifted back into their murky underworld where I prayed they would remain. The memories, however, lingered. Memories of Devlin, memories of all those victims and of a haunted killer who had made me a target. I knew no matter how hard I fought them off, the nightmares would return the moment I closed my eyes.

  For now, though, I wanted to savor my adventure. The start of a new commission filled me with excitement, and I looked forward to the prospect of uncovering the history of yet another graveyard, of immersing myself in the lives of those who had been laid to rest there. I always say that cemetery restoration is more than just clearing away trash and overgrowth. It’s about restoration.

  The back of my neck continued to prickle.

  After a moment, I turned to casually glance back at the row of cars. My silver SUV was one of only five vehicles on the ferry. Another SUV belonged to the couple, a green minivan to a middle-aged woman absorbed in a battered paperback novel, and a faded red pickup truck to an elderly man sipping coffee from a foam cup. That left the vintage black sports car. The metallic jet paint drew my appreciative gaze. In the sunlight, the shimmer reminded me of snake scales, and an inexplicable shiver traced along my spine as I admired the serpentine lines. The windows were tinted, blocking my view of the interior, but I imagined the driver behind the wheel, impatiently drumming fingers as the ferry inched toward the other side. To Asher Falls. To Thorngate Cemetery, my ultimate destination.

  Brushing my hand against the back of my neck, I turned again to the water, mentally rummaging through the tidbits I’d gleaned from my research. Located in the lush Blue Ridge foothills of South Carolina, Asher Falls had once been a thriving community, but in the mid-eighties, one of the town’s most prominent citizens, Pell Asher, had struck an unsavory bargain. He’d sold acreage to the state to be used as a reservoir, and when the dam opened, the area flooded, including the main highway leading into Asher Falls. Already bypassed by a new freeway system, the town sank into oblivion. The only way in and out was by ferry or back roads, and the population soon withered. Asher Falls became just another statistic in a long line of dying rural communities.

  I’d never set foot in the town, even to conduct a preliminary assessment of the cemetery. I’d been hired sight unseen by a real estate agent named Luna Kemper, who also happened to be the town librarian and the sole administrator of a generous donation made anonymously to the Daughters of our Valiant Heroes, a historical society/garden club for the beautification of Thorngate Cemetery. Luna’s offer couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I needed a new project and a change of scenery, so here I stood.

  As we approached the dock, the engines powered down and we came to a near standstill. The heavy shadows cast by towering trees at the shoreline deepened the water to black. At no point could I see the bottom, but for a moment, I could have sworn I saw something—someone—just below the surface. A pale face staring up at me… .

  My heart took a nosedive as I leaned over the railing, searching those blackish depths. People without my ability would have undoubtedly wondered if the play of light and shadow on the water had tricked them. Or worse, if they might have spotted a body being washed ashore in the ferry’s wake. I thought instantly of a ghost and wondered who on board might be haunted by the golden-haired apparition floating underneath the water.

  “I believe this is yours.”

  A man’s voice pulled me back from the railing, and I turned reluctantly from the lake. I knew at once he belonged to the sports car. He and the vehicle had the same dark, sleek air. I thought him to be around my age—twenty-seven—with eyes the exact shade of a tidal marsh. He was tallish, though not so tall as Devlin, nor as thin. Years of being haunted had left the magnetic police detective hollow-eyed and gaunt while the stranger at my side appeared to be the picture of health—lean, sinewy and suntanned.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He extended his hand, and I thought at first he meant to introduce himself, but instead he uncurled his fingers, and I saw my necklace coiled in his palm.

  My hand went immediately to my throat. “Oh! The chain must have snapped.” I plucked the necklace from his hand and examined the links. They were unbroken, the clasp still securely closed. “How strange,” I murmured, unlatching the claw fastener and entwining the silver strand around my neck. “Where did you find it?”

  “It was lying on the deck behind you.” His gaze slid downward as the polished stone settled into the hollow of my throat.

  Something cold gripped my heart. A warning?

  “Thank you,” I said stiffly. “I would have hated to lose it.”

  “It’s an interesting piece.” He appeared to study the amulet intently. “A good luck charm?”

  “You might say that.” Actually, the stone had come from the hallowed ground of a cemetery where my father had worked as caretaker when I was a child. Whether the talisman retained any of Rosehill’s protective properties, I had no idea. I only knew that I felt stronger against the ghosts when I wore it.

  I started to turn back to the water, but something in the stranger’s eyes, a mysterious glint, held me for a moment longer.

  “Are you okay?” he asked unexpectedly.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  He nodded toward the side of the ferry. “You were leaning so far over the railing when I came up, and then I saw your necklace on the deck. I was afraid you might be contemplating jumping.”

  “Oh, that.” I gave a negligible shrug. “I thought I saw something in the water. Probably just a shadow.”

  The glint
in his eyes deepened. “I wouldn’t be too sure. You’d be surprised at what lies beneath the surface of this lake. Some of it occasionally floats to the top.”

  “Such as?”

  “Debris, mostly. Glass bottles, bits of old clothing. I even once saw a rocking chair drifting to shore.”

  “Where does it all come from?”

  “Flooded houses.” As he turned to stare out over the water, I studied his profile, drawn by the way the late afternoon sunlight burnished his dark hair. The coppery threads gave him an aura of warmth that seemed to be absent from the midnight-green of his eyes. “Before the dam was built, the lake was half the size it is now. A lot of property was destroyed when the water rose.”

  “But that was years ago. You mean the houses are still down there?” I tried to peer through the layers of algae and hydrilla, but I could see nothing. Not even the ghostly face I’d spotted earlier.

  “Houses, cars…an old graveyard.”

  My gaze shot back to him. “A graveyard?”

  “Thorngate Cemetery. Another casualty of the Asher greed.”

  “But I thought…” Uneasiness crept over me. I was good at my job, but recovering an underwater cemetery wasn’t exactly my area of expertise. “I’ve seen recent pictures of Thorngate. It looked high and dry to me.”

  “There are two Thorngates,” he said. “And I assure you that one of them does rest at the bottom of this lake.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “The original Thorngate was rarely used. It was all but forgotten. No one ever went out there. No one gave it a second thought…until the water came.”

  I stared at him in horror. “Are you telling me the bodies weren’t moved before they expanded the lake?”

  He shuddered. “Afterward, people started seeing things. Hearing things.”

  I fingered the talisman at my throat. “Like what?”

  He hesitated, his gaze still on the water. “If you look for this basin on any South Carolina map, you’ll find the Asher Reservoir. But around here, we call it Bell Lake.”

  “Why?”

  “In the old days, coffins were equipped with a warning system—a chain attached to a bell on the grave in case of a premature burial. They say at night, when the mist rolls in, you can hear those bells.” He glanced over the railing. “The dead down there don’t want to be forgotten…ever again.”

  Two

  A tremor shot through me a split second before I saw the gleam of amusement in the stranger’s eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said with a contrite smile. “Local folklore. I couldn’t resist.”

  “It’s not true then?”

  “Oh, the cemetery is down there all right, along with cars, houses and God knows what else. Some claim they’ve even seen coffins float to the surface after a bad storm. But the bells…” He paused. “Put it this way. I’ve fished on this lake since I was a boy, and I’ve never heard them.”

  What about the face I’d seen under the surface? I wondered. Was that real?

  His lingering gaze made me uneasy, though I had no idea why. His eyes were just a little too murky, a little too mysterious—like the bottom of Bell Lake.

  He leaned forward, resting his forearms against the railing. He wore jeans and a black pullover sweater that hugged his toned torso. An unexpected appreciation skimmed along my nerve endings, and I glanced quickly away because the last thing I needed was a romantic complication. I wasn’t over Devlin, might never be over him, and an attractive stranger could do nothing more than momentarily ease my intense longing. Assuage an almost physical ache that had settled deep inside my chest since the night I’d fled the house Devlin had shared with the very beautiful and the very dead Mariama.

  “So what brings you to Asher Falls?” the stranger asked. “That is, if you don’t mind my asking. We don’t get a lot of visitors. We’re pretty well off the beaten track.”

  His voice was pleasant enough, but I detected a slight edge to the question. “I’ve been hired to restore Thorngate Cemetery. The high and dry one.”

  He didn’t respond, and after a moment, his silence drew my reluctant gaze. He was staring down at me, his eyes still gleaming, though not with amusement or even curiosity, but with a spark of what I could only name as anger. The emotion faded, but I knew I hadn’t imagined his irritation.

  I tried not to read too much into it. I often encountered local opposition. People were protective and sometimes overly superstitious about their graveyards. I started to reassure him that I knew my business. Thorngate would be in good hands. But then I decided that might be a job best left to the woman who had hired me. She would know how to address the concerns of her community far better than I.

  “So you’re here to restore Thorngate,” he murmured. “Whose idea was that?”

  “The name of my contact is Luna Kemper. If you have questions, I suggest you direct them to her.”

  “Oh, I will,” he said with a tight smile.

  “Is there a problem?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  “Not yet, but I can foresee some tension. Thorngate—the high and dry Thorngate—used to be the Asher family cemetery. After the original graveyard flooded, the burial site was donated to the town, along with enough land for expansion. A lot of people still have strong feelings about it.”

  “The Ashers gave away their family cemetery? That seems a bit extreme. Why didn’t they just donate land for a new one?”

  “Because a gesture was needed after what the old man did.” The green eyes darkened. “An atonement, if you want to know the truth. The irony, of course, is that the ostentatious memorials and family mausoleum only serve to highlight the divide between the Ashers and everyone else in town.”

  “Is Pell Asher still alive?”

  “Oh, yes. Very much so.” I saw another flicker of emotion before he glanced back at the water.

  “What do you do in Asher Falls…if you don’t mind my asking?” I mimicked his earlier question, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I drink,” he said. “And I bide my time.” He turned with a look that sent another shiver skittering along my backbone. There was something in his voice, a dark undercurrent that made me think of drowned cemeteries and long-buried secrets. I wanted to glance away, but his heavy-lidded eyes were disarmingly hypnotic. “I’m Thane Asher, by the way. Heir apparent to the shriveling Asher Empire, at least until Grandfather rewrites his will. He tends to go back and forth between my uncle and me. I’m the fair-haired child this week. If he kicks the bucket before next Thursday, I’m golden.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I merely extended my hand. “Amelia Gray.”

  “A pleasure.” He took my hand and squeezed. His was the warm, smooth palm of the privileged, unmarred by the calluses I’d acquired over the years from clearing brush and lifting headstones.

  My thoughts turned to Devlin once again, and I imagined the stroke of his long, graceful fingers down my back.

  Suppressing a shudder, I tried to pull away from Thane Asher’s grip, but he held me for a moment longer, his gaze locked with mine until the ferry docked with a slight jolt and he freed me.

  “Here we are,” he said cheerfully. “Asher Falls. Welcome to our kingdom, Amelia Gray.”

  Three

  Disembarking behind the minivan, I pulled to the side of the road to reset my navigation system. My windows were down, and a cool wind swept through, carrying the verdant, piney scent of the Upcountry. The dog days had extended into September, and the bee balm and hedge nettle were still blooming, carpeting the meadows in lavender. Rising above the gentle hills of the Piedmont, the area was beautiful, but the landscape of looming mountains, deep shadows and the green-black forest of pine and hemlock was foreign to me. My beloved Lowcountry, with its steamy marshes and briny breezes, seemed a long way from here.

  The roar of an engine drew my attention from the scenery, and I glanced at the road as the black sports car zoomed past my window, leaving a thin cloud of dust and exh
aust in its wake.

  “Welcome to our kingdom,” I muttered as I watched Thane Asher take a sharp curve without slowing. It was an impressive maneuver of reckless abandon, squealing tires and shimmering metallic paint. Then with a whine of the powerful motor, he was gone, and the quiet that settled around me seemed heavy and ominous, as if weighted by some dark enchantment.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at the ferry, mentally retracing my route to Charleston. To Devlin. But I was here now, and there was no turning back.

  Pulling onto the road, I trailed Thane Asher into town.

  * * *

  Asher Falls had once been a picturesque town of cobblestone streets and classic revival-style buildings situated around a formal square shaded and shrouded by live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Quaint was the word that came to mind, and it was only on second glance that one noticed the deteriorating vital signs of a dying community—boarded windows, sagging gutters, the stopped clock in the beautiful old tower.

  I saw no one as I drove around the square. If not for a few scattered vehicles, I might have thought the place deserted. The streets were as silent as a tomb, the storefronts dark and lonely. The whole town had the quiet, forlorn air of the abandoned.

  I pulled into a parking space and got out. Luna had emailed me the address of her real estate office, and I located it easily. But the door was locked, and I saw no sign of life through the window. Pecking on the glass, I waited a moment, then headed next door to the library, an impressive three-story structure with arches and columns reminiscent of some of my favorite buildings in Charleston.

  A girl of about sixteen stood behind the counter sorting through a stack of books. She glanced up as I stepped inside but didn’t offer a smile or a greeting. Instead, she went back to her work, the pixie cut of her silver-blond hair revealing an anemic-looking face.