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to an open grave.
As though we haven’t been using the place as a playground all night long.
    “Did someone dig this guy up?” Justin bent and ran his fingers over the stone. The letters had mostly eroded, but he found the faint grooves after a moment.
Webb
, they read.
    Val picked up a handful of dirt and let it fall through her fingers. “I don’t think so. The hole’s not big enough for someone trying to get to the coffin.” The hole was maybe two feet all around and looked more like something had exploded up out of the ground than dug down into it.
    “Look there.” She pointed at the edge of the churned earth, where five long, raking lines led into the middle. “I think it’s supposed to look like Mr. or Mrs. Webb climbed out themselves.” She straightened and paced around the grave in a widening circle. “There.” She showed him a bony handprint pressed into the dirt, and some footprints beyond it.
    Justin came to stand beside her, eyes wide. “Are you about to tell me this guy’s a zombie? Because Elly hasn’t taught me the first thing about fighting zombies.”
    Val snickered. “No, since I’ve never met one. I’m pretty sure what we’re looking at here is someone’s idea of a hilarious prank. Doesn’t one of the fraternities scare the shit out of their pledges every Halloween?”
    “Beta Epsilon, yeah.” Justin had rushed them, Val knew, but he never made it past the first couple of weeks. Justin didn’t talk about it, but by the growl in his voice, he was still pissed about whatever had happened. “Ugh, fuck those guys. Can we get out of here before they come back and finish setting up? They’ll probably want to put buckets of pigs’ blood in the trees or something.”
    “All right,” said Val. “Let’s go.”
    “Assholes.”
    “When we get you feeding on real people, maybe I’ll let you bite one.”
    He made an even more grossed-out face than when he’d been drinking the lambs’ blood. “Did you ever notice the smell when they come into Night Owls to buy their CliffsNotes? Those guys bathe in so much of that body spray shit it’s probably seeped into their bloodstreams by now. I’m not eating
that
.”

3
    E LLY LAY ON her back on a plank spread across two ladders, painting runes of warding on the ceiling plaster with a toothpick. She’d found herself restless after leaving Cinda’s house, her mind abuzz with too many questions about the ghoul, who controlled him, how they were doing it. Runework calmed her, the more complex the better. It came to Cavale easy as breathing; Elly needed practice. So she’d driven into Edgewood, presumably to work on runes and calm her spinning mind. Not at all—at all!—for companionship.
    The smell of chocolate chip cookies drifted in from the kitchen. They were being baked by a succubus, which didn’t move the needle on Elly’s strange-o-meter, but the succubus was making them specifically
for her
, which sent the needle well into the red. She wasn’t used to people doing nice things for her.
    A clatter and a squeal almost made her botch the letter she was working on. Sunny ducked into the living room, and when Elly peered down at her from her plank, the short, dark-haired woman stood beneath, stretching up on her toes to offer a spoonful of pilfered cookie dough. The handle of another spoon protruded from Sunny’s mouth; she grinned around it.
    “Raw cookie dough can kill you!” Lia called.
    “Nah,” said Sunny. “I’m not human.” Or at least, that was what it sounded like. The spoon garbled her words a bit.
    Lia poked her head through the doorway. Her blond hair was swept back in a bun, which was a good thing, the way she waved her dough-covered wooden spoon in admonishment. “You’re not, but Elly is.”
    Elly reached for the spoonful of dough Sunny still held up to her. “I’ll take the risk.” The sweet combination of brown sugar and butter and chocolate chips exploded on her tongue, made her
mmmm
in