The Visitor (Graveyard Queen, #4)(64)

Fumbling with the ribbon around my neck, I pulled the skeleton key free from my shirt and clutched it in my fist, willing whatever power it contained to help thwart those insidious voices inside my head.

Nothing happened at first and I thought the earlier incident must have truly been a fluke. But after a moment, the voices faded to a whisper. The pressure eased. Once more the key had temporarily locked the door to the dead world.

Released from the spell, I sat up and squinted into the sunlight. The entire event had lasted only a matter of moments, but I had the unsettling notion that a chunk of time had passed me by. Fear pricked at the base of my spine as I rose on rickety legs. The sky was cloudless, but the air had the same electric calm that came before a storm.

I’d dropped Dr. Shaw’s phone in the grass and now I grabbed it and tucked it away in a pocket. As I turned to retrace my steps to the gate, a feeling came over me that I was no longer alone. Someone had entered the cemetery without my notice.

My gaze swept over the walls, the oak tree and finally the tabletop tomb. I saw someone lurking behind the domed lid and my breath quickened as I recognized Micah Durant’s shimmering hair.

Nervously, I called out to him. “Hello?”

He didn’t answer, just stood staring out at me through the gloom.

“My name is Amelia Gray,” I said as I began inching toward the gate. “I saw you at the house a little while ago. Your grandmother invited me to take a look at the cemetery.”

I could hear the drone of a hive somewhere in the woods behind him where earlier I’d heard no sound at all. I’d no sooner recognized the buzzing than Micah tilted his head skyward and slowly lifted his outstretched arms.

He meant to summon the bees, maybe even the workers from the same colony as the one that had stung me in Louvenia’s driveway. If they zeroed in on the lingering pheromones, there would be no running away from them, no place to hide from them.

All of this passed through my mind in the space of a heartbeat. I tried to concentrate my every thought on survival as I mentally sifted through the contents of my pockets. The phone would do me no good. We were miles from anyone. The pepper spray would only help if I could spray it directly in Micah’s eyes, and I had no intention of allowing him to get that close to me. If I could make it through the gate and into the maze, I might be able to elude him, but I wouldn’t be able to outrun the bees. I had to find shelter and quickly.

I felt the crawl of tiny feet at the back of my neck, on my arm and in my hair. And then something very strange happened. Extraordinary even by my standards. A terrible noise arose within the walls of the cemetery as a winged horde descended from the branches of the live oak.

I thought at first Micah had summoned the bees and my arms instinctively flew up to cover my face and head. Then I realized that honeybees did not make the kind of high-pitched whine that sprang forth from the swirling brood, a sound that could only be described as a chain saw slicing through concrete.

Cicadas.

Thousands and thousands of cicadas.

The insect cloud grew so dense, I could no longer see Micah, and it came to me in a flash that this was the cover and distraction I needed.

Engulfed in that clattering cyclone, I fled from the cemetery.





Thirty-Six

The din of the cicadas followed me through the gate, but once I entered the maze, the sound died away as if the graveyard walls were somehow able to contain it. I couldn’t help but think those cicadas had been summoned. I wondered if Mott had been there all along lurking in the shadows, perhaps crawling through the walls as she observed my every move. A wizened guardian whose intent I had yet to determine.

But I wouldn’t contemplate her motives at the moment. I needed to keep my wits about me so that I could find my way back to the road. Before I’d gone too deeply into the maze, I paused to gather my bearings, mentally reversing Owen’s instructions. I heard no sounds of pursuit, human or otherwise, and after a while, I began to wonder if Micah had only meant to frighten me away.

I still couldn’t come up with a rational explanation for Dr. Shaw’s absence unless he and his investigator had also been scared off. I found that prospect unlikely, but wherever they’d gone to, I needed to find them.

I’d been traveling through the maze at a good clip, senses on alert for any threatening sound or movement when I ran into a dead end. I had been careful with my turns, but somehow I must have missed one in my rush to get away. I backtracked a few steps only to realize that I was hopelessly disoriented.

Stopping to regroup, I reminded myself that I’d been lost in a laurel bald once and had managed to find my way out. That particular thicket had covered the whole side of a mountain, the vegetation so dense in places that I’d had to drop to my hands and knees and crawl through the narrow channels with a killer on my trail.

This maze had been planted by my great-grandmother, and though it seemed large from the inside, I doubted it covered much more than a few acres. Since the cemetery lay directly south of where I’d left my car, all I had to do was use the position of the sun and the compass app on my phone to work my way out.

With that plan in mind, I resumed my journey, taking the time to carefully chart a new course each time I came to a dead end, heading due north whenever possible. As I made my way through, I tried to listen for snapping twigs or hurrying footsteps—or the drone of bees—but all was silent inside the hedges.