Anatomy: A Love Story(51)

“Leave it,” Jack whispered. “It’s too dark out there to see it anyway.” What Jack didn’t say was that if whoever was out there made his way close enough to see the body, he would also be close enough to look down into the open grave and see the two of them, shivering against the chill of the night.

The footsteps were impossibly close now: the creaking sound of boots on wet grass sounded as though they were only a few cemetery rows away, but neither Jack nor Hazel dared to check. And it wasn’t just one set of footsteps; Hazel listened intently, and then raised three fingers to Jack. There were at least three men walking together through the rows of tombs side by side.

The footsteps stopped. Again, Jack and Hazel glanced at each other. There was nothing left for them to do. They could run, but climbing out of the hole would take a moment, and by then, they might be ambushed, as well as outnumbered.

“It’s fine,” Jack whispered. “Whatever it is, it’s all right.” Without thinking, he lifted an arm and placed it across Hazel’s shoulder.

She looked back at him with a small smile. Hazel shifted her weight and heard the sound of her bootheel on wood. They had dug all the way to the coffin. But there was nothing to do about it now. All they could do was wait, and hope whoever was out there wouldn’t walk close enough to realize there was a hole in the ground containing two petrified young people.

Hazel pressed her shoulders up against Jack’s, partly to avoid the chill leaching from the moist earth through her jacket, but partly because his warmth—the solidity of his presence—made her less dizzy with fear. It anchored her. They were there, together. Whatever—whoever—was out there, neither of them would have to face it alone.

They remained motionless, listening to footsteps that seemed to approach and retreat for what felt like hours. Hazel’s joints ached, but she didn’t dare move.

Finally, the footsteps made a full retreat.

The only sounds were the cawing of a night bird and the whistle of the wind through the rows of headstones. Even so, Jack and Hazel kept still, huddled together in the hollow earth above a coffin.

A thin crescent moon had risen in the sky, sharp as a scalpel, and by its light Hazel examined Jack’s face: the speckles of silt along his nose, his strange hawklike eyes, the thin line of his lips, and eyelashes darker and longer than hers, curling so that they almost reached his perpetually furrowed brows.

Feeling her gaze on him, Jack turned. “I wonder if—”

Hazel leaned in and kissed him. She hadn’t anticipated the moment, hadn’t even imagined what it would be like, but when he turned to her, just inches away, she felt pulled toward him like gravity. It was like magnetism, the cold of her lips seeking the warmth of his. Jack’s eyes were open in surprise, but then he swallowed the rest of the sentence and kissed her back, hard and urgent.

Jack wrapped his arms around Hazel and kissed her as if she were his only source of oxygen. His hands were in her hair, running up her neck, along her jawline. His fingertips traced the velvet lobes of her perfect ears. Neither had known it could feel like this, that it was supposed to feel like this: effortless. It was as if the other’s lips were the only place they’d ever belonged, and fate itself had brought them to this very moment, terrified and aching in a half-dug grave, just so the two of them could come together.

When Hazel pulled away, her face was flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Jack said. Hazel curled up against him, the curve of her spine fitting perfectly against his chest. Jack lowered an arm over her, and they watched the moon and listened to the sounds of the night.



* * *



THEY WOKE UP TO A LOW gray sky and a priest staring down at them. Jack scrambled to his feet and crawled out of their small trench, which looked even narrower by daylight. The dry earthen walls had crumbled inward while they slept. Jack extended a hand down to Hazel and pulled her onto the grass.

“Morning, Father!” Jack said cheerfully. “Lovely morning. Bit of a fog, though you won’t hear any complaining from me.”

“I can explain,” Hazel said.

The priest’s eyes widened in terror. He looked at the mutilated corpse lying naked on the ground, and then back at Hazel and Jack, and then back at the body, and back at them. “Be gone, unholy demons!” he shouted. “Be gone, ye the dead, from this world of the living!” He bent his ancient knees and picked up a clod of dirt. He flung it at Jack and Hazel. “Shoo! Shoo! This be holy and consecrated ground. Flee!”

Hazel lifted her hands to protect her eyes. “Sir—Father, this is all a misunderstanding—”

But Jack interrupted: “Yes! We be the undead woken! And we’ll be”—he tugged on Hazel’s arm—“going now. Arghhhh!”—he wiggled his arms in the air—“Your holiness is just too powerful for us!” And then he hissed like a snake.

Before either of them could see the priest’s reaction, they turned and raced toward the trees. Mercifully, Miss Rosalind was still waiting for them, cranky and ready for her next meal, but happy enough to take the pair of them back to Hawthornden.

Someone, three someones, had been walking in the graveyard at night, someone was taking resurrection men, and something horrible had happened to a dead man’s eyes—but Hazel couldn’t think about any of that now. The thoughts swirled in her brain and dissolved in her exhaustion like cream being stirred into weak tea. All she could manage at the moment was staying upright and awake on Miss Rosalind with Jack Currer’s hands on her waist, fantasizing about her bed with coals warming the sheets, and Cook’s freshly baked fish pie, and the way Jack’s lips had felt on hers.