The Gravedigger's Son - Darynda Jones Page 0,1

Nowhere to advertise. No one to give her business card to without it slipping through their fingers.

Amber was part private investigator and part psychic, for lack of a better term. Not a great combination, but the law firm from which most of her business derived didn’t care about her extracurricular activities. They’d realized she was good at her job a long time ago. Well, three months ago. But it had taken Amber three months before that just to convince them to give her a chance. They’d been keeping a roof over her head and enchiladas in her belly ever since.

That was all she cared about. The roof over her gorgeous two-story Adobe, and the food this incredible town had to offer. She’d missed Santa Fe when she moved away for college. More than she would’ve imagined.

The rest of her income stemmed from rich widows wanting their cards read. Like her departed clientele, that part of her business was all word-of-mouth. She didn’t advertise, but as with her PI biz, the clients started rolling in once she got established.

Thus, her big chance with this departed client. She showered at the speed of lightly toasted cinnamon bread and pulled her hair into a bun on the top of her head, ruing the length like she did every morning. She’d been threatening—no one in particular—to cut it off for years, and yet, she didn’t.

Deep down, she knew why: Because he’d liked it. He Who Must Not Be Named. He’d always loved her hair. He would bury his face in it. Tell her it smelled like rain. Felt like water cascading through his fingers. The fact that she’d been keeping her hair long years after he left her a fetal, quivering mass of Jell-O irked Amber to no end.

It hadn’t kept him here.

It certainly wouldn’t bring him back.

She shook off the memory, the same one she had every morning about this time, and put on a cozy, shawl-collared sweater, leggings, and her favorite ankle-high boots—scrunched leather with a buckle. The sweater, like the boots, was a deep, bone black. They matched her hair. She used to wear a lot of cerulean to bring out the color of her eyes, but she’d gotten over that in college. Nobody cared what color your eyes were if you never made eye contact. Another habit she’d picked up after the impromptu departure of He Who Must Not Be Named. Another habit she was struggling to overcome.

“Coffee?” Kyle asked when she emerged from her fortress of solitude and walked the five-ish steps to her kitchen.

“Part of a complete breakfast.” She popped a pod into the coffeemaker, pressed the start button, then gave her personal assistant all of her attention. Or, well, most of it. Some of it still lingered on He Who Must Not Be Named. She pressed her fingernails into her palms as punishment.

Kyle consulted the clipboard she’d never seen him without. The one he perpetually scribbled on. But he never seemed to flip the page or run out of ink, so what, exactly, he consulted was anyone’s guess. She’d always wanted to ask how a clipboard and pen had ended up in the afterworld with him, but Kyle was a talker. She didn’t know if she was ready for that conversation. Mostly because it could last for hours.

“Okay,” he said, pointing at…no clue. “Besides Mrs. Rodriguez downstairs, Mrs. Harmon called and would like an emergency reading this morning.”

By called, he meant that Mrs. Harmon had left a message on the machine, an ancient piece of technology she only kept around so Kyle could hear the incoming messages and report back to her if anything needed her immediate attention. Like, you know, a paying client.

Amber tried not to cringe. She failed. While Mrs. Harmon was her best-paying client, besides the Bristol and Partners Law Firm, the woman was also quite gullible. She’d been taken to the cleaners by countless charlatans and compared their readings to Amber’s, questioning everything Amber told her.

One delightful piece of work named Starchild had garnered a special kind of hatred from Amber—an emotion she rarely entertained. She’d considered sending Kyle over to haunt her, but the charlatan would only use it as a ploy to get more clients. She would say she’d been contacted by the dead and was helping one of them go into the light. She would bask in the attention. She would probably even start a GoFundMe page for the departed’s family. Aka, her pockets.

But enough about her. Today was a