Chapter One

Fourth generation mortician. That’s a lot of dead bodies.
I thought I’d be proud to carry on the family legacy, but
that was before I knew the job would be hell on my social
life. I mean, who wanted to date a woman who drained blood
on a regular basis and whose scent of choice was embalming
fluid?
Sure, I got a little lonely sometimes. It mostly happened
when I was preparing a body in the middle of the night
instead of snuggled up next to someone warm with a pulse.
But dead bodies were my business. And I hated every fucking
minute of it. I never wanted to take over the family funeral
parlor. I wanted to be a doctor. Well, technically, I was a
doctor, but I preferred to be one for the living.
My parents died early last year, and the gossip and scandal
involved would have broken someone with a lesser
constitution, but I’d managed to hold my head up. Mostly. It
was because of my parents that I’d had an impromptu career
change. The only thing I had left of them was the crumbling
old Victorian I grew up in and Graves Funeral Home—believe
me, it was a hell of a legacy.
I had little choice but to resign my job at the hospital,
pack my bags and move back to Bloody Mary,
Virginia—population 2,902. The good thing about owning a
funeral home in Bloody Mary was that hardly anyone ever
died, despite the rather macabre name. The bad thing about
it was I had a shitload of student loans to pay back and not
a lot of income.
Did I mention the budget cuts?
Ahh, my life was simple before the budget cuts. The mayor’s
decision to be more fiscally conservative left King George
County without a coroner. So, I, J.J. Graves, in a moment of
temporary insanity, volunteered for the job. In all
actuality, I was strong-armed into taking the position out
of a sense of duty to the community and the guilt of
tarnishing my family’s good name. Well, tarnishing it any
more than it already was.
Which brought me here. Alone in my bed in the middle of the
night. My bedroom so cold white puffs of breath clouded
above my face every time I exhaled because I couldn’t afford
to crank the heater above 65 degrees. My toes wiggled and
fought for release beneath the nubby covers I’d tucked under
the mattress too tightly, and goosebumps spread across the
top of my skull and tightened the skin so much that it felt
as if the follicles might snap off.
I’d been wide awake for more than an hour, thinking of my
family, what was left of my legacy, and how much my life in
general sucked. Not for the first time, the thought entered
my mind that it wouldn’t be so terrible if I just packed a
bag and left everything behind me without a word to anyone.
I didn’t have any family to worry over my disappearance. No
children to leave belongings to. Sure my friends would miss
me for awhile. But eventually the people who’d watched me
grow up would only have passing thoughts about that Grave’s
girl whose parents killed themselves. All the while I would
be starting a new life. Hopefully someplace warm.
But like I always did, I immediately dismissed the thought.
It took more courage than I had to start over and leave
everything familiar behind. I needed something in my life
besides a half-assed career and a mountain of debt. A man
would be nice. A man who’d be willing to have sex would be
even better. But chances of that happening were somewhere
between negative four and zero. Not because Bloody Mary
didn’t have its fair share of men, but because I was just
picky. Bloody Mary wasn’t exactly teeming with single males
under the age of forty who had health insurance and all
their own teeth.
I huffed out another white puff of breath and rolled over,
punching my pillow and clearing my mind of all thoughts that
didn’t involve counting sheep. I’d had trouble sleeping
since I’d moved home. Maybe it was because the house was
empty and made weird noises and my imagination assumed the
cold blasts of air and the rattling pipes were the haints of
all my ancestors shaking their heads in pity. Or maybe it
was because the mattress was old and lumpy. Who the hell
knew? But I’d learned to function on just a few hours of
sleep when I was in medical school, so I was used to having
bags under my eyes and skin that looked like it never saw
the light of day.
The silence of the house smothered me—a heap of decaying
wood and rotting shingles that crushed me with the weight of
neglect and responsibility—so I burrowed under the covers,
searching for peace of mind and the comfortable spot on the
mattress that always seemed to elude me. I’d almost talked
myself into getting up and starting a pot of coffee when the
phone warbled on the bedside table.
I cursed out a mumbled, “shit” in surprise and flailed under
the covers so my sheets resembled something along the lines
of a straight jacket. My pulse jumped and throbbed in the
side of my neck, and each pounding beat marched through the
synapses of my brain until I became lightheaded with
something I recognized as fear. I closed my eyes and let out
a slow breath.
The only time I got calls in the middle of the night was
when someone died. I hated death. I hated that my parents
had left such a massive responsibility on my shoulders. And
most of all I hated that I was the only one the dead could
turn to. I missed the living. The dead made me think of
things I wasn’t quite ready to face.