Page 77 of Grave Robbing and Other Hobbies (Grave Concerns 1)

When we took a few steps away, Hunter finally let me go.

I turned to face him, forcing him to stop. “Did she really call me athat?”

“They don’t have a great love for humans, Ava. Why do you think they live here?”

“Where is here?”

Grant held his hand out and pointed first to the top, then to the bottom of his hand. “This is the living world, and this is the underworld. He spread his fingers and pointed to the space between. “We’re somewhere around here. It’s like a tiny universe contained in the folds of the living world. There are a few of them around.”

“Like purgatory?”

Hunter shuddered hard. “No. This place follows the basic laws of the living realm. It’s like a pocket of space existing there. Purgatory is neither the living world or the dead and it is a placeno onewants to ever go…and for me to say that?”

He left the rest of it unsaid.

Grant nodded to our left. “Come on, let’s go see Serrish. The less time we spend here, the better.”

Given their reaction to me, that seemed a fair statement, so I followed when Grant started to move again.

We went down a trail, wide enough for the three of us to walk side by side with rocks lining the way. Tents sat off the main trail, and campfires burned everywhere. People moved, men and women who all looked similar to Anya, with the same features and green eyes. Their hair, their clothes, height and build all changed but those green eyes never did, and theyallstared at me.

“What are they?” I whispered to Hunter.

He leaned in to answer as we walked. “The Elder Ones. The over-reaching word would be fae, but there are different types—druids, sprits, nymphs. They’ve mostly kept to themselves, first in out-of-the-way areas and, as humans spread, in pockets like this one.”

“Is that why they look so weird?”

Grant snorted. “This is why I said not to talk, Ava. They look different because they didn’t start out as human. The ones you’re used to, we all started out human and changed. The Elder Ones are born what they are, and while they have exceedingly long lives, most aren’t immortal. So this is what they look like.”

“So maybe don’t insult the beings who can kill us and already don’t like you, huh?” Hunter added.

We walked farther, and despite moving through different trails, taking places where it forked left or right, Grant seemed to know exactly where we were headed. At the end sat a white tent, but this one wasn’t off the trail as all the others had been. Instead, it was placed at the end, as if the trail always led only there. It was A-framed, with a tall center, sides that sloped down and a center cut in the front flap. On the outside, it didn’t appear that it would hold more than a couple people comfortably, and I suspected Hunter would need to bend down to enter it.

Grant held open the flap and Hunter entered first with me behind him.

And the inside was nothing the outside would have prepared me for. Inside the tent was large and spacious, with a ceiling plenty high enough for even Hunter to stand straight and a spread-out, spacious seating area. On a couch that faced us was who I assumed was Serrish. She had the same features as the other fae I’d seen, but somehow, they fit her better. She had long hair so blonde that it looked white and tumbled down in waves to her lower back. Her eyes had the same green color, but she’d used some sort of eyeliner around them to make them pop. She had on a flower dress, much like the others, though hers was tight and low-cut in the front. Instead of bangles up her arms, she had leather cuffs and small pieces of what looked like vine winding up the forearm and to her shoulder.

She beamed as she looked between Hunter and Grant, but that pleasure drifted away the moment she spotted me.

Hunter spoke up to try and head off the complaint. “This is Ava.”

Serrish pressed her lips together, but she nodded at the seats across from her.

A hand on the small of my back got me moving, and I ended up seated between Grant and Hunter.

“You didn’t tell me what you wanted,” she said to Hunter.

“I wanted to ask in person. It isn’t something I trusted normal lines of communication with.”

Her eyebrow arched up, as if suddenly interested. “Well, you are rarely boring. What brings you here?”

“I believe spirits are disappearing, and I need you to see if they’ve passed to the other side.”

Serrish’s long hair tumbled over her shoulder as she titled her head. “Missing? Spirits don’t just go missing.”

“And yet they have.”

“You say that becauseshesays so?” She nodded at me as though I were a pet we were all discussing but wouldn’t dare talk directly to.

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