Lost Secrets
an excerpt

Prologue

There is an ‘end’ in friendship. You’d think after all this time I would be used to it, but immortal doesn’t mean wise, or even educated. It just means old.

The sun was setting as I pulled the car into the parking lot outside the cemetery, and I yanked the hat off and tossed it into the backseat, my hair clinging damply to my neck.

I locked the car door behind me, almost absently. Very few people drive cars now, and even fewer know how to hotwire them, but stranger things have happened to me. I push open the gates to the graveyard, the hinges squeaking slightly. I think that it’s an unwritten law that the hinges to graveyards have to squeak – it certainly seems that all of the graveyards I’ve been to do.

The wind picked up, and I shivered slightly, hugging my jacket closer to my body. It wasn’t a true chill, just a psychological one. I wander through the headstones, pausing here and there to look at names, dates, and carvings. Here’s the stone for Mary Frances Quivering, 1921-1999, Beloved Wife, Mother, and Grandmother. Beside her is her husband, Thomas Neville Quivering, 1920-2001, Beloved Husband, Father and Grandfather. I’ve always thought that those words encompass what life means to the end. Nothing better can be said.

Slowly I meander over to the east side of the cemetery. Here’s the hideous angel over the gravestone of Laurel Wendy Johnson. The first time I saw it, I tried to tear it down with my own hands. Spent three nights in jail until my cousin took pity on me and bailed me out, and then I had to do sixty hours of community service. Now I just live in hope that a strong wind will blow it over (and I have some friends who could do such a favor for me, for a price. Don’t think I haven’t considered it). It’s not just the statue that offends me; it’s the offense it offers to those that I come here to visit. Neither received the same regard from their family, but since they’ve gone on, I am offended on their behalf.

I’m unable to avoid the farthest corner of the east side forever, though. I kneel down between the two graves I’ve come to visit. I bring no flowers – my friends didn’t care for flowers, or useless gestures. They preferred actions, and the actions I’ve taken since their deaths would hopefully satisfy them.

Elizabeth Anne Lawrence, one of the gravestones reads. Betsy. Unbidden, an image of her came to mind. A spitfire, stubborn as mule, and one of the most loyal people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. She was gifted, struggling with the gift when we first met, but when faced with overwhelming evidence, she stuck with her practical nature, her common sense.

And next to Betsy lies her cousin, Abby. A year younger than Betsy, Abby was always the one who wanted to see what other people missed, to be able to believe in something beyond the mundane. I hope that she did so before she died. I’ll never be sure…

“Lillian.” My name, spoken into the dead of the night, caught my attention some hours later, and I turned to see a shadowed figure standing between me and the exit – and my car.

“Yes?” I managed to keep my voice from shaking through the dint of long hours of practice – one doesn’t show fear in the Vampiric Council, after all.

“It’s time.” The figure steps into the light of the moon, and I recognize him. Letting out a breath, I push myself to my feet.

“Let’s go, then.” Just before leaving the graveyard, I look back to where Betsy and Abby lie. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, in a thin breath of air, so quietly that not even my companion should have been able to hear me. As I turn to leave, I hear, as though it were just the whispering of leaves, Betsy’s laugh.