Page 50 of Grave Humor

I waved the handkerchief and took the time to wipe down the cover before picking the book up and cleaning the back and spine. Tucking it under my arm, I dusted off its pedestal before returning the volume to its rightful place. With more care than I bet Director Hammel gave to anything, I eased the cover open.

Runic pictures rather than words decorated the first page, reminding me of a mix of Mesoamerican and Egyptian. The pristine sheets rustled when I turned them. “Vellum?”

“I’m not sure what it’s made of.”

Interesting. I returned to the first two pages. If I considered modern conventions, the first would be the book’s title, and the next few pages would be the chapter listings, which took up four complete pages. “How many chambers are there in here?”

“A hundred and fifty-four.”

I counted entries on the opening pages. Sure enough, there were a hundred and fifty-four entries after the potential title page. “It’s probably a registry of the residents of the catacombs.” I flipped through, and each page had a few runes and images and a few lines to accompany them. “Maybe their name and a description of who they were?”

“Interesting. But why would it be so deep within the catacombs? I would have thought they’d store such a thing near the entry.”

I bit my tongue, as I wanted to remind him we kept our registries of our deceased guests under lock and key away from public view. Instead, I shrugged. Leaving such a treasure in the catacombs annoyed me—especially when I knew someone who might at least know the language the text was written in. “Mind if I hold onto this?”

“If it makes you happy and keeps you from causing me trouble.”

I hoped the dead didn’t take offense to me lifting something of theirs from their resting place. If they did, I’d put it back without asking Eoghan about the contents of the book. If it was in a language he knew, it would be invaluable to him.

If it wasn’t, I’d ask the devil to satisfy my curiosity.

“What’s important to you in here?”

“This way,” Director Hammel ordered.

I expected another hike, but he guided me through a few short hallways to a set of three steps leading up to a larger room. Instead of the niches for burials, three sarcophagi waited inside, their covers broken and littering the floor. Inside waited linen-wrapped skeletons.

“Who are they?”

Director Hammel stepped around the broken pieces of stone and he gestured to the central figure. “These are the mortal remains of gods, and I mean to claim the power from their bones upon their resurrection.”

Okay. Everything made more sense. I dealt with a madman, and I regretted I hadn’t fallen prey to my impulse to loot an ancient skeleton for a sword and dispatch the idiot then and there. If the skeleton got up, seeking vengeance for its disturbed rest, I’d just blame the bastard and hope for forgiveness.

Then again, while I no longer had my phone, I had a secret.

I wondered if the devil liked me enough to pay me another visit. Deliberately provoking Lucy might count as idiotic, but if I couldn’t rescue myself, I’d go for the big guns and use him as a method of rescuing myself.

“How do you think Eoghan can help you with these gods?”

“I need the power that awakened him. He’s just evidence the power is here somewhere.”

“Would it help if I knew someone I could ask?” I could call Darlene, introduce myself, and talk to the devil that way. Maybe I didn’t have a high school diploma, but I could rub a few of my brain cells together and get a charge.

“How could you possibly know someone you could ask?”

“Through the CDC,” I lied.

Oh, I could ask the angel’s wife. That would work even better.

“No.”

Oh, well. I’d just have to invoke the devil’s name and see what sort of hell I could unleash on Earth. What was a little hell down in a catacomb with the body of an angel and three gods?

I needed to take my rather grave sense of humor and introduce it to the business end of a shovel. Life would be easier without death hanging over my head all the time.

“What gods were they?”

“I don’t know their names. I only know they are divines, and their bones still sing of their divinity, just like the angel still registers as an angel to the scanners.”