MORTAL TIES excerpt: Chapter 1

Lily Yu hadn’t planned to visit the graveyard at sunset.  It just worked out that way.

Mount Hope’s main gates closed at three-thirty, but the pedestrian gates stayed open.  People liked to stop by after work, the guy at the cemetery’s office had said, especially on the deceased’s birthday or other important dates.  No parking available at this hour, though, except for what you could grab along the street.

Lily pulled her government-issue Ford to the curb and checked her rearview mirror.  The white Toyota that had been following her drew close, then cruised on by.  She would wait.  No point in making them anxious by getting out before they could park.   It was bad enough she brought them here when the light was going. Not that they would be spooked by the setting, no more than she was.  The dead weren’t scary.  It was the living you had to watch out for.

While the Toyota hunted a parking place, Lily transferred her penlight from her purse to her pocket.  The day was slipping down towards dusk, and twilight’s a tricky bugger.  In the daytime you know where you are and can see where you’re going.  At night you know you can’t see, not without help—electric help, most likely, from the city, a flashlight, whatever.  You know, so you take precautions.

Twilight blurs the edges.  In the shadow time, it’s easy to mistake what you see, to step wrong, thinking there’s light enough to keep going.  Back when she worked homicide, Lily had arrested people who went that one terrible step too far, confused by a personal twilight of drugs or emotion.  People who never set out to be killers.

But some take that step on purpose.  Some damn well know where the lines are, and cross them deliberately.  Like the bastard whose hearing she’d testified at today.

Goddamn copycats.