Page 1 of Barristers & Bones

Chapter 1

Luna

My birthday–and too much tequila–triggered the nightmare. I could usually yank myself awake when the demons stirred, but tonight my guard was down, and my mind threw me back to that dark room where I swam in pain, blood, and thirst.

“Luna, wake up!” Sylvie yelled, shaking my shoulders.

I gasped like a drowning victim coming back to life. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

Sylvie Spade had saved my life that day, and her peculiar, slightly scary family gave me safety and security while I healed. She looked so pretty and sweet, with her wavy blond hair and dimpled smile, but it was complete bullshit. She could be as mean and lethal as any of her cousins.

“Goddamn it,” she breathed, “Ihatewhen you do that. It freaks me the fuck out.”

It freaked me out too. I lay there panting and sweating for a few moments while she muttered next to me. Our apartment sat on the second floor, behind the iconic Palm Desert Oasis Mortuary, a sprawling funeral home compound with its own private cemetery in the center of sunny Las Vegas.

“How come I’m the only one who gets a hangover?” The watery, early-morning light made me squint, and my tongue felt like I’d eaten roadkill and washed it down with battery acid.

“Because you’re a wussy lightweight. Come on, you’re probably dehydrated too.” She patted my leg, then pinched my butt to get me moving. I was too tired to retaliate.

We headed to the kitchen for water and aspirin, and I started digging through the freezer. “How about ice cream for breakfast?” I held up a container. I still felt shaky from the nightmare, and my body craved sugar.

She smirked and grabbed two spoons. “What’s one more bad decision?” So we ate pistachio ice cream from the carton that tasted faintly of freezer burn while watching twoSouth Parkepisodes.

Then Sylvie decided if we were up, she might as well start her workday. “Come on. I already embalmed and bathed Ms. Elwood yesterday. We can do her face and hair.” She dragged me down to the cosmetic preparation room on the other side of the quiet, dim mortuary.

The prep rooms and garage where the bodies were dropped off sat tucked away on the other end of the mortuary. As we walked through the quiet space, the smell of lemon furniture wax and vanilla air freshener filled the air. Filtered, colored light came in through the stained-glass windows and lit the pews.

The Spade family owned the mortuary complex, which Sylvie and her grandfather, Ezra Spade, ran. The House of Spades also owned several other, more questionable businesses around town.

Sylvie was the mortician, and Ezra ran the funeral home. Our other roommate, Alexa, and I sometimes moonlighted as “assistants.” We were both poor law students, and Ezra discounted our rent in return for helping with the larger funerals. I sometimes assisted Sylvie with preparing the bodies, and it was a great setup–except for my occasional queasiness.

She had a separate cosmetic prep room where she kept all her flesh-colored fillers, cosmetics, hair products, and other items lined up on the shelves along the walls used to repair and beautify the bodies. A tray full of surgery-type tools for a little “under the hood” work also sat on her prep table.

At six in the morning, the day after my birthday, I helped Sylvie prepare the embalmed corpse of Ms. Elwood who’d died on the toilet.

“Why do so many people pass away in the bathroom?” I asked as we wheeled her body out of the walk-in refrigerator.

She shrugged. “A postmortem examiner told me when a person has a heart attack or a blood clot, it might feel like a bowel movement. Or the actual bowel movement itself could cause so much pressure, it triggers one.”

We wheeled the gurney to the cosmetic prep room. “What was her cause of death?” I asked.

“The postmortem report stated her heart looked oversized and heavy, so probably a heart attack and age. We’re all going to die somewhere. If I can’t die asleep in my bed, the bathroom isn’t a bad second choice–as long as it’s clean.” The Spade family had a straightforward, pragmatic approach to death.

I turned on the overhead light, chasing away the shadows. “That’s probably why Ezra drinks a glass of prune juice with his breakfast.” Along with being Sylvie's grandfather, Ezra was also my former legal guardian. He got custody of Sylvie and me a few months after I was taken out of my parents’ house, half-dead on a stretcher.

“Yep. Ms. Elwood’s daughter didn’t find her for a few days.”

“What shape was she in?” I murmured as we fastened flesh-colored caps over the eyes.

“Her organs had just started to break down, but it wasn’t bad. Putrefaction hadn’t set in, and besides the usual urine and bowel release, the smells were manageable.” Sylvie kept a container of menthol ointment in her work area, which she wiped under her nose when an overly ripe corpse came in.

I surveyed the face and thought this one might take a little extra work. Ms. Elwood died in her late eighties, and her nose had somehow gotten smashed. She also looked a little sunken and concave, but I knew Sylvie could fix it. She and Ezra were the best at what they did.

The Spade family purchased the property in the early 1960s. First, they built a cemetery and then a sprawling funeral home, which they renovated and upgraded over the years. The Spades and the mortuary had become my home, and I loved my adopted family fiercely even though their level of morbidity and strangeness sometimes rivaled that of the Addams Family.

“Are you ready to do her mouth?” I asked, pulling out cotton gauze, a plastic mouth former, and forceps from a drawer.

“Almost. Thanks.” She snipped the simple suture holding Ms. Elmwood’s mouth together, then pried her jaw apart by placing the heel of her hand on the forehead and pushing down on the chin.

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