Copyright © M.M. Crumley 2024

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  Lone Ghost Publishing LLC.

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  Author: Crumley, M.M.

  Title: THE HOUSE OF GRAVES: AND HE WALKED A CROOKED MILE

  Target Audience: Adult

  ISBN: 9798329353570

  Subjects:

  Urban Fantasy/ Horror Comedy

  This is a work of fiction, which means it’s made up. Names, characters, peoples, locales, and incidents (stuff that happens in the story) are either gifts of the ether, products of the author’s resplendent imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or dying, businesses or companies in operation or defunct, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Character List

  Tessa Graves (norm): our main protagonist, lead detective of Graves, Graves, & Graves

  Ollie Graves (norm): Tessa's aunt and total badass

  Gisele Graves (norm): Tessa's grandma and author extraordinaire

  Curtis Nash (troll): Tessa's friend and partner

  Alex Baudelaire (witch): Virgil was working for before he died

  Amos the Betrayer Amulet: an artifact that protects the wearer from body magic

  Arthur Graves (norm): Virgil and Ollie's brother

  Badri (elf): the Graves family's cook

  BCA (organization): Bureau of Cryptid Affairs, no longer exists

  Blackwater: prison that resides in the grey space; Curtis was inside it for 70 years

  Bosch (norm): previous head of the BCA

  Cadwel Wolves (wolf shapeshifters): previous client of Graves

  Cecily (imp): helped Ollie retrieve her poisons in book 1

  Dal (tiger shifter): Julian's best friend, dead

  Della (witch): Mrs. Jury's adopted daughter; she sees true shadows

  Doc Holliday (norm): an old family friend, hero of the Immortal Doc Holliday Series

  Dulcis Hotel: Doc's home

  Fernsby (witch): Denver's leading hypnotist

  Floure LaRoche (Roma): Julian's mom

  Frank (norm): former employee of Graves, Graves, and Graves

  Hand of Redemption: an artifact that can only be wielded by one who is worthy

  Iona: heroine in one of Gisele's books

  Jarmen (boglet): supplies Ollie with her poisons

  Julian LaRoche (Roma): sells information in the Hidden

  Lloyd McQueen (ogre): business with much power inside the Hidden

  Luc (witch): Alex Baudelaire sent after Tessa in book 4, she declined

  Magistratus: Hidden police force

  Magnus (Myhanava): the Graves family butler

  Maude (witch): librarian helping Gisele

  Mira (tiger shifter): Julian's best friend's wife

  Mitcham (Zeniu): previous tetrarch of the Hidden; Doc book 2

  Mr. Lexi (Menehune): puzzle box maker Tessa saved from the patron's control

  Mr. Prescott (?): the deceased owner of Prescott Furniture Company

  Mr. Treyman (?): Mr. Prescott's business manager

  Mrs. Jury (witch): Thomas Jury's mother, head of the witches council

  Mrs. Prescott (?): hired Tessa in book 4 to discover who was blackmailing her

  Ms. Liddell: an alias Tessa used in book 4

  Phillip Jury (witch): Thomas Jury's father; witch responsible for Curtis's imprisonment, dead

  Pops (Roma): Julian LaRoche's father

  Rishma (wood devil): bartender at the Strong Arm Tavern

  Sagena Redgrove (Takaheni): Simon's sister, head of the Magistratus

  Samit (tiger shifter): Mira and Dal's son

  Selina LaRoche (norm): Julian's adopted sister

  Silas Graves (norm): founded Graves, Graves, and Graves

  Simon Redgrove (Takaheni): Hidden businessman, tetrarch of the Hidden

  The Patron (witch): Aleister Graves, main client of Graves, Graves, & Graves

  Thomas Jury (witch): friend of Doc's

  Trish Owens (Worm): worked for the patron, Tessa killed in book 3

  Virgil Graves (norm): Tessa's father, deceased

  Weldon Graves (norm): Gisele's husband, deceased

  M.M. Crumley Book List

  Urban Fantasy

  THE IMMORTAL DOC HOLLIDAY SERIES

  BOOK 1: HIDDEN

  BOOK 2: COUP D'ÉTAT

  BOOK 3: RUTHLESS

  BOOK 4: INSTINCT

  BOOK 5: ROGUES

  BOOK 6: EMPIRE

  BOOK 7: OMENS

  BOOK 8: CHASM

  BOOK 9: FERAL

  BOOK 10: OBLIVION

  BOOK 11: RELENTLESS

  BOOK 12: REQUIEM

  BOOK 13: HELLION

  BOOK 14: SHADOWS

  BOOK 15: INDEBTED

  BOOK 16: FATHOM

  THE HOUSE OF GRAVES SERIES

  BOOK 1: THREE LITTLE GRAVES & THE BIG BAD WOLF

  BOOK 2: OVER THE RIVER & THROUGH THE WOOD

  BOOK 3: FIRE BURN & CAULDRON BUBBLE

  BOOK 4: A HUNTING, A HUNTING WE WILL GO

  BOOK 5: AND HE WALKED A CROOKED MILE

  THE LEGEND OF ANDREW RUFUS SERIES

  BOOK 1: DARK AWAKENING

  BOOK 2: BONE DEEP

  BOOK 3: BLOOD STAINED

  BOOK 4: BURIAL GROUND

  BOOK 5: DEATH SONG

  BOOK 6: FUNERAL MARCH

  BOOK 7: WARPATH

  Writing as M.M. Boulder

  Psych Thrillers

  THE LAST DOOR

  MY BETTER HALF

  THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

  MY ONE AND ONLY

  WE ALL FALL DOWN

  To find me on Facebook, just search for M.M. Crumley

  Visit my website at www.mmcrumley.com

  AND HE WALKED A CROOKED MILE

  M.M. Crumley

  To Truth

  To the power of Belief

  To being more

  To pushing past the pain and the programming

  To doing something, anything, to make the world a better place

  To Tessa

  Prologue

  Aleister Graves reread the final line of Tessa's latest report. It was certainly more substantial than her previous reports had been, but it was still full of half-truths and lies.

  With a heavy sigh, he tossed the report to the side. It fluttered towards the floor, then caught fire and burned so completely that there wasn't even any ash left to fall upon the boards.

  He tapped his finger on his desk while he considered his options. He could easily kill her, but that would negate nearly thirty years of dedicated focus. Thirty years was a mere drop in the bucket, and he didn't mind that over much. The real trouble lay in the death of Graves, Graves, and Graves, Hunc Quaesitorem.

  If he killed Tessa, Graves would also die, and that was unacceptable. He refused to waste another two hundred years building what he had already built once.

  Virgil had never understood why Tessa was important. He had thought any child, a male child specifically, would be enough to carry on the Graves name. He didn't understand that it had to be blood. It always had to be blood.

  There was always Olive Graves, but Aleister suspected it might be a little late to mold her to his will now. The one time he had suggested that Weldon bring her to one of their meetings, Weldon had said firmly, and in a tone that had brooked no argument, "Gisele gave you two boys; the girl is hers."

  Aleister could have forced the issue, but Weldon was truly a good servant; and since he had already provided Aleister with two children, he had allowed Weldon's brief moment of disrespect. If he had only known how short the boys would fall.

  He shook his head in disgust. Even with his blood in their veins, Virgil and Arthur combined hadn't been half the man Weldon had been. In fact, when she was functioning properly, Tessa put them both to shame as well.

  And since they were both dead anyway, and Ollie was too old to fashion, Tessa would have to do for now.

  Her rebellion wouldn't last long. He was getting close to the artifact known only as the Source, and once he had his hands on it, Tessa would finally bend to his will. She would finally stop fighting him. She would finally accept her duty and do as he told her.

  It wouldn't be long, and he was nothing if not patient.

  There was a soft, but certain knock on his study door.

  "Enter," Aleister said.

  The door swung open revealing a young boy. The child exhibited an excellent facade of confidence; but, to Aleister's satisfaction, beneath the facade, the boy was trembling with fear.

  "I am going up to bed, Father," the boy said.

  His diction was precise. Perfect even. And he spoke in Greek. No small task for a child of six.

  "Very well, Aaren," Aleister replied.

  The boy made a carefully measured nod, backed away from the doorway, and closed the door.

  Aleister returned his attention to his desk. He didn't need Tessa for much longer, just long enough to establish Aaren as her successor. It had taken him nearly seven hundred years to
do it, but he had finally fathered a witch.

  Tessa was just a bit of chaff along the way, and he would not hesitate to discard her once she was no longer needed. Just as he had discarded the other children with no part in his plan. Just as he would eventually discard Olive. He would allow for no loose ends, and any child who carried his blood was by definition a loose end.

  He had learned to be careful over the years. When dealing with witches, it amused him to be careful.

  He could still smell the stew of humanity that had surrounded him as a child, but even though he had been born to a lowly whore in a filthy London street, it had not taken him long to realize that he was nothing like everyone else. He was not one of the masses. He was different. Special.

  For years he had thought he was the only one, but then he had seen them. The Jury family.

  The paper near Aleister's hand caught on fire, but he paid it little heed.

  He loathed the Jurys. With their pure blood and their special rules and their rituals. He was better than all of them, and he had proved it by controlling everything they held dear. They thought they controlled the Hidden, but they were wrong. He controlled the Hidden. He controlled them.

  They had rejected him, but now they came to him, begging for favors. If only they knew.

  A burst of fresh heat waved out from the fireplace.

  For over two hundred years, he had held the Jurys in the palm of his hand, and as long as Tessa didn't do anything stupid, he would continue to manipulate and control them.

  The mere idea of Tessa doing something stupid made him seethe with rage. She was his. She belonged to him. She should have no thought inside her head except pleasing him.

  He calmed himself by burning one of the birds in the aviary across from him and reminded himself that Tessa wouldn't fight him for much longer. The artifact would grant him ultimate control of her mind; and then all he had to do was wait just a while longer, just until Aaren was old enough to take his rightful place as the head of Graves, Graves, and Graves.

  What was time to him? Nothing.

  Chapter 1

  "This makes no sense," Tessa Graves said wearily as she dropped her head onto the Strong Arm Tavern's bar top. "We have a name for the patron, we have a face, and we even know who he's masquerading as. How is it that we still can't find him?"

  "I think it would be a mistake to assume he's stupid," Curtis rumbled.

  "He is stupid!" Tessa snapped. "Just not as fucking stupid as I want him to be!"

  "Whiskey?" Curtis offered.

  "Yes," Tessa sighed. "The whole goddamn bottle."

  She heard Curtis slide the bottle towards her, and she grabbed it before lifting her head just enough to guzzle some down.

  She was beginning to worry.

  For one moment, she had felt so triumphant. She'd had him. Name, face, occupation. What more did she need? She was Tessa Graves, premier investigator. She always found her man, always. Always solved her cases, always.

  She took another drink.

  "We'll find him," Curtis assured her.

  "Yeah," Tessa murmured. "Sure we will."

  The pain in her head was vibrating with such intensity that she could hardly stand to lower it back down, but she did anyway. This was her thinking pose, head on wood. She never failed to come up with a good idea when she was in this position.

  "Do you remember when the Cadwel wolves attacked you here?" Curtis asked good-naturedly.

  Tessa rolled her eyes, even though they were closed, and said, "No."

  "It wasn't that long ago," Curtis teased.

  "Feels like years," she muttered.

  And it did. She could barely remember those old almost pain-free days. Or a time before Curtis.

  "I can still see the horror on your face the first time I changed," he said, humor coloring his tone.

  Since Curtis obviously wasn't going to let her sulk, Tessa sighed, sat up, and took a drink.

  "I take it you don't have an aversion to Julian's thing?" Curtis asked with a chuckle.

  Heat flooded Tessa's cheeks, and she pinched her thigh in an attempt to redirect it, but it didn't work.

  "I don't… I mean… It's not… Shit," she muttered before draining the bottle and gesturing for Rishma to get her another one.

  With a rather wide and self-satisfied grin, Rishma headed her way. When he reached her, he pulled out a bottle from under the counter and held it out in front of her.

  Tessa reached for it, but stopped herself.

  "What's that?" she snapped.

  "Troll whiskey," Rishma replied with a smirk.

  "And why does it have that label?" Tessa demanded.

  "It's a new line. And if you'll pose for the poster, you can have a cut of the profits," Rishma said hopefully. "It's already very popular. Even the toffs are buying it."

  "What the hell's a toff?" Tessa growled.

  "You know, someone who thinks they're better than they really are," Rishma stated.

  "So the Graves family," Tessa grumbled. "I'm not drinking that shit."

  "It's classy," Rishma insisted. "Open Graves Troll Whiskey, the drink of Tessa Graves, top investigator of the Hidden."

  "That is way too long of a name," Tessa spat. "And I didn't give you permission to use my name anyway."

  Rishma laughed and said, "So sue me."

  Tessa snatched the bottle from his hand and snarled, "This one's on the house."

  "Pose for the poster, and they'll all be on the house," Rishma replied.

  "I'm not doing a goddamn poster! I'm working!"

  "Are you now?" Rishma snorted. "I hadn't noticed."

  A spike of pain jetted through Tessa's head at his words, but she just stuck out her tongue at him and said, "Business meeting, so shove off!"

  "Maybe we should pack it in for the day," Curtis suggested once Rishma was out of hearing.

  "We can't!" Tessa snapped, frustration filling her. "We haven't actually done anything."

  And they hadn't. Everything was a dead end. Everything.

  After Tessa had figured out exactly who the patron was, she, Ollie, and Curtis had gone to Philadelphia and combed through the Graves house there. They had found nothing.

  The address on file for the senator the patron was masquerading as was a dead end. So Ollie had hatched a plan to grab the patron when he left Congress one day, but it turned out that the senate was on its annual August break.

  They couldn't wait until the Senate was back in session either. Tessa had to find the patron, and she had to find him now. There was simply no way she could continue to lie to him for very much longer in her reports.

  At least that was the excuse she had given Ollie when Ollie had suggested they wait. The truth was that Tessa's head hurt more and more every single day; and she was afraid if she waited too long, her grape would just pop, and the patron would get away.

  She had come to terms with dying if it meant taking the patron with her to hell, or wherever it was dead people went; but the idea of dying before he did was simply not acceptable.

  "I can do this," she muttered. "I just have to be smarter."

  They were dealing with a witch though. He was at least two hundred and fifty years old, maybe older. She was only thirty-three, and her mind hadn't been her own most of her life. How could she possibly hope to outwit him?

  "You're going to win," Curtis said softly as he laid his large hand on her back. "You're fighting for something, but he's fighting for nothing."

  "I'm not sure how much the home-field advantage comes into play here," Tessa sighed.

  She glared at the bottle of whiskey with her name on it, hating everything about it; but since she was in pain, she gave in and took a large drink. The whiskey left a trail of fire down her throat and spread out to her body, momentarily burning away her pain.

  "That's actually pretty good," she stated. "Little different."

  "The… um… hair has a profound effect," Curtis muttered.

  "As an investigator, I find that fascinating," Tessa replied. "But as a human being who is currently imbuing said whiskey, I find it repulsive, and I wish you would never bring it up again."

  Curtis's laugh rumbled down the bar, and Tessa was happy to hear it. If Curtis was still laughing, things couldn't be all that bad.

  "Gisele said she has a job for us," Tessa said before she took another drink.

  "Are you certain you want to split your focus?"

  Tessa shrugged and said, "We're not getting anywhere with the patron so we may as well help someone else while we try to figure out what the hell to do next. I need to check something out first, but I should be home in time for dinner."