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The sun rose at seven that morning, theoretically. Dawn came as a gray light that crept in through the shutters of Wednesday's room half an hour after she had gone down to breakfast and shone through the glass windows of the conservatory where she was eating it. It wasn't the cold of snow and ice or the dramatic winter of the mountains; it was the oozing cold of Pacific Ocean fog.
"How unusual. You would almost think it was summer," said her mother, raising her teacup to her lips. The sleeves of her dress trailed dark tentacles of fabric across the table.
"Hmm," said Wednesday. She would be thirty in February. It was true that the past twenty-nine autumns had mostly been sunny, but there was always hope. "Global warming," she said. "Perhaps we'll have fog all year now."
"Storms," Gomez crowed. "Just think of the shipwrecks!" He was reading a newspaper--the Carpathian Star. Only the ends of his fingers and the top of his pomaded head were visible around its voluminous pages. "Listen to this, Cara Mia," he said. "Man found with throat slit: Vampire scare shakes New Jersey."
Morticia smiled. "How... delicious."
Wednesday drank her tea, a Lapsang Souchong that tasted of burnt wood. "I'll be out late tonight, Mother," she said.
On the other side of the table, the paper suddenly retracted. "What's this I hear about a date, young lady?" asked her father, grinning at her over the edge of the page.
"It's not a date."
"A young man, a funeral, staying out late: It certainly sounds like a date to me."
"He drives a marvelous hearse, you know," her mother said dreamily. "I think he could be the one, Dear."
Wednesday shrugged and went to dress: Black wool stockings and ankle boots with buttons--also black, and good for walking. A black silk slip and a black sheath over it, slit in back for ease of movement. Earrings made of jet and an old silver necklace in the shape of a cross. A little knit cardigan and a long, black overcoat. Kidskin gloves and a hat with a veil. Her pearl-handled derringer went into one pocket of the coat, her cell into the other.
*
Harold arrived at 10:55 exactly.
"He must be eager to see you," said her father.
"He's always five minutes early," said Wednesday and went out to the car.
Harold was wearing the same dark suit as always. It was old, out of fashion, and slightly too big. He brushed the hair out of his eyes and looked at her. His face was a bit like a fish or a figure at a wax works. Wednesday wondered how old he really was.
"Good morning, Harold."
"Good morning, Wednesday." The corner of his mouth turned up, just like it did every week (but only on Wednesdays). He started the car.
The enormous Cadillac glided out of the driveway and onto the street. Riding in Harold's hearse, she was rapidly finding, gave her the feeling of floating, as though the side of the highway whipping by outside were no more than an illusion and only the interior with the two of them was real.
She relaxed into the plush leather; it would take them at least an hour to get there.
*
They left the car parked across the street and walked up the main cemetery drive. Down a long allée of cypress they went, past the office with its corinthian columns and weeping statuary, and up the long, slow incline to where the mourners were gathered. The monuments in this area were older--enormous stone angels and obelisks. The Gough family crypt stood at the very top of the hill, a monstrosity of carved stone swags and evergreen boughs. At each corner, a caryatid was bent nearly double by the weight of its roof.
"Aunt Marguerite was buried in one like that," Wednesday remarked.
"When did she die?" Harold asked her.
"She didn't."
It was a lovely service. Harold was mouthing the words along with the priest; Wednesday got a strange little thrill every time she glanced up at him. The family clustered around the crypt itself. Friends and acquaintances stood in groups among the nearby headstones. No one asked them any questions.
*
The air was cold inside the car after sitting for so long. Wednesday stared out the window into the night, but the street was still deserted, the cemetery utterly still.
"Do you often go to funerals?" she asked after a while.
"Used to."
"For fun?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes I went with a friend." He laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound.
Silence.
"Go on," Wednesday prompted.
He turned towards her. His face was normally as still and blank as a reflecting pool. They had only known each other for a few months, first at the Academy and now here. This was the most emotion she had ever seen him show. "We used to go together. She..."
Whatever he had been about to say was cut off by a sudden rap at the window behind her.
A man was standing outside--a man wearing a violently colored Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts despite the weather. "Agent Buckner..." said Harold. His face went blank again.
"And how are my two favorite agents tonight," said Buckner, sliding in beside her. "Coffee? It's organic." He waved a tray of paper cups at her.
"I am fine, Agent Buckner," said Wednesday.
"Now, now, what have I said? Call me John. Or Free. Or Buckner. None of this 'agent' stuff." He grinned at them. "Harold, man, how's it hanging?"
Agent Free "John" Buckner was a product of aging hippie parents, Quantico, and massive quantities of coffee, in approximately that order. He was also an irrepressible font of good, old-fashioned, all-American optimism. Wednesday found him fascinating in an alien sort of way.
"Agent Chasen and I have nothing to report so far," she said.
"Well, not to worry, Addams: this case has to break some time!" Evidently, stakeouts did nothing to dampen Agent Buckner's spirits. "Any theories so far?"
"There's no sign of vampire activity in the area," said Harold, "and cosmetically, at least, the graves look relatively undisturbed, so we don't think they're just getting up and walking on their own."
"Ghouls do make rather a mess, don't they," said Agent Buckner.
"We suspect it's the work of humans, sir," said Wednesday. "Someone is filling the dirt back in and replacing the sod."
"Good old fashioned body snatchers, huh? Oh, I knew this was going to be a good one."
Wednesday smiled. Who knew what people might be stealing bodies for? The possibilities were delightfully horrid. It was going to be such fun.