Origins

Her parents are high-powered defense attorneys, forever more taken up with their cases than with their daughter. Someone was always talking in that house, yet hardly anyone listened to her. She has mentioned that her parents have a penthouse in Midtown. In the end, it was the dead who heard her first.

“My parents have penthouse in midtown, what do you think?”

“我父母在市中心有一套顶层公寓，你觉得怎么样？”

At first it was only talking to herself in the cemetery, until one day a woman’s voice answered her complaints. Following its directions, she dug up a severed hand buried in a lead box in Van Cortlandt Park. Once the hand was free, the voice grew clearer: for years the lich had been searching for a student to pass her knowledge on to.

“Van Cortland Park”

“范科特兰公园。”TL

She became a student, and a necromancer too, and the two roles are forever pulling against each other. When she talks about the ritual, she can’t help comparing it to schoolwork: completing some eldritch ritual, she says, beats finishing her paper. When she wants to turn down an invitation, homework is her excuse. She is a student at Blackmore Academy.

“Completing some eldritch ritual beats finishing my paper on Wuthering Heights.”

“完成个什么诡异仪式，总比赶《呼啸山庄》的论文强。”TL

She skips class, and hardly bothers to hide it. When Apollo said she hadn’t been in class yesterday, she admitted she had been skipping.

“I was skipping class. I'm fine.”

“我逃课了。我没事”

Whenever her parents come up, she turns evasive. When Bebop asked, all she let drop was “They’re alright.” When Wraith said her parents were great lawyers, she answered, “They’re the best”; when Wraith pressed — not a fan? — she turned on her at once: Wraith was not her therapist.

“Eh. They're alright.”

“呃。还好吧”

“You're not my therapist.”

“你又不是我的心理医生。”TL

It was the Doorman who spelled it out for her. Casting himself as her teacher, he told her she was so starving for a parental figure that she had run straight into the palm of a lich’s hand; she was praying her parents would notice before it was too late, but they wouldn’t. That is someone else’s verdict, not her own words.

“Miss Graves, you are so starving for a parental figure that you ran straight into the literal palm of a lich's hand. You know it's wrong. You know you can't control her. You know that you're going to die if you don't get help, and you're praying that your parents will notice before it's too late. They won't. But I see you. Stay at The Baroness, and let me be your teacher.”

“格瑞墓小姐，你太渴望父母般的关爱，以至于一头扎进了英灵的掌心。你心里清楚这不对，清楚自己控制不了她，也清楚如果再不求助就会死，而你还在祈祷父母会在为时已晚前察觉。他们不会的。但我看得到你。留在巴隆妮斯酒店吧，让我来做你的老师。”TL

Old Friends and Foes

The Lich Mentor: Her Best Friend

She calls the lich her best friend, yet almost everyone else warns her. Grey Talon says she isn’t using that lich hand — it is using her. Seven urges her not to trust her mentor: mentors only teach what they want you to learn. First she answers, “She’s not like that,” then, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You're not using that lich hand, Graves, it's using you.”

“格瑞墓，不是你在用那只英灵之手，是它在用你。”TL

She guards the hand closely. When McGinnis wanted to see it, she said no twice over; when Mo & Krill wanted to buy it, she said she kind of needs it.

Solomon: The One Who Won’t Let Her Return

Solomon sees her quite differently. He sighs that he wishes he had found her first, and says he can’t let that lich come back. That is Solomon’s judgment, not her choice.

“I wish I found her first”

“要是我能先找到她就好了。”TL

Apollo: The Awkward Lab Partner

Apollo is her classmate at Blackmore and her lab partner. She loves needling him about his father, and calls him the golden boy; yet when he really does go down, she groans that she has killed her lab partner, and admits she doesn’t hate him as much as she wishes she did. For his part, he allows that she was a decent lab partner.

“I don't hate him as much as I wish I did.”

“我并不像我希望的那样讨厌他”

“She was a decent lab partner.”

“她是一位不错的实验伙伴”

Violet: A Goth Girl Under Her Brush

Violet is a painter with a love of portraiture. Painting Graves, she said she loves a good gothic piece, and that the negative space really makes the hair; as for the severed hand, she admits she doesn’t get it — but hey, not her life. She has asked about Graves’s mentor too, leaving it at a single remark: she doesn’t sign up for classes if she doesn’t know who’s teaching them. Once, more personally, she talked about Graves’s parents; that is the conversation below.

Vindicta: The One She Can’t Help

Vindicta died falsely accused of trafficking with spirits, and seeing Graves walk about with a lich hand, she judged that times were not different enough. Later Graves offered: helping the dead is kind of her thing, so if Vindicta needed anything after the ritual… Vindicta asked her only whether she was willing to lock people inside a burning building. No, Graves answered, that’s insane. Hence the words: “Then you can’t help me.” Later still, once the fight was decided, she said she wished Vindicta would let her help, and that she wasn’t about to let Vindicta put more blood on her hands.

“I died for being falsely accused of trafficking with spirits, and here you are brazenly walking about with a lich hand.”

“我因被诬陷与亡灵勾结而死，而你却大摇大摆地带着英灵之手四处走动。”TL

“Then you can't help me.”

“那你帮不了我。”TL

“I wasn't about to let you put more blood on your hands, Vindicta.”

“我绝不会让你害更多人，薇妲”

Holliday: The Other Side of Authority

Sheriff Holliday and she can’t stand each other. One tells her to go find a playground to brood in; the other fires back, “A condescending cop. Shocking.” When Graves goes down, Holliday mutters to herself: where the hell were that kid’s parents?

“A condescending cop. Shocking.”

“一个态度傲慢的警察。真令人震惊”

“Where the hell was that kid's parents…”

“那孩子的父母到底在哪儿…”

Lady Geist: A Voice She Can Hear

She can hear the voice in Lady Geist’s arm — he won’t stop screaming about what he wants to do to people, she says — and she called him straight out by name: Oathkeeper.

“His names Oathkeeper.”

“他叫守誓者。”TL

Drifter, Ivy and Kelvin

Drifter sneers that she spends her time playing with monsters, but Ivy and Kelvin soften her. Ivy was nice, she says, and she wishes they were on the same side; she has read a lot about Kelvin, he seemed cool, and maybe one day she can help him. Kelvin thanked her, but declined to have her carry word from the dead: he doesn’t want to put the families through any more trauma.

“Wish we were on the same side, Ivy.”

“真希望我们站在同一阵营，青藤”

“I read a lot about him, he seemed cool.”

“我读过很多关于他的故事，他看起来很酷”

Anecdotes

She is frank about the dead: she treats them as companions at her command, makes no secret of how useful they are, and brings a dark humor to it. The dead make for great sentries, she says, and a corpse can take the bullets for her.

“A corpse can take the bullets for me.”

“让尸体替我挡子弹。”TL

She has clear limits. When Paradox wanted to bring her in on prying secrets from the dead, she said she was not profiting off of innocent people; when Vyper joked about killing her parents, her answer was a flat no.

“I'm not profiting off of innocent people.”

“我没有从无辜的人身上牟利”

There are things she can’t make sense of, too. She has talked to a lot of people who are dead because of Wraith, and none of them are mad at Wraith; she admits she doesn’t understand why.

Nor is she without grown-ups willing to reach out to her. Infernus told her that if she ever finds herself over her head, she can come to him for help; Lash offered to kick the shit out of the lich hand if it ever gives her trouble, and in the end she agreed.

“If you ever find yourself over your head you can talk to me for help.”

“如果你遇到任何困难，可以随时来找我寻求帮助”

She has little patience for the people of OSIC, yet she doesn’t turn them down outright: she is not interested in being a Sandman, but when Haze mentioned a “Medium” post in another division, she said that might not suck.

“That might not suck.”

“那或许没那么糟糕”

Sometimes she begs off, saying she has work to do at Trinity Church.

Open Questions

“It was at Whiteside and Graves”

“就在怀特赛德与格瑞墓律所。”TL

“I bet my mentor would love to get her hands on that stone.”

“我敢肯定，我的导师一定很想得到那块石头”

“Paul wanted me to send his regards.”

“保罗让我转达他的问候”

“I don't know what the hell that thing was but it wasn't a doorman.”

“我不知道那玩意儿到底是什么东西，反正肯定不是门侍”