Page 166 of Blue Moon Mistress

And what meets her when she pulls the casket wide isn’t a corpse.

Eyes open, dark red where they should be white, her skin pale as death with black veins running beneath…

My grandmother isn’t dead.

She’s Changed.

Aphrodite is just as shocked as I am.

And she’s too close.

In the barest blink of an eye, my grandmother has her by the throat and she takes like a woman dying of thirst for nearly twenty years.

I feel Aphrodite’s magic weaken. I can sense the guys somewhere in the ether and I could find them, if I go right now.

But if I leave…

I watch her drink from Aphrodite, the other woman struggles, but her thrashing is weaker now.

If I leave, my grandmother will get out and wreak havoc on the town.

Aphrodite wielding blood magic is dangerous.

My grandmother, the most powerful witch I’ve ever knownanda vampire… No one would be safe.

I reach out, using the tiny fence that surrounded the belladonna and pull one of the pickets from the ground. The stake-like piece of wood was no doubt left for this very occasion.

“Saffrah,” I say the name I’ve called her since I was a child unable to say “Grandma Saffron”, hoping it is a strong enough tie to her memory.

And she does stop drinking long enough to look up at me.

Blood covers her lower face, her neck, and down the front of her burial gown… not that the black fabric looks anything other than wet.

Whether gaining her attention is a good thing or not, I don’t know. But she stares at me like she’s never seen me before and then, almost as an afterthought… she throws Aphrodite away. Strong enough and far enough, she lands outside of the Carraway plot entirely.

My grandmother stalks toward me, her steps the same juddering movements I’ve seen in old monster movements, but her face is a mask of confusion…

When she stops in front of me, I know I can let go of the picket.

“What?” she asks, voice thick and breathing sharp. “Is going on, cutie pie?”

Thirty-Three

The words sound sowrong coming from a woman drenched in blood, I can’t help but laugh.

“I really wish I knew.”

She doesn’t reach out her hand to help me up and I don’t think I’d have accepted it if she had.

Her gaze moves past me and I pull myself upright with the flat rocks of the fence, starting to get feeling back in my leg. My grandmother glares at Aphrodite and I wish I could push through the Carraway gate and go after her.

But I can’t.

I watch her use the closest tree to stagger to her feet, her hand clutching her messy throat.

“She’s weak.” My grandmother says, as if she can read my mind. “You can wait to go after her until we’re done.”

A clatter and rush of sound pulls my attention from her as her vampire tumbles out of the underbrush, his clothes are torn, his face slashed, but none of that seems to slow him down.

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