Page 150 of Blue Moon Mistress

“Regardless of why I wanted to leave, you didn’t let me. What do you think will happen if I’m right, this blows up and it kills me, or worse? Even if you keep your mouth shut, Elaria won’t.What do you think the rest of the coven will think when you were warned and you left me to deal with it on my own?”

“Don’t be dramatic. I have every faith you can handle Aphrodite Lourdes.” She hums and for a moment I think she might have thought of something else, but she says, “You are more than capable. I love you, but I have to go.”

The next time I call her, I’ll force her to tell me why she’s constantly running away from our conversations.

But if she’s not willing to help…

I pull up Elaria’s number and call the one woman I know would help me withanythingI asked.

“Hey,” she says, something like caution in her voice. “How was your full moon?”

“Amazing.”

“Good, I want details.”

I can’t keep myself from laughing. “Later.”

“Fine. We’ll do it in person so I can pop some corn and you can really give me the dirt.”

“I was actually hoping to get you down here sooner rather than later. I’m starting to think Aphrodite isn’t as weak as the coven’s convinced she is… Any chance you want to come down and help me figure out what’s going on?”

She’s quiet for longer than I expect. “I’ve been ordered not to visit.”

“What?”

“After the trial the coven has been ordered to give you… distance. Renée even told your mother to stay put.”

“They didn’t like my decision and now they’re letting me twist, is that it?”

“Probably.” She curses and I hear the phone shift in her hair. “Your mom’s calling me. I’d bet it’s another gag order.

“I love you. Be safe and I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.”

When she hangs up, I let out a long slow breath and set my phone face down on the counter. There’s nothing I can do without driving all the way up to Salem, so I go back to the only thing that I really have any control over.

But instead of continuing on my slow circle of the shelves in the house, I grab a thick knife and walk to the stairs.

Tucked away in the back of the house where no one else ventures, the stairwell leads to the attic. But what I want isn’t stored up there.

I stab the knife between the fourth step and the riser, using it like a crowbar. Like the Carraway plot, the stairs hold secrets my mother would rather see buried.

If I still trusted her judgment, I might have hesitated to pry away the tread of this stair but once it’s gone…

There isn’t a speck of dust on the items therein. Sometimes magic is better than a hermetic seal.

Bottles of emergency potions fill either side of the cavity, but it’s the heavy book in the middle that I want.

My grandmother was the sort of woman who had dozens of grimoires in her lifetime. But this one… this was the book where she kept all of her most sacred information. If she had the answer I was looking for, it would be in here.

I leave the stair open as I take the cracked and brittle tome to my island, easing it open.

The pages fall to the side, opening to torn out remnants.

I run my finger along the jagged edge and look over my shoulder to the dining room.

It only takes a second to go to the table, to pick up the nameless spell and place it back in the book. And now, the spell isn’t nameless anymore. The page binds itself back into the book. Magic reclaiming its own.

Why my grandmother had a spell for blood binding other witches… I can’t begin to guess. How half of it gotoutof her grimoire…

---