Page 168 of Blue Moon Mistress

“They attacked you?”

“The Change is not a pleasant process. It doesn’t surprise me that so many of them focus on their rage and let it sustain them.” She touches her neck, even though the mark of what happened is gone. “They didn’t kill me. And your mother won’t. So I’ve been taking a very long nap.”

“Until Aphrodite woke you up, unknowingly offering herself as a snack.”

“Honestly… I was so thirsty I couldn’t help myself. It’s a good thing you stopped me or that other witch would have died.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“Who knows what would have happened to her spells if she died before they were unwoven.”

Her words trail off as her eyes lose their focus. The moment passes in a flash of red across her irises.

“That’s not important right now, is it?” She wraps her shroud more tightly around her. “What do you think she wants your wolves for?”

“Power. That’s all she’s ever wanted. And I think she’s going to drain my wolves and her acolytes to do it.” I can’t stop the shiver that wracks me. “I have to get them back.”

“You’ll have to find them first.”

Instinctually, I step in front of the exit.

Gran’s smile lets her fangs peek out beneath her top lip. “I put myself here, I’m not about to leave.”

Turning her back to me, gran goes to the soupy corner of the plot. “There’s far more here than my desiccating corpse. And some of it is going to help you find them.”

She mutters something under her breath and it sounds like she’s mad at my mother. And then I hear her say, “You’re old enough to know all the family secrets.”

But she’s muttered that to the mud too as she leans into it, muck up to her shoulder.

“There you are.” She drags a jar from the muddy depths and scrapes the dark soil from the glass, glaring at the contents for a moment before nodding her head as though she wasn’t actually certain the first time.

Moving to one of the many buckets filled with rain water, she pulls one up and pours it onto her arm, washing it, and the jar clenched tightly in her hand.

“Have you ever fallen through the veil?”

“Only once.”

“When?”

I swallow the ugliness, not wanting to remember. “You know when.”

My grandmother looks up at me, her eyes narrowing for a moment before they clear. “Yes, you were five, weren’t you?”

I nod, not wanting to relive the night I tangled up in someone else’s thoughts. I almost didn’t make it out of that nightmare alive.

“It will be easier this time.” She moves around the plot, collecting a wooden basin before she returns to her coffin, to sit on it as she unscrews the jar.

When she spills half the contents into the bowl, it sizzles and a puff of smoke vanishes into the night overhead.

Her eyes never leave it as she seals up the jar once more and tosses it—not looking—back into the mire.

From here, I can smell dill and lavender but the rest of the dark liquid is a mystery. At least it is until she spits in it. Dark and heavy words drop from her lips to the bowl below her, and I stay put. I don’t dare take a step forward. Not when her fangs are out.

But they aren’t for me.

She drags her teeth across her arm and blood pours out into the basin.

More words, bouncing through three different languages, she casts the spell that will tether me to this plane.

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