Page 25 of Blue Moon Mistress

She’s the only other witch from my coven I regularly keep in touch with aside from my mother.

My response is quick. A finger to the glass, I speak my message, and when I let go, my glass clears. My words will form on hers, waiting for her to see them.

And now, it’s time to get uncomfortable.

Trips to the Carraway plot are the only time I wear jeans. The pair is a decade old and has the protective dirt still ground into the denim. The hiking boots are newer—because I hate having wet feet.

Hair in a braid and windbreaker on, the only thing I have to load into my car, is the shovel etched with binding runes.

I dislike short trips home, but I dislike putting off unpleasant tasks even more.

When I start my car, a wolfy face pokes out from the foliage, watching me, and if I didn’t know better, I might feel hunted.

Instead I blow the wolf—Joshua’s if I had to guess—a kiss and head for the main road.

The pack runs beside and behind my car until I reach the wards at the end of the drive and then, they break off.

I’ll get used to it, eventually.

The highway is a long, winding canyon of trees, close enough to the coast that the gray of the stormy autumn ocean peeks through every now and again.

It’s calming… right up until I turn off for the golf course that mars the dunes. But I don’t have to drive all the way to the enormous club house with its pretentious patronage.

There’s a little service road that’s easily missed, and a half mile down it, I park beside a chain-link fence and the vine covered carcass of a defunct substation.

Anyone paying attention would notice there are no power lines attached to it, but the warning signs are still up.

From there, it’s a hike.

I toss the shovel over my shoulder like a rifle—it can be more dangerous—and step into the undergrowth.

There are no marked trails, the plants grow thick, and spelled seeds keep them that way. My windbreaker is slicked with the dew from the morning—the canopy is thick enough, the sun doesn’t dry anything down here.

It’s part of what makes it perfect for the Carraway plot.

The soil is constantly moist, and in one corner, it’s always a soupy mix mimicking quicksand.

The earth here is happy to eat whatever we feed it.

The stones are more than willing to keep it in, and the trees eager to conceal.

Ringed by tall, hewn rocks driven into the ground, the Carraway plot is very clearly a cemetery. A place for things that need to be buried, but in ground that is not consecrated.

A chill settles over me as I step through the narrow entrance, slipping through the zig-zag opening as though I’m performing a dance.

My grandmother’s headstone is the cleanest. The clearest. Her name is not inscribed, nor any dates. Instead, it reads:

DISTURB NOT THE DEAD

NO LONGER NEEDED BY THE LIVING

LET ROT TAKE WHAT MUST BE GIVEN

LEST RUIN DESCEND

TEMPT NOT THE IRE OF BLOOD AND ASHES

Carved into the granite, painted over with lime, the stone is set at a skew. A sign of the settling earth, and possibly of an attempted escape.

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