It was gone. Her house, the house he’d grown up in, wasgone. There was nothing left but rubble. Nothing but the white shingles that had once covered his home, nothing but remnants of the roof and her crushed flower pots remained.
“No,” he murmured, picking his way through the mess, feeling as though he’d been stabbed through the heart.
Robbie came to stand beside him, pulling his hand into hers. “Greer, what’s happening? Talk to us. Talk to me.”
“Everyone’s gone,” he muttered, unable to form a coherent thought. His mind whirled, fractured in pieces.
“But where?” Wanda asked, pulling her light gray sweater around her waist as she placed a consoling hand on Greer’s shoulder. “Where have they gone?”
He saw Robbie cock her head and hold up a finger before she wrinkled her nose. “Do you smell that?”
Greer looked around. He didn’t smell a thing, unless devastation had a scent. “What do you smell?”
“Me, Greer. She smellsme,darling boy,” a deep, throaty voice said.
He whipped around, but he didn’t need toseewho it was. Heknewwho it was.
His feet crunched in the debris as he widened his stance. Narrowing his eyes, he addressed the newcomer with a wooden tone. “It’s you.”
“It is. Gwinnifer, if you’d like, but Grandmama if you must.”
Oh. Shit.
Chapter
Sixteen
Welp, that explained how her magic was still alive, didn’t it? All the talk of it’s impossible and seeing her body? Just bullshit. She should have known when magic was involved, anything was possible. And something told Robbie, Gwinnifer was gonna want that magic back.
Oh.Shit.
Robbie let her eyes roam over this sultry woman’s form. So this was Gwinnifer. The dead, serial-killing essence sucker.
As she slinked up to Robbie, seductive and gorgeous in a tight-fitting ruby-red dress, assessing her from head to toe, Robbie gulped—but did that keep her big mouth from opening? Nah. She went straight to the elephant in the room and gave it a little pat on the back.
“But you’re dead.”
What else did you say to someone who’d risen from the dead?
She winked, as beautiful and young as she’d been in the casket they’d unearthed. “I suppose you want to know how that’s possible?” she asked, her tone bored.
Robbie nodded dumbly as Tottington rushed to her side, gripping her arm. She tucked her left hand to her chest in a protective manner.
“Uh-huh. Yep. I sure do.”
Heaving a sigh, she smiled like the cat who ate the canary, her green eyes, so like Greer’s, glittering. “In due time. For now, let’s get you all settled.”
Nina was in her face in a heartbeat, her jaw tight as she flashed her fangs. “The fuck you will, lady. Tell us what the hell is going on or I’ll wring your wannabe Gen Z?—”
Gwinnifer lifted her fingers in a flash, stabbing them at Nina’s mouth, pushing her backward with an invisible hand.
Nina’s instant silence made Robbie gape at her in horror.
Oh, sweet pepperoni pizza. She’d sewn Nina’s mouth shut.Sewn it shut.
There was a spell for that?
Why hadn’t Greer taught her how to do that? There was a time or two when Hervé could have used a couple of stitches in his big yap.