Page 41 of Midlife Witch Unexpected

“A fanger has a hard-on for the cemetery," Branson said.

They turned to me, but I simply stared back. I wasn't about to tell them I was new around here; they knew. But they probably didn't know how new I was to the magic world. They'd be unaware and I wasn't about to inform them. But after this encounter, I was sure as hell going to have a conversation with Branson about what I needed to know.

Harpies on my doorstep!

“Do you think you can handle the vampire?” Ida asked.

“I don’t see why not.” I stared her down trying to feel as confident as I sounded. This was no time to show weakness. It was no time to let them know I had absolutely zero idea of what was going on, but I knew on the name of my aunt and my grandfather and all of our ancestors before us, I was going to do everything in my power to find out and to stop the vampire from getting in on my terrain. It was almost a primal instinct within me. I could feel it rising in anger. They needed to stay the hell away from my land. The cemetery was closed for a reason, and even if I didn’t know what that reason was, it was going to stay that way over the dead bodies of my ancestors.

Jaika looked me in the eye his hands fluttering down by his sides. “Okay,” he said, turning to Ida. “We should give her a chance.”

“Give me a chance?” I asked. “You realize I own this land and this cemetery and I will allow you to be involved. That is how this is going to go down.”

Jaika and Ida looked taken aback. Branson raised his eyebrows in amusement.

“You’re not afraid of the Demigods?” Ida asked.

"That old goat? Doesn't worry me in the slightest," I was full of blasé. "If you want to tell-" I stumbled my words. I had no idea who our regional Demigod was.

“Aurelius,” Branson said quietly.

“If you want to tell Aurelius, go ahead,” I said, loudly interrupting the conversation going on between the harpies.

Ida visibly recoiled. “I don’t think there’s any need for going that far. You’ve made it pretty clear you’re capable of handling the problem. So, we don’t have any reason to doubt you. Do we?” She turned and gave a meaningful look to Jaika.

“We can just leave it for now,” Jaika said thoughtfully. “If the vampire comes back and you can’t stop him, well, there are worse things in the world than the wrath of Aurelius.”

Chapter 25

It wasn’t until the next morning Hilda and Trina showed up, complete with Anita and Drake. “We have deep concerns about the cemetery,” Hilda said.

“You don’t say,” I said sarcastically. I wasn’t in the best of moods. I hadn’t been able to sleep very easily the last few nights. Branson was still sleeping downstairs and I was still trying to placate the pulsing magic moving through my veins. “I don’t even know what specifically is protecting it.”

“Well, there are numerous wards set up around the perimeter to keep out people,” Hilda explained. “But the wards are strengthened by a variety of different markings, spells, gems, emblems, cross spells, and basically there is a whole matrix of wards and tripwires to set off the protection spells over the entire cemetery.”

“When an unwanted character is near,” Branson said, “it will also send a repulsion spell that will keep any enemy at bay. But it's completely programmed by you, The Hayes. All of the different mechanisms and measures are done inside the cemetery, and they’ve all been done up until this point by The Hayes. So, if you don’t know what they are, and you can’t figure out what they are then we’ve got a slight problem.”

“I think I do have something,” I said with a smile, feeling the strength of light moving through my hands. “I found the grimoire using a tracing spell. I have every faith I can do the same with the cemetery. But I need a model of the cemetery because I don’t want to have a light show going over the location where the different wards are. We need to do it in the privacy of The Estate.”

“Model making.” Drake put his arm around his sister’s shoulders.

“I can whip it together. We just need the ingredients,” Trina said.

“And I need to get my spells ready,” I said. I had some basic spells down but could use a quick dive in the deep end of the grimoire before we tried anything crazy. “Let’s reconvene in a bit.”

I took the time to lock myself in the library alone. It surprised me how easily I had grown used to having people around me all the time. It had been a while since my ex-husband and daughter were home regularly and I realized I enjoyed the communal side of life. It was refreshing and enjoyable, well, mostly. Branson was still a thorn in my side.

Regardless, having some time in the library alone with the grimoire was just what I needed to help me focus. I moved my hands over the pages of the book, looking for a spell to heighten the power of the finder magic I was going to use.

“This!” I exclaimed, my finger landing on a page entitled “Detecting Weakness.”

I held my hands out, palms up, and read the words out loud. "Take a peek. Where is it weak?"

I repeated the words again, watching the lights dance off my hands and against my body. This would have been a great spell to determine where to attack your opponent.

“Take a peek. Where is it weak?”

The purple and green tracers sent waves of warmth over my body as they congealed around my knee, which I’d landed on when Joachim had caused the earthquake. Oh, for fuck’s sake, if we were counting what felt weak on me, there should be a lot more places lighting up.

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