Page 45 of Midlife Witch Unexpected

We arrived at the clearing of the Celtic Martyrs, and I stared at their three crosses. Beneath those headstones lay the remnants of three women who had been my ancestors. They had taken care of the cemetery when it first opened. Somehow, they had died because of it. A cold shiver went through my spine and along my arms. They had not made it. They had been killed in the line of duty. Nobody here even knew who or what had killed them. They only knew the cemetery had been saved, even though these three had lost their lives.

The cemetery was so important that people would sacrifice their lives for it. My ancestors. All The Hayes who had gone before me. Well, except my mother. She had completely renounced the entire world she had grown up in, without so much as mentioning it to me.

“How am I going to tell my daughter?” I muttered.

“What?” Branson asked. Of course, he was the one walking closest to me. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing except he made my temperature spike by about a thousand degrees whenever he was near.

“Sorry, I was just taking a mental note,” I said. “I have to tell my daughter.”

“It’s probably best not to do it over the phone,” Anita said conversationally.

“Right,” I murmured.

“I don’t think it’s anything that has to be dealt with right now,” Hilda said with a slight twang of annoyance in her voice.

“Right,” I said again. Feeling like a complete idiot. How was I supposed to be in charge of all this when I couldn’t focus on the task at hand?

“Don’t worry,” Hilda said. “It’s in your blood. It’s in your daughter’s blood too. In the same way, you knew we were telling the truth because you could feel it. The magic in you responded to the truth of what we were saying. You were guided at some point in your life to understand energy and how energy magnetizes toward different people and objects. You have probably exposed your daughter, too. She will be none the worse for wear in discovering this.”

“But Anita is right,” Drake said begrudgingly. “You don’t want to do it over the phone. You’re going to need to get her out here.”

“Focus, people,” Hilda said.

“We don’t know where to look,” Trina complained.

“Look around the edges of the tombs,” Hilda said. “It’s a metal ball about the size of your hand. Didn’t you see it before, Trina? The last time there was a problem with the folded cross was when Carl was sick.”

“Carl?” I asked. I thought I knew everybody by now. It’s not like it was a big town and I didn’t have many people I needed to know.

“Carl was your Aunt Emma’s dog," Hilda said.

“Damn, stinky thing went with her everywhere,” Trina said with a shudder. “He wouldn’t live a minute without her. Followed her around every step she took.”

Clearly, Trina wasn't a dog person.

“It was pretty devastating for her when he died,” Hilda commiserated on the dog’s side. “That’s when she told me she was having troubles with the cemetery, and she needed to find the folded cross. I came down here with her.”

“Well, where is it?” asked Trina, the lines of her face taut in frustration.

“It was in one of these tombstones,” Hilda said. “You don’t expect me to remember back twenty years ago? I can barely remember what happened yesterday.”

“Can’t you just clean away some of the leaves and vines and things with a wave of your hand?” I asked.

“No, the cemetery mustn’t be disturbed,” Hilda said. “We are not allowed to use magic in the cemetery unless absolutely necessary. The amount of magic used inside the cemetery is already a ton. surely you can feel it.”

I could. More and more as I got used to magic, I could sense the electricity in the air around me, but the cemetery was different. The entire cemetery was like an energy field buzzing through my blood.

“Even me?” I asked awkwardly. “I could send some light tracers to find it.”

“No," Hilda said. “Sometimes you just have to do things by hand around here. Not everything is appropriate for magic, least of all other magical things. You never know when you mix two energies what could happen. You might do a finder spell in the cemetery for the Folded Cross, and you’ll end up with someone’s glass eyeball in your hand.”

“True,” Anita murmured.

“Right, so if everyone can just go around and look at the headstones,” Hilda directed, “look for something missing. I think it was an oval-shaped headstone.”

"You can't make an oval-shaped headstone; it wouldn’t even stand," I murmured.

“No, it was definitely an oval shape,” Hilda said. “I definitely remember that much. It was lying flat on the ground.”

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