Page 44 of Midlife Witch Unexpected

“Except for right there,” Anita said.

I had avoided looking at that spot for particular reasons. But I knew where she was pointing before I even had to look. The graves of the Celtic Martyrs.

My gaze whipped to Branson before I bit my lip and turned back to the model.

Had we done something wrong by having sex in the cemetery? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing anyhow but it was probably by any stretch of the imagination the wrong thing to have done in a cemetery.

“The weakness is by the Celtic Martyrs,” I said, my voice slow and angry.

I might be new to this world, but Branson wasn’t. He should’ve known better.

Branson stepped forward his aura breaking the Coven circle and snuffing out the light that had enveloped the model. “There’s something wrong in that corner of the cemetery. The best thing we can do is go there, try to find it, and sort it out.”

“There are talismans in different corners of the cemetery that should be protecting it. I actually know the talisman there is a woven metal Celtic cross inlaid into one of the graves. It’s called the Folded Cross.”

“Do you know which grave?” I asked.

“I know where it supposed to be,” Hilda said. “Why don’t I go down and have a look?”

“We should all go,” Branson ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t want any of you going out with a vampire on the loose and the wards weakened.”

Chapter 26

You guys go without me. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t dare say them. I was supposed to be the High Priestess of the coven, a title I still had a hard time accepting. The idea of being a High Priestess of anything was so grossly outdated for me I could barely stand it.

But when I thought about why I had those opinions, it had a lot to do with my mother. She was always adamant we were Catholic. Based on the fact she knew Demigods and the Fae were real, she was blatantly lying.

Now I was ignorant but locked into solving this problem.

But I had made this choice. Not my mother, my daughter, or even my ex-husband, it was a problem I had completely taken on board for myself. So, even though going down to the cemetery with the coven was not my idea of a good time, in fact, it sounded rather awkward, it was what I had taken on.

There was no getting out of it now.

Hilda led us down a pathway that ran along the side of The Estate and took us all the way to the cemetery.

“This is the entrance your aunt used to take when she’d come down to review the wards,” Hilda said. She held a branch off the pathway so we could all get past. “Just keep going. It’ll take you to a gate, shortly.”

When we arrived at the gate, I put my hand on it and received a shock. “What was that?” I asked. “Why is it giving me a shock? I thought I was the Keeper of the cemetery.”

“Aye, but you’re not Keeper of each gate,” Hilda said with a grin. “I am the Keeper of this gate. Each of us has a gate we keep. The Hayes keeps the main entrance safe. But I keep the Celtic Martyrs safe.”

Branson stepped around me and took hold of the gate.

I watched my steps making sure I didn’t land in any of the wet puddles that filled the path. More importantly, I was making sure I didn’t make eye contact with Branson. For some reason, the guy still got to me. He shouldn't. I mean okay, I had him as a rebound kind of one-minute stand. Well, it was a lot longer than a minute.

Stop.

Just stop thinking about it.

I quickly diverted the way my brain was going. Thinking about Branson hot and naked wasn’t going to do me any good when I was trying to fix the problem at hand. Our goal was to keep people out of the cemetery and the only way to do that was going to be through finding any weaknesses in the protective field.

“What exactly are we looking for?” I asked the group as we walked single file along a small trail. I barely knew what a magic spell, a protective field, or a talisman was.

“An iron Celtic knot,” Anita said. “It’ll be a ball of knotted metal. Like a small sculpture.”

“I think I remember where it was,” Hilda said. “So, we’ll just look to see if it’s still there.”

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