Chapter 3 #3
Mac escorted them south, thankfully without running his lights and sirens.
Bran let Aisling destroy his music app’s algorithm by playing whatever her heart desired for the half hour it took to get to the ranger’s station.
It kept her distracted, and that was all that mattered.
When they finally pulled off the road and into the parking lot adjacent to the one-story building, Bran had a whole new playlist consisting of pop songs he wasn’t familiar with on his phone.
Two other black ranger trucks were parked in the lot, and Mac pulled in next to one.
Bran parked a few spots away, setting the brake and turning the engine off.
Aisling undid her seat belt but didn’t immediately open the door.
Bran reached across the console to tweak her ponytail.
“You can stay in the work area inside while I go with Mac.”
Aisling nodded and got out of the car. Bran followed suit, watching as Jupiter flew past to settle on the edge of the station’s roof.
The radio tower built on top of the station offered a higher perch, but Jupiter didn’t seem enticed by it.
Aisling immediately darted to his side, wrapping one skinny arm around his waist and tucking herself close.
Bran draped his arm around her shoulders as they walked to where Mac waited.
Mac gestured for them to follow him inside. “It won’t take long.”
Bran wouldn’t know. He’d never had to identify a body the forest gave up before.
He’d never dreamed he’d have to do it for his mother.
The ranger’s station encompassed the whole squat building, more modern-looking inside than Pelham’s police station.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been inside it—maybe when he was a kid—but only a handful of people were working, one of whom was at the dispatch desk in the corner, judging by the number of screens.
Mac greeted the receptionist, an older woman who smiled kindly at Aisling but didn’t ask how she was doing.
“She can stay with me while you handle your meeting, Mac.”
“Thanks, Doris,” Mac said as he pushed open the wooden swing gate that separated the work area from the public area. “Bran? The morgue is this way.”
Bran steeled himself and followed Mac through the work area to a rear hallway.
It led farther into the building, past some interior offices, and finally to an elevator that was large enough to handle a gurney.
Mac hit the button for the basement, and the elevator slowly descended.
The doors pinged open on a hallway that led to a single door at the end.
When they reached it, Mac opened it, but Bran couldn’t quite get his feet to move.
“Bran?” Mac asked, looking back.
He swallowed, blinking through the burn of tears. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know this is a difficult time and an even more difficult request.”
Bran nodded jerkily. Everyone always had his family name the dead in Pelham. Bran was the only one left to name his because he’d never lay that at Aisling’s feet.
Mac led him into the small, cold room meant to hold the dead until arrangements to be taken to a funeral home could be made. Bran knew he should call the one Tina had given him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Not yet.
“Ready?” Mac asked quietly.
“No,” Bran said with a watery, strangled little laugh. “Let’s get it over with.”
“All right. We’ll do Ray first.”
Mac opened up one of the three cold storage doors set into the wall and rolled out the gurney.
The body was in a black bag that he unzipped, revealing the ravaged mess of Ray’s face, throat, and chest. Bran could only look for a few seconds before he wrenched his gaze away from the horror.
He hadn’t ever cared for his stepfather, and the feeling had always been mutual.
But he’d never wanted the man to suffer how he obviously had.
Mac zipped the bag closed and stepped away from the gurney. Bran mentally shook himself before letting his right hand hover over the body, fingers spread wide. “I name you Ray Carroll. May your soul rest in our world and never haunt the wyrding. May your body and bones return to the earth.”
He drew a witchmark in the air above Ray’s broken body with his magic, the shape of it named.
He drew a second, this one for rest. He cast both into the dead, glowing lines passing through the black body bag to settle in flesh that lived no more.
Mac nodded and pushed the gurney back into cold storage.
When he opened the second door and drew out that gurney, Bran nearly lost it.
“I need a minute alone,” Bran rasped.
Mac hesitated before bowing his head. “You should know it’s only her. We couldn’t find Talon. I’ll be right outside.”
Bran only hoped his mother’s familiar—a house cat who never aged—hadn’t suffered when he died.
It probably went against some protocol to leave Bran alone with the bodies, but guardians had never stood in the way of witches.
Mac didn’t start now and took himself out of the morgue.
The door clicked shut behind him, sounding overly loud to Bran’s ears.
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Bran stared at the body bag that held his mother’s remains and told himself it had to be done.
She wouldn’t be the first of their coven targeted by what crawled out of the forest.
Bran wondered, distantly, if he’d have been in the third cold storage drawer if he had been home for a visit.
He unzipped the bag down to her navel with shaking fingers, revealing his mother’s cold, lifeless face.
She didn’t look how he remembered her, and Bran couldn’t stop the sob that ripped its way out of him.
He covered his mouth with one hand, hunching over as everything blurred from tears, jostling the gurney.
His mother’s hand slipped out of the bag, bloated fingers dangling off the side.
Something fluttered free of them, drifting to the floor.
Bran wiped away a couple of tears, breathing in deep a couple of times to try to get himself back under control.
He crouched to retrieve what had fallen, peering at the crumpled flower in his palm.
The bruised petals were a color blue he’d never seen before, its pollen a startling, vibrant pink.
Even the one smelled like a dozen, a sweetly floral scent reminding him strongly of spring.
His lips trembled—from rage or grief, he couldn’t tell—as he stared at a flower that didn’t belong in this world.
“Fuck,” he rasped, fingers folding around the delicate petals.
The lights were back.
Shoving the flower into his pocket, Bran zipped the bag back up over his mother’s body, gaze averted.
He hesitated before settling his fingertips on her covered forehead.
“I name you Juliana Gallagher, witch of the Gallagher coven. May your mantle be mine in the shroud of your passing. May your soul rest in our world and never haunt the wyrding. May your body and bones return to the earth.”
Bran drew the same witchmarks he had with Ray’s body over his mother’s, pushing his magic into the memory of her, for she was gone from this mortal world now.
As the last glitter of magic faded at his fingertips, an impossible breeze that came from nowhere blew past him, rattling everything not bolted down in the morgue.
It carried the smell of earth and a hint of his mother’s favorite perfume with it.
Bran breathed it in, trying to commit it to memory, as the witchmarks inked into his right forearm burned with power.
He bit back a cry, gripping his forearm with his other hand as the coven’s broken generational circle closed there in the morgue, with Bran the last witch of their line to carry a duty, a mantle, in the face of a threat that would see them dead.
All the knowledge his mother once held had died with her, and Bran ached for that loss, for the grimoire that was missing, too.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to stand against the horror found in the depths of the forest when it had been strong enough to take his mother from them.
The strange breeze faded to nothing, leaving Bran aching to see sunlight. The circle had closed, and the Gallagher coven was his to lead. It was just him and his sister, and his sister carried a geas on her throat that proved she was a target as much as their mother had been.
The lights had certainly whittled his coven down to nearly nothing.
Bran gripped the gurney and rolled it back into cold storage, closing the square door behind it.
He headed for the exit, stepping back into the hallway where Mac waited.
Bran nodded stiffly at the other man, not up for speaking just yet as he tried to swallow around the knot of grief stuck in his throat.
“Let’s get back upstairs,” Mac said quietly.
Bran finally found his voice. “The grimoire is missing.”
Mac froze, panic flashing across his face. “What?”
“It’s missing. It wasn’t in the Shoppe. Can you check with the police to see if it was at the house?”
Mac closed his eyes. “Yeah, I will.”
“Great. Thanks. I need to get the hell out of here.”
Mac didn’t argue his request. They returned to the work area on the first floor, and Aisling stood from the chair she’d been curled up in at the receptionist desk, hurrying over to him. Bran hugged her tight, refusing to cry in front of her.
“Mac?” the woman manning the dispatch desk called out worriedly. “We got another 10-65.”
Mac swore, leaving them with a hasty goodbye. Bran tracked his passage, wondering what that was all about. Aisling tugged on his hand, and Bran jerked his attention back to her. “Yeah, I know. Let’s go get breakfast.”
Red’s Diner was the only place in town that offered milkshakes, something he knew Aisling loved. While it wasn’t Dunkin’ Donuts, it would do.