Midlife Soul Hunter (The Forty Proof #8)

Chapter 1

1

I ’m here again, in a place where no one ever wants to go, but every woman alive has been at least once.

The valley where despair claims your body and hope flees your heart and soul, leaving you alone and lost, feeling as though you cannot take another step. Like I said, all women know this place, and plenty of men, but in my foolishness, I’d thought I was safe from that place now. It was logical that I might think that way.

I’d survived my husband’s mental abuse and philandering, the death of my beloved Gran, and rebuilt myself step by painstaking step. I’d faced monsters, demons, and evil that tried so very hard to take me out.

Along the way, I’d become more than I’d ever believed I could be.

I’d found my heart and courage.

I’d found friends who rallied around me in my times of need, friends who had become the family of my heart.

And I’d found love that had shaken me to the core, changing the way I looked at the world.

A love that I was holding to with everything I had in me, a love that I was fighting for.

And yet, here I sat, on the edge of my bed in a ramshackle safe-house, exhausted beyond measure, unable to do more than sit and breathe. Everything in me hurt, from my skin to the roots of my hair, to that middle toe on my left foot which ached each time I flexed my feet. I knew it was more than body aches that were plaguing me—my soul had been battered, thrashed against the shores of a world without him…and I wasn’t sure where to put my feet next.

I could still hear the echo of the last brave thing I’d said.

“I’m not leaving him there. No matter what it might cost in the end.”

I’d uttered those words after leaving Crash in hell, and I’d meant them with all my heart. Yet I hadn’t been able to find a way to him. No matter how hard I’d tried to find a path, it seemed my way was continually blocked.

Three weeks had passed since that day, three weeks since Crash had died in my arms. His soul was trapped, and he’d warned me that he was the bait the Dark Council was using to get me to go into hell. Because by me going into hell, I gave the Dark Council another ingredient—and quite possibly—the last ingredient to the spell that would raise a vampire army. The very spell that Crash and I had been trying to prevent when he died.

I didn’t care about that, didn’t care about any of it—I only cared about bringing him home.

But finding a way into hell, an actual gateway, was apparently no small thing. Every one of my friends was helping me look—even Remy and his father, Ivan the Red. I’d barely slept, barely eaten, all I’d done was search the city, seeking anyone who might be able to send us in the right direction.

Those who could have helped on the Council—Roderick or Stark—were nowhere to be found. It was as if they’d never existed.

Gerry had no idea.

Maggie, the goblin in the botanical gardens, didn’t have any information.

Sarge and Winnifred, the garrache , had come up with nothing from any of the local packs.

We’d interrogated Remy to no avail—he knew nothing of hell or how to get there. Despite his age and experience, Remy’s father, Ivan the Red, was no more knowledgeable. Though it hadn’t stopped him from dragging his son with him to the fae realm to try and find something that might help us. Remy had no choice, and Ivan had insisted it would be good for them to get to know one another.

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I wasn’t in a place to argue.

We’d even followed a lead to a haunted building that currently hosted “Hunk-O-Mania”. All that I got out of that was a lighter and an eyeful of wrinkled skin I didn’t need to have in my memory bank.

Getting to Crash was all that mattered, and yet, not for the first time since I’d returned to Savannah after losing him, I was coming up with a whole lot of nothing.

My hands began to tremor in my lap, and I clasped them together as the fear climbed in me that this was indeed it, that I was going to be grieving him for real. That there was no coming back for his soul.

I blew out a breath and stood, wobbling a little. I gripped the edge of the bed and turned to look out the window. The light was dull outside—I’d only been asleep a few hours, passing out sometime after three in the morning, only to wake before dawn.

Despite the lethargy that lay heavy on me, like a wet, woolen blanket hanging from my shoulders, sleep was not my friend.

I dreamed of Crash every night, of his death, of his hands slipping from mine. Of being helpless to bring him back.

This morning though, was a little different.

I was both hopeful and terrified for the day ahead of me.

There was one person left on my list of possible helpers—someone who had knowledge of the dead. Although I absolutely did not want to go to her, I’d passed the point of desperation days ago.

Today was the day I took another leap beyond it. I made my way out to the kitchen. It was empty, an unusual thing in Haven House given how many of us were currently calling it home. And man, was it a list.

Eammon, Eric, Sarge, Ivan the Red and of course, Remy had stayed close. Dr. Mori had gone back to his floating house, but he was here most days helping us look at possible routes into hell. As always, Robert was close by.

Penny, Feish, Kinkly, Bridgette and Jinx were all staying close to the house when they weren’t out searching Savannah—which was all hours of the day and night. Winnifred aka the garrache , was out most days, ranging with Sarge, talking to whatever shifter they could find.

Usually Eric was up by now, getting things ready for the day. But I knew that he’d been out the night before, talking to the other bigfoots, trying to get us a lead, too, so he was absent from his favorite place.

There was no smell of fluffy fresh pastries, or even the pot of coffee he usually had going. I didn’t realize how much comfort those smells brought until they were gone. I swallowed hard, my emotions high even for something as simple as missing Eric.

Shuffling around, sniffling, wiping at my eyes, I boiled a pot of water and made a tea, adding a good amount of cream and sugar.

“What time are you meeting her again?” Feish asked from behind me. She wasn’t in much better shape than I was after the last few weeks. To say that we’d been grinding was an understatement.

She’d gone to the local sea gods—a real dick of one named Moses had been our best shot according to her—but they’d laughed in her face and sent her away, telling her that they knew but wouldn’t tell her. I suspected they didn’t know, or they’d have bargained for an exchange that would leave us in their debt.

I blew on the surface of my tea, rippling the top of it. “Eight, at the Hollows Graveyard.”

I was pretty sure she already knew the exact time and place, but I didn’t mind repeating it. We’d all been repeating what we were doing and planning to each other, because it made us feel like we were accomplishing something. Like we were doing everything we could.

I’ll try Death Row.

Good, then I’ll try the Botanical Gardens.

Who has the shifters?

The swamps to the north…

We’d strategized and spread out, and so far all the work had produced…nothing.

I took a sip of the tea and Feish sat down next to me. She leaned her head on my shoulder and let out a heavy sigh, her gills flapping lightly. “This is hard, Bree. I thought we’d have him back by now, but every person we talk to is one less who can help and that…scares me. What if we can’t find him? What if the boss is truly lost? What if….”

I put my arm around her shoulders as she began to tremble. “I’m afraid too, Feish. But we just keep going until he’s back with us. That’s all we can do, no matter how hard it is.”

She sniffed and rubbed a webbed hand across her face. “Stupid, this is so stupid. The first week, I thought we’d have a way to him. So many stories about portals to hell, surely as goose shit is slippery we’d have found one that worked by now.”

This was a conversation she and I had at least once a day. How things should have been, and how for all the mentions of portals or ways into hell, we hadn’t found a single one.

I nodded and stared into the depths of my tea as if the answers might be in there. “I know.”

We’d tried haunted houses. Caves where we’d found nothing but a terrified shifter. We’d gone all around Savannah and back, and in the end, nothing. As each subsequent day that produced more nothings, the hope slid lower within me and the fear rose. All of my friends were still trying, but I knew they were thinking the same thing with each day that passed.

One more time, one more ask, and then be done with it, let Crash go, and move on to stopping the Dark Council once more.

“The others think we’re crazy,” Feish burbled softly. “I heard Eammon telling Sarge that we needed to let Crash go and give up. That there is no saving the boss, that he thinks it’s been too long.”

A flurry of wings tipped my head to see Kinkly zipping in to join us. Well, maybe zipping was an overstatement. Her flying was still off-kilter from her injury, but she was getting stronger with each day, her flight less erratic. “I don’t think you’re crazy, and I don’t think this is impossible.” Her autumn colors were duller than usual too, the deep reds, oranges, and browns muted, like she’d had the shine literally rubbed off her wings and hair. “I think your love for him runs deep enough to make this happen. I mean, if anyone can do the impossible, it’s you, Bree. The others should know that by now.”

Tears gathered in my eyes, and I blinked, which made them run down my face and plop into my tea. Throat tight, I spoke around the lump. “Thanks, Kink.”

Her smile wobbled a little. “Look, we should get you cleaned up for your meeting. Marge does not need to know how low you are, or that you’re desperate for information. We want her seeing the badass who took her zombies down.”

Feish bobbed her head. “Yes. Good point. Desperate woman is not a good look. That gets us nothing but an STD and a bucket of regrets.”

I’d tipped the tea back as she began to speak, which left me choking on it. Spluttering still, I looked over at Feish. “What are you reading now?”

“All sorts of good books. They have many points,” Feish narrowed her eyes. “About regrets and men in particular.”

I shot a look at Kinkly, who just shook her head surreptitiously.

Wiping my chin, I stood, my back protesting only slightly. The last three weeks had been easy on my body in a weird kind of way. I’d run every day, out of the sheer need to burn off anxiety and fears that I couldn’t face—hence that one toe acting up and my ankles feeling like they’d been wrapped in tensor bandages that were too tight—but there had been no battles with anything. No fights for my life. No Dark Council showing up on my doorstep.

There hadn’t even been any clown-faced rats trying to bite my head off. Not so much as a scratch on my skin.

It was almost like the shadow world around me had gone silent. Dormant.

That or I was in the eye of the storm. Call me crazy, but it felt like the latter.

Every night I’d worked with Dr. Mori, and every night he tried to draw the same kind of power out of me that I’d displayed in the land of the dark fae. When I’d lost control of my death magic, I’d nearly died myself. I’d found myself in hell, with Crash, or at least my soul had been there.

All that death magic power and no control was bad when it came right down to it.

“You could raise the dead all around us, and then die yourself, leaving us to fight thousands of zombies on our own,” Dr. Mori chided, his dark eyes gentle. His bedside manner had improved some.

“But you can take zombies down,” I pointed out. “You don’t need me to do that.”

“Not your zombies,” he said softly. “Your magic is different enough than mine that whatever undead you raise will not be the kind that I can control or stop.”

“I don’t plan on raising any undead. Other than Crash.”

The training had been good, and had left me feeling far more capable, albeit fatigued from the nightly dream practice.

But no matter what Dr. Mori did, I couldn’t find that spark again that allowed me access to the big death magic. Losing Crash had stolen something vital from me.

So, instead, we practiced control—breathing, focusing on the magic and how it felt, how to direct it and then how to turn it off. Simple when it was just a trickle of power. Simple when I didn’t need to put any gusto behind it to fight for my life, or for the life of my friends.

I left the kitchen, my tea only half drunk and headed to the shower.

Under the hot water, I lowered my head so that my chin touched my chest as the stream of water pulsed over me, loosening some of the tension in my body for long enough for me to pull myself together. To put on the brave face that was confident.

I needed to make this next meeting happen, to find my way to Crash. To convince Marge to help was something I was determined to make happen.

Feish and Kinkly were right, I needed to get it together before I met with Marge, who was always wrapped up in some kind of underhanded scheme. I had to be the woman who’d faced down Marge and her zombies back in NOLA once more. “I can do this,” I whispered to myself, but I sounded more like the woman I’d been before I came home to Savannah.

I did not want to be that woman again, the one who was afraid, and sad, and scared to make a choice.

“Pull it together,,” I grumbled at myself.

Toweling off, I got dressed, not even bothering with my leathers that I had from Gerry. Instead, I slipped into a pair of jeans and a simple white tank top.

Kinkly fluttered around my head.

“You need a few warrior braids again, my friend. To find the strength to keep going on.” She landed on my left shoulder and quickly braided that side of my hair back.

“I am trying, Kinkly.” I nodded and straightened my shoulders. “She’s the person who will help us get to him.” She had to be, because her name was the last one on my list.

Literally, last on the list. If Marge couldn’t help, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

Gran floated silently into the room, her broad skirts flowing around her as she made her way around to face me. “I’m coming with you. I think it best. Marge can see me of course, but you need back up with that woman and everyone else is either sleeping or out.”

I wanted to reach for her and hug her tight, but that wasn’t possible, so I settled for a smile. “Everyone else is out?”

“Sarge and Winnifred and Jinx are still out—they were meeting with a different shifter last night, one named Cin. I think she was from way up north, but has been hiding down this way. And yes, everyone else is sleeping. It’s very early, you know, and everyone is tired. It has been a difficult few weeks for not just you.”

She was right…about all of it. But seeing as my body wasn’t going to let me sleep any longer, it was better to get the day going.

I glanced at Feish. “You ready?”

She bobbed her head. “We aren’t walking out to the Hollows, are we?”

“I thought we’d take a boat, in case we need to make a quick exit,” I said. “Do you have something that would work?”

Feish clapped her webbed hands together. “Excellent. I have just the boat to borrow.”

Borrow to her meant steal, but that was fine. Fine to steal…

I found myself shaking my head at how my morals had slipped. Things had changed for sure.

“We have sketchy shit to do, so let’s get it done,” I said, a flicker of amusement rolling through me.

“There she is, my honey girl, the one with the fire in her belly. Let’s go talk to Marge and get that stubborn blacksmith home.” Gran patted me on the face, the brush of cold air the only indication that she’d tried to touch me.

Blinking rapidly, I blew out a short, sharp breath and then turned, following Gran out.

Well, I would have except that I was stopped in my tracks by a woman I hadn’t seen in weeks.

Her uniform was a bit more wrinkled than when I’d seen her last, her badge dull, but she was still a police officer. “Abigail. What are you doing here so early?”

“Officer Burke,” she snapped, obviously irritated with me before I’d even done anything. “I need to speak to you, Ms. O’Rylee. I have a few questions.”

I shook my head. “I have a meeting. And you’re being rude, so no.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I could haul you in for official questioning.”

“For what?” Feish stepped up beside me. To the average person, she didn’t look like a river maid with gills or webbed hands. She was a pretty woman with a cleft lip, which gave a reason for her sometimes-interesting way of speaking. At least to a human.

“For obstructing justice,” Abigail said.

It was my turn to narrow my eyes. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

“At the police station.” She motioned for me to follow her.

I sighed. “I have a meeting that I cannot be late for, but I promise you that I’ll come in as soon as I can. Later today.”

She whipped around. “You are not above the law, not even if you have some sort of magic hocus pocus!”

I did a couple of big blinks. “Magic hocus pocus. That’s a new one. Really, I’m the one keeping Savannah from falling apart at the seams from critters that you all can’t even see. So why don’t you just let me do my job?”

With that, I brushed past her and picked up my pace to put some distance between us.

“If you don’t come with me now, I will arrest you the next time I see you!” she yelled after me.

I lifted both hands high into the air, palms to the sky as if in supplication for an answer. Then I turned and spoke over my shoulder. “Good ducking luck with that! I’ve been charged with murder wrongly once already. I doubt you’ll get anything to stick!”

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t “speaking” in the purest sense of the word. Yup, I was yelling right back at her.

For good measure, I slowly made a fist of both hands, minus a single finger. Let her chew on that. The burst of anger felt good after the weeks of sadness. But even the anger fled within a few seconds.

Kinkly was giggling as she continued to braid back my hair. “Oh man, you should see her face. I think her head is going to pop off she’s so red!”

“Will she be a problem?” Feish was all but stomping beside me in her irritation.

I shook my head. “I haven’t done anything, so she can’t make me come in. Later, I’ll deal with her later and see if I can find out what has her panties all tied in knots and shoved between her cheeks.”

Kinkly snorted. “You haven’t had anything to do with her, not for a long time. What could she want from you, especially to be so angry?”

“No idea,” I said. That was the truth. Since I was cleared of Alan’s murder and gotten information that my parents had also been murdered, there had been little to no communication with the local police department. Which was fine by me.

Feish fell into step beside me, no longer stomping, and we quickly left the very angry Officer Abigail Burke behind.

The pre-dawn light cast everything around us in gray tones despite the bursts of color in the foliage and the thick yellow streams of pollen that lay on the ground. I slowed down so that Feish and Kinkly got ahead of me.

“Probably just my mindset,” I muttered to myself.

Except it felt a little too prevalent for that. Everything looked…off. I stopped and frowned at the world covered in a layer of…I wanted to say dust, but it wasn’t dust. It was thinner than that. “Is it just me? Do you see this? Gran, could this be…a spell?”

Gran slowed. “Well I’ll be damned. Now that you point it out.” She reached a finger out and brushed through the thin layer that looked like dust, but wasn’t. “A dampening spell. Visible only at the crack of dawn.”

I wracked my brain for my past training, but came up empty. “What would a spell like that do?”

Her eyes were thoughtful as we walked slowly behind the others. “It would depend on the intent behind it, but I would say it would be used mostly to slow down someone’s enthusiasm.”

“Enthusiasm?” I muttered. “But it’s everywhere—the spell, not enthusiasm.”

“Which would allow people to touch it, and in essence, take it with them,” Gran said. “I’ve never seen one on a scale like this though, it’s as if it’s everywhere we look.”

Dampening. As in killing my enthusiasm too for finding Crash? I mean, I’d not stopped, neither had my friends but had we gone slower? Had we struggled to get up each day?

Damn straight.

“How do we stop it?”

“Being aware that it is there, unwinds it,” Gran said. “So, this, recognizing it will help it fade.”

I muttered a string of curses under my breath as I caught up to Feish.

“What’s that?” Feish shot me a look. “Talking to yourself again? Listen, I can handle sad Bree, mad Bree, and even bad Bree, but not crazy Bree. You’re on your own if you go loony.”

The laugh shocked me as it broke out of my mouth, but then I couldn’t stop. “That’s the line? Crazy me is too much?” I was snorting and giggling, unable to hold it back.

Kinkly fluttered around my face. “Oh, I think I can handle crazy Bree. The one I don’t want to see is the Bree I first met. The one who was so afraid of her own power. That’s the one who’s gone. Even now.”

I gave her a quick nod. “She is. But it’s okay to be…down. It’s okay to not always be the strong one and to let your friends hold you together for a while.”

Kinkly snorted. “Well, I know that. You don’t have balls, that’s the biggest factor in being able to recognize that you don’t always have to be the strong one.”

I told them about the dampening spell and made them look around, helped them to see the strange dull glimmer on things. Right away, I saw them perk up—like being told you weren’t crazy, it really was the world out to get you in truth. As if a weight had slid off their shoulders, they straightened and walked a little faster.

Damn Missy and her games. It had to be her, throwing this dampening spell on us to slow us down.

Gran laughed ahead of us. “You know, there was a time when I thought my husband, Altin, knew best. He always was the strong, silent one. And you know what it got him?”

“Dead?” I offered.

“Dead,” she confirmed.

There was a flicker of something next to her, a tall figure in a cloak who was there and gone before I could say if I was just seeing things. Maybe, maybe not. I rubbed at my eyes, but the figure didn’t reappear. Was it my grandfather, Altin? I’d met him once, in a dream that wasn’t just a dream. He was Fae, so was it possible he was trapped in the underworld like Crash?

“Gran, you never did tell me what happened to Altin, how he met you, or ended up dead.” I hurried my feet up to catch her, even as my eyes slid back to the gray world around us.

Feish frowned. “I can’t wait to hear his story.”

“Me either!” Kinkly yelped. “I want to hear their love story!”

“I’ll translate,” I said as I caught Gran’s eyes. “There’s no time like the present, we have a boat ride and time to kill.”

She sighed and seemed to consider for a long moment before she started her tale. “You know I had a sister, Lilith.”

I nodded as I repeated her words for Feish and Kinkly. “I think I met her when I was young. She lived far away, but I can’t remember where. And she only came the one time.”

Gran tucked her hands into her skirt pockets and continued with her story. “Growing up, Lilli and I shared clothes, magic, and knowledge. We shared a home even as grown women, working magic together. And we shared…Altin.”

Okay, so yeah, my jaw dropped. If ever there was a distraction from the heartache I was suffering, it was my gran’s suddenly torrid love life that I’d been completely unaware of.

“They be both banging him?” Feish gasped.

Gran scoffed. “Vulgar. And yes. We were both with him, though at different times, we weren’t those kinds of witches, thank you very much.”

Kinkly squealed with delight. “A harem! You were part of a harem!”

“I was not!” Gran snapped, though I could see the grin on the side of her face trying to peek through. “We both loved him. We were both busy with our work, and usually at different times, so we agreed the best way to make sure he didn’t wander—he was fae after all—was to both bind him. He loved it, and so did we. It was a perfect union. We thought so, anyway.”

Boggling, absolutely mind boggling, that’s the only ducking word I had for this revelation, and it was a perfect distraction for the ache in my heart and body. My brain was gobsmacked over what Gran was saying.

There was only one thing to do with this information. “Go on, you can’t stop now,” I managed as we reached the river. Feish ran to grab the boat she wanted to ‘borrow’ and yelled over her shoulder, “No more story without me! I want to hear about the harem and all the regrets she has with men!”

Apparently, she wasn’t much worried about getting caught, not that I was surprised, Feish was resourceful at the best of times.

So we waited for her, and I watched my gran, wondering just how much of her story—of her life—I didn’t truly know. A hell of a lot more than I’d realized, that much was certain.

Feish was back in under three minutes, swimming beside a boat she was propelling toward the shore, kicking so hard water sprayed behind her as if it was an engine propelling her, and not her feet.

“Okay, okay, everyone in the boat, and now more story! This is better than a romance book, because it’s real!”

Gran stepped inside the boat first and sat down, her image still somewhat solid looking as the day was on the dim side. I followed suit and Kinkly clung to my ear.

“I agree with Feish, this is beyond juicy.”

“It is not juicy, it’s proof that real love comes in all forms,” Gran smoothed her skirts, though there were surely no wrinkles in the ghostly material. “I wanted a child, as did Lilli. We wanted them to be close, so what better way than to have them by the same father? Well, Lilli had a girl a week before I had your mother, Bree.”

The boat was bumping along the water at a good clip, pushed by Feish, but honestly, I barely felt it. The story of my grandmother’s past was too engrossing. This wasn’t something she’d ever told me before, at least not as detailed as this.

Gran’s hair and skirt didn’t so much as ripple in the wind off the water. “Things didn’t last, though, and the way everything fell apart still tears at me. When the girls were a year old, something changed, I’m still not sure exactly what. I was busier than ever, running the local coven and raising my girl, but Lilli felt like Altin favored me. I’d barely seen him during those last months, I’d thought he was with her. I could not convince her and she left, taking her daughter with her. It wasn’t true of course—he didn’t favor either of us, but Lilli was right that he’d stopped spending as much time with her. And me, truth be told. What I learned later was that he had another woman, a fae woman that he also cared for. She knew of us, but we did not know of her.”

Horror struck me at the thought that slammed into my brain like a runaway train, and I blurted out the question that scared me to death. “Please tell me it was not Karissa.”

Gran shook her head. “It was not Karissa.”

I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Thank Jaysus for small mercies.”

“It was her mother.”

So much for small mercies. Duck me sideways, that was not expected, and yet it made a strange kind of sense. Some of Karissa’s animosity toward me could just be plain hatred for the connection I had to Altin, especially if…

Horror struck me again. “Please tell me she wasn’t related to me?”

Gran smiled gently. “No, she was not related to you or Altin. Her father was the king of the fae, and Altin was just a pawn of the young and very bored queen who had a certain taste in men.”

My relief was as pure and crisp as the air around us. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d found out that Karissa and I were related. Bad enough that we’d loved the same man but to be her cousin too? Nope, that was a very large nope. Even dead, Karissa’s name still struck horror into me, I couldn’t help it. Her impact on my world had been too much—and mostly in the wrong way.

“But you do have a cousin. Born a month ahead of you. I don’t know what her early years were like, because Lilli hid all of her family from me. Other than a few visits on her own—one where you met her—she kept to herself and hid her daughter and granddaughter from the world, and more importantly from me. She never forgave me for stealing Altin, no matter how many times I tried to explain to her that I did not. That there was another woman.”

Feish pulled herself up over the edge of the boat. “Did Altin stay with you, though? Even though Lilli left?”

Gran nodded. “He did. I was fine with sharing him—even with the young fae queen. I knew that I was never going to get all of him. He wasn’t that kind of man. But Lilli thought her love would change him and make him want to be with only her. It doesn’t work that way, girls. Love doesn’t change a man. He either changes because he is made to understand a truth, or he stays as he is because he chooses to hide from the truth. Nothing else can make him change. Not truly.”

Feish burbled and slid most of the way back into the water. “So all the books are wrong?”

“Most.” Gran laughed, but it was gentle, soft. “Do not give up hope, Feish. Not on love. Just understand that there is only so much it can do, and so very many things that it can’t.”

I spoke for my gran, to Feish, but wondered if her words were meant for me. Because it was love that had me fighting to go to hell. Was she trying to make me understand that love might not be strong enough for this journey? Was she trying to make me see that love would leave me in the end?

I swallowed hard and looked out over the water, willing myself to stay strong. “Crash wouldn’t give up on me, Gran. I know it.”

No one said anything, and I turned to see that Gran’s eyes were shut tight. “Is there more to the story? More to you and Altin and Lilli?”

“There is, and none of it is easy. I fear that you may be angry with me, Bree. And I do not want to lose you too.” Her eyes opened, and if ghosts could shed tears, it looked like she was close, glittering gems in the corners of her eyes.

I smiled and shook my head. “You won’t lose me, Gran. No matter what. We need each other, no matter what is in the past.”

Feish floated along in the water, no longer propelling us, and despite the splash of waves and the cries of the birds and the world waking up, there was a moment of silence. Kinkly clung tightly to me, and I found myself wishing Robert was there too. I’d left my hip bag—and Robert—at the house. I’d felt like I didn’t need it, which might have been that dampening spell again, leaving me apathetic in some ways.

Funny to think of the comfort I could take in a skeletal hand when things got uncertain.

Gran gave a quick nod, drawing my eyes once more. “Then I will go on, with the story that it is fully time to tell.” She smoothed her skirts again. “Lilli died the same night as your parents, the same night as her daughter. Which left her granddaughter to fend for herself—I don’t know if it was the same people who took their lives, but it is a valid suspicion.” Gran shook her head. “I found my great-niece, and I brought her home to us.”

Now, my heart and mind were already pretty beaten up—there were not a lot of spoons left in my cupboard, if you get what I’m saying. Trying to put the pieces together was like trying to make jam in macaroni and cheese taste good. It just wasn’t going to happen.

Her words kind of sat there in the air between us until it finally clicked what my gran was telling me, and I couldn’t help my reaction.

My eyes bugged wide, and I stood up, wobbled like crazy in the boat, nearly capsized us. And yes, I might have been yelling. Speaking loudly, whatever. “I’m sorry, what? Did you keep her in a different house? The attic? The basement? Jaysus, Gran, are you losing it? There was no cousin living with us through my teen years. I think I would remember a small detail like a whole other person living with us!”

She bobbed her head and kept her hands folded in her lap, her face a mask of sorrow. “There was another girl living with us, and she was and is your cousin. More than that, she was a powerful witch in her own right, from a very young age. I trained her, as did Missy and Hattie.” Gran sighed. “I know you don’t remember her, Bree, which is why I haven’t said anything before now.” She stalled me, lifting both hands. “Let me explain. The night that you decided to leave with Alan, she…she wiped your memory of her and asked me to keep her existence a secret from you. She was already having trouble with the other witches, she’d been experimenting with how far she could push her magic. You tried to defend her, and in the end, you were hurt. Not badly, but enough that it scared your cousin. So, she wiped your memory of her so you would not be hurt again. And I…agreed to it because I didn’t want to lose you, honey girl.”

I passed on what Gran had said.

Feish slowly began to propel us again. “Wiping memories is dangerous, Celia. Did Bree agree to it?”

Gran looked over at Feish. “Yes, it can be dangerous, but not for Bramble. It is one of her strongest abilities.”

All I could do was stare at my gran. It didn’t escape me that she hadn’t answered Feish’s second question. Had I agreed to have my memory wiped? I was guessing not, and that was a no-no.

But what was I even thinking? That I had a cousin who had lived with us that I couldn’t remember? I frowned and tried to go through my teenage memories, but from what I could tell, there weren’t any missing spots or people.

Was this for real, or was this some sort of trick? I couldn’t imagine Gran doing something to hurt me, not even by accident—and if her story was true, and I had no reason to believe it was not, she had been trying to protect me. They both had. And the idea that I might have a cousin out there, almost a sister, was too good to be true.

I closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands to them. Trying to recall something, even a hint would be enough for me to believe.

“You were the best of friends, Bree,” Gran said.

A whisper of something, of memories I couldn’t quite reach, brushed across my mind. The smell of lilac bushes and a voice I didn’t recognize yet felt like I’d known for a hundred years.

“We’ll always be best friends, Bree. I know it. Please forgive me, I am doing this to keep you safe. Please believe me, everything I am doing is to keep us both safe.”

Her voice hung in my mind. There and not.

“Why?” Was the only thing I could get out of my strangled throat, the distant memories sliding forward in my head. Not quite unlocked, not quite alive, but close. “Why would you tell me this now, and not when I first came back to Savannah? Why hold this back, Gran? I don’t understand.”

Her face crumpled, the sunlight streaming through her now. “I hoped that I wouldn’t have to tell you, Bree, not ever. I hoped it would never even be a discussion that we had to have at any point in your life. Because Bramble changed after she left home. She turned her back on the light and embraced the darkness of her magic. Her powers grew, and she did not use them for helping people. She is as dangerous as a witch can be, Bree, and she knows that one of the few people who could stand in her way is you . Your cousin is not the girl from your childhood, and she will kill you, given the chance. I believe it with all my soul. And…” Gran shook her head and her hands trembled as they fluttered through the air. “This spell the Dark Council has been chasing, it could only be performed by the most powerful of witches. I’d never considered it before, because I believed the Dark Council had Missy as their witch, but now…if Bramble is that witch, Bree, I fear that she is coming for you. You have been a thorn in the Dark Council’s side. They have truly brought out the—”

“Big guns,” I said.

Gran nodded. “Aptly said, yes. They have brought out the big guns, and I fear they are pointed directly at you, Bree.”