Chapter 34

Thirty-Four

The last time I'd fallen through the veil, it had been a sheer accident.

This time… it's not any better.

Cold sinks into my skin and my bones ache.

This time, I know they're phantom pains. The ugly remains of my spirit falling into the ether between living and dead.

This time, red clouds my vision and the memories that surround me are blood memories. Glee hits me like a champagne cork, painful and bubbling.

An idea formed.

A deeper memory of my grandmother's ring.

I push those away, her plan is fractured, but if I can find them, I can stop her. I pull at the memories of them with a soft touch.

She watched Thomas in his classroom, eyes hungrily devouring, lusting…

Johnny responded to a trapped racoon in the backyard of an unfamiliar house.

Chase at his bar.

Joshua doing their grocery shopping.

She's followed them for weeks, and I never saw her once.

She wanted them this full moon.

Needed to get them away from me…

The memories start to blur and I know I don't have much time left.

A place solidifies.

Dark.

Narrow, curtained windows set high.

Squeaking wooden stairs…

Mrs. Miller ferrying lemonade into her basement.

Mrs. Miller, spelled to believe she has four granddaughters.

Passing through the veil is like falling into deep water. Coming out of it is like reaching the bottom of a bungee line. I am flung back into myself so violently, I have to drop to my hands or I'll hit face-first.

"Welcome back." My grandmother steps around me, crouching down and taking hold of my chin with her hands, forces me to meet her eyes. "You did make it back, didn't you?"

"Yes." The words are a rasp, but I choke them out, anyway. "How long?"

"Less than a minute." She lets go of me, and I manage to sit back on my heels. "The veil knows you despise it. It doesn't want you any more than you want it."

"I know where to look."

"Good. I didn't want to have to throw you back in."

And I wouldn't have let her.

I can't shake the cold fingers of that half death.

"You've got company." When I look up, Chase's wolf watches me from outside the Carraway plot. Paws on the wall he looks at me with eyes dark with concern. He's nearly solid.

"He thinks you're a threat."

"He's technically right." Scooping the bowl from the ground beside me, she tosses the remnants of the potion into the soupy mire and fills the bowl with fresh dirt, grinding it into the wood to clean away the last of the spellwork.

The dirt follows after the potion and when she sets it down, she turns back to me.

A handful of new dirt in her grasp. "Scrub that off or you'll have terrible nightmares."

Aphrodite needs the full moon.

But I'm not going to wait that long.

I won't let them stay with her a moment longer than I have to.

She leaves me to clean away the remnants of Aphrodite's blood from my face. The rainwater is freezing, but the dirt was worse.

I turn to the sound of scraping wood as I wipe my face down with my sleeve.

Grandma has turned the coffin and let it drop back into her grave. "It's time for me to go back to sleep."

"I don't have a shovel."

"You won't need one." Laying down, she rests her arms to her sides and looks up at me. "I sincerely hope I don't see you again, cutie pie."

With a snap of her fingers, the casket falls closed, the chains snake back around it and the lock clicks into place. I stumble backward as the earth that had exploded outward sweeps back over her, sealing her back in place.

She's never been trapped here.