“No,” I said, “I put wards up for you. How did the ghost get through?”
Gerry’s eyes slid away from mine and I got into her face and whispered, “You invited it back. You wanted to hear what it said. You want to do it.”
“No,” Gerry and her husband said together.
“Why do you know what it wants,” I asked the husband. “What’s your name?”
“Curtis,” he said. He cleared his throat and then said, “Gerry wouldn’t do that to the family. She wouldn’t.”
“You did it,” Gerry snarled. “You did it. You did this. This is your fault.”
“But Gerry…” Curtis whined.
One of the kids whimpered and I looked at my sisters. Bran rolled her eyes and growled, “I am not a role model for children.”
But she grabbed both of them by their arms, drew them into the other room. I could feel her working magic a moment later. And I didn’t need to ask to know what she was doing. She was creating a pentacle, putting up wards, and blocking the sounds.
When I felt the pentacle snap into place, I turned and faced Gerry.
“Confess,” I ordered.
“I’m not the one who needs to confess,” she hissed. “I’m the victim.”
“Darling, no,” Curtis said. “Don’t be that way.”
I sighed and looked at Ruby.
“I would guess channeling,” Ruby said. “We need a pentacle made of ether.”
“Gerry,” I said. “You can work with me and let me help you.”
“Or what,” she snarled again. She leaned towards me, with her hands clawed.
“Or,” I said, “You will scar your children for life. They’ll never get over this. Not ever.”
That stopped her. But I knew crazy mom eyes and this mom was devoted to her kids. Because, gods damn it, my own was as well.
“Hold it together,” I told Gerry and dropped to my knees making one of my swift pentacles, only this time using ether and the talisman instead of chalk. The power was enormous when it snapped around Gerry, and she shrieked.
“That’s the ghost,” Ruby said.
“What did you do,” I asked Curtis. Ruby scribbled on a piece of paper several runes and I put them on the outside of the pentacle. As I did whatever was Gerry faded to what was the ghost.
“I…I …”
It was the ghost or Gerry who answered. Maybe both. “He cheated. He broke our family. Just like they all do. They cheat and they destroy and who is left? What? Nothing! Just ashes. He needs to go. Quietly. It would be so easy. Just a little drink, a little swallow, a few moments and it would be done.”
“It would be better,” Ruby said, “If you push the ghost through the thinning. As the keeper, there is far more chance that you’ll be successful.”
I hadn’t even known that you could fail. It was obvious now, but I hadn’t…I closed my eyes and drew on my magic, I drew it through the part of me that was connected to the dead. To that bridge inside of me between my soul, my magic, and the otherness that was in me. The coolness. The never-warm magic that crackled with cold light.
Maybe this was where my snake came from. Maybe this was why my family was so broken. So misaligned. Maybe this coldness was just weak enough in my mother that she could recognize the problem when the others hadn’t. That she’d been able to warm herself against the fire of my daddy’s pure heart.
Gods. She’d gone to jail for him, and I was going to cure him of her love. Of what she’d done. I was going to free him and leave her out in the darkness.
I made my ether cage of those emotions, of that fury, of that sadness, and I pushed that ghost that was riding poor Gerry through the thinning. In the end, she wouldn’t murder her husband, and her children wouldn’t be scarred forever, but I didn’t think the family would recover. Because when Gerry’s eyes opened, and the ghost was gone, she hadn’t regained any of the warmth.
Whatever fire Gerry had once possessed for Curtis had gone through the thinning with the ghost who would have seen him dead to correct the wrongs.
* * * * *
Drake would have found the murderer without me. Because he was a good man, a good cop, and a good witch. Not a powerful witch, but a good witch. He had known from the beginning that Daddy was the least likely of possibilities for premeditated murder. Gwennie told me he had asked her all about Joni and her relationships. He’d learned that Joni had a lover. He’d learned that her spouse had been driven to kill her by the same ghost trying to push Gerry over the edge. I should have trusted him more. I think, perhaps, Mother had trusted him more which was crazy to me. She’d remembered him, known he wouldn't let Leander push Daddy as the murderer—not really. Not forever. And she'd taken the time in jail while Daddy had been safe with us.
Gods, she never stopped messing with my head. She protected Daddy and trusted us to save her. She’d acted, yet again, out of love. And, yet again, I was utterly certain she loved us and utterly certain that you could never quite trust her.
I waited alone outside the St. Angelus Jail for my mother. And when she walked down the steps in her slow, solid way, I crossed to her.
“Your father?”
“I found something to help him,” I said.
Being a witch is wonderful. And it sucks. Because I felt her sorrow through the instincts of my heart, and I knew what I had done. I had taken away that last shred of hope. I had crushed it and left her out in the cold.
“Have you then?” There it was. That emotionless, wooden voice.
I nodded, opening the door to the station wagon. It smelled less of death and mold now, and far too much of overwhelming sadness.
“Happy Yule,” Mother said to the window as she settled into her seat.
I pulled the car away from the curb and headed back to the house that she had loved and abandoned to save me from the cold. She had given up everything that she’d been raised to cherish to allow me the freedom to grow up away from the Hallow madness. She had given me my Daddy and filled our home with warmth. She had changed everything. Every, single thing.
I only wished that in saving my Daddy I hadn’t opened up our whole family to the storm.
“It’s a Yule miracle,” I said sadly, regretting the recipe that my Grandmother Ruby had given me. Hating the potion and the effects even though they were just what I wanted.
And maybe because I was sad for Mother. For her and with her, there was the tiniest spark of a flame in all that heartbreak. The tiniest bit of hope for something better even though what was lost had been so very precious.
“Indeed,” Mother lied. “A miracle.”
CHAPTER 9
“Oh. My. Gods,” Bran said a moment after the front door opened. I turned to see what was causing such a reaction and discovered a new level of flabbergasted.
“Felix?”
The tall, slim, dreadlockless man who stood there nodded once and then said, “Shut up.”
“Oh. My. Gods!” Bran said again. “Shut. The. F—“
“Branka,” Mother interjected, and Felix flinched. He turned slowly, faced my mother, and then gave me such a look of utter pleading that I laughed.
“Bran, sweetie,” Daddy said. “Would you like some cocoa? Felix? You look very nice, young man.”
“Um,” Felix said, fighting for words since I hadn’t given him any reaction to the wordless plea that my mother would be leaving soon. Today even.
“Take it,” I said. “You’ll need it. We have a few more bodies in the house.”
Felix swallowed, dropped into a chair, and reached out blindly for the cocoa.
Bran’s evil laugh was echoed by mine.
“Meet my kittens,” I said, grinning. “My parents are leaving in the morning, but the kittens are staying. Apparently, I was desperate for a cat because Saki, Bran, and Gwennie got me one of these little balls of fluff and murder.”
I jerked my head towards the settee under the window where a tiny black ball was spooning, a sleek black bombay, and a pretty little gray and w
hite cotton ball with whispers and claws.
“Oh thank gods,” Felix said, hand shaking as he lifted his cup to his lips, drained it, set it down and then rubbed his hand over his head. “Merry frackin’ Christmas.”
“Yes, we know,” I said. “Happy Yule to us all for that one.”
My mother sniffed once to show her offense, Daddy chuckled, and Felix fled.
“I was thinking,” Bran said casually as my mother took a seat in one of the armchairs, “That I might go home with you, Mother.”
I stopped breathing. I think Daddy and Mother must have too because the room became so silent the only thing you could hear was tiny snores from the little grey and white kitten.
“That would be nice,” Mother said coolly.
“Well,” Bran shifted, pretending to miss our reactions, “I mean…we can’t all be the Princess Knight. But I might brush up a skill or two.”
“Maybe learn not to get haunted,” I suggested silkily.
“Perhaps look after your mother,” Daddy said. “See that she’s happy. That she knows she is loved.”
Bran and I stopped breathing again, but Daddy wasn’t saying he loved our Mother. Not like she wanted. He didn’t. He couldn’t. But he did love her—he loved the mother of his daughters. Nothing more. And even if she was a monster and a snake, she was our monster and our snake.
“Tell Hazel hi, eat a chocolate croissant for me, and never, ever, drink anything Mother gives you.”
“Please,” Bran said. “Mother hasn’t caught me in that one in forever.”
“It’s just a matter of time,” I countered before I stood, crossed the room, kissed Mother’s cheek, laid my hand on Daddy’s, and escaped my family before they drove me completely insane.
That, too, might just be a matter of time.
The End
Hello! Thank you so much for reading about Rue and her friends. I hope you truly enjoyed this story! Please consider leaving a review to help others who might enjoy the antics of Rue. Reviews don’t just help readers, they help authors too, so thank you in advance for leaving one.
If you’d like to discover what happens next, check out Fated Graves which is available for preorder now. You’ll find a preorder available for Rubies and Graves soon. If you happened to have read the Inept Witches series, the next one, Paris Murder, is coming in February!
ALSO BY AMANDA A. ALLEN
The Inept Witches Mysteries (co-written with Auburn Seal)
Inconvenient Murder
Moonlight Murder
Bewitched Murder
Presidium Vignettes (with Rue Hallow)
Prague Murder
Paris Murder (coming in Feb 2017)
The Rue Hallow Mysteries
Hallow Graves
Hungry Graves
Lonely Graves
Sisters and Graves
Yule Graves
Fated Graves (Coming Soon)
Rubies and Graves (Coming Soon)
Curses of the Witch Queen
Fairy Tales Re-Imagined
Song of Sorrow: A Prelude to Rapunzel
Snow White
Kendawyn Paranormal Regency Romances
Compelled by Love
Bewildered by Love
Persuaded to Love
Other Novels
These Lying Eyes
Author’s Note
Like all books, this one happened through endless acts of friendship that gave me the freedom to write and edit. Thank you for those who reached out to me requesting another Rue book. Thanks to Pamela Welsh and Louisa Lechner for being my early readers. I am grateful for the drive that comes from being a mother and the push to excel I feel simply because I have been blessed by the four little lives of my kids. For you—anything, always.
Much love to those who help me get time to write and love my babies, Mom—I’m looking at you. Emily Paulina and Laurieann Thorpe, you guys are the best. Thanks again for the awesome covers Auburn Seal.
Loves Amanda
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Amanda A. Allen
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Yule Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery (The Rue Hallow Mysteries Book 5) Page 7
