Chapter 34

A Grave Dilemma

“I won’t!” Savannah shouted, her voice echoing across the vacant park. “I won’t do your stupid Coven ceremony! I’d rather have no ceremony at all than be a useless Coven witch.”

“Like me.”

“I didn’t mean that, Paige. You aren’t like them. I don’t know why you waste your time with them. You can do so much better.”

“I don’t want to do better. I want to make things better. For all of us.”

She shook her head. “I won’t do your ceremony, Paige. I won’t. It’s mine or nothing. Don’t you understand? This is what my mother told me to do. It’s what she wanted for me.”

When I didn’t respond fast enough, Savannah’s face contorted with rage.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You won’t do it because it comes from my mother. Because you don’t trust her.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust—”

“No, you’re right, it isn’t. It’s because you hate her. You think she was some kind of monster.”

I stepped toward Savannah, but she flung me off with such force that I tripped and fell against the picnic table.

“My mother looked after me. She wouldn’t have let Leah come near me again.”

I flinched. “Savannah, I—”

“No, shut up. I’m sick of listening to you. You think my mother was evil because she practiced dark magic? That didn’t make her evil. It made her smart. At least she had the guts to get out of the Coven, not hang around, learning stupid little baby spells and thinking she’s queen of the witches.”

I stepped back, bumping the table again and falling hard onto the bench. Cortez hurried from the woods, where he’d been burying the Hand of Glory. I shook my head to warn him off, but Savannah stepped into my line of vision and towered over me.

“You know what?” she said. “I know why you won’t do that ceremony for me. Because you’re jealous. Because your mother made you go through that useless Coven ceremony and now it’s too late. You’re stuck. You can’t go back and do it over again. You can’t get more powerful. So you’re going to hold me back because your mother didn’t—”

“Enough,” Cortez said, pushing Savannah away from me. “That is enough, Savannah.”

“Back off, sorcerer,” she said, turning on him.

“You back off, Savannah,” he said. “Now.”

Savannah’s face fell, as if all that anger suddenly gave way.

“Go back to the swings and cool down, Savannah,” he said.

She obeyed, giving only a tiny nod.

“Let her go,” Cortez whispered when I made a motion to stand. “She’ll be fine. You have a decision to make.”

With that, he sat beside me and didn’t say another word while I made that decision.

Would I force Savannah to settle for less than her full potential? Once the choice was made, there was no reversing it. A witch had exactly one night to turn the tide of her destiny. Melodramatic, but true.

Was I jealous of Savannah for still having the opportunity to become a more powerful witch? No. The thought hadn’t occurred to me until she mentioned it. Now that she had, though, it did give me something to think about. The chance had passed for me. If, as Eve claimed, this other ceremony would make a witch stronger, then yes, it stung to think I’d missed out. Given the choice, I’d have picked the stronger ceremony without question. Even without knowing whether it worked, even without knowing how much more power it could give me, I would have taken the chance.

Did I trust Savannah with this power? Give me the ability to kill and you’d never need to worry about me suffocating some jerk who cut me off on the freeway. Knowing I possessed the power would be enough. But Savannah was different. She already used her power at the slightest provocation. Yesterday, when we found that investigator in our house, Savannah had thrown him into the wall. Would she have settled for that if she could have killed him? Yet I couldn’t wait around to see whether she’d outgrow her recklessness. Either I performed that ceremony tomorrow or I never did it at all. With that came another responsibility. If I gave Savannah those powers, I would need to teach her to control them. Could I do that?

Savannah’s mother may have passed along some attitudes with which I strongly disagreed, but Eve had loved her daughter and had wanted the best for her. She’d believed that the “best” was this ceremony. Did I dare dispute that?

How could I make a decision like this so quickly? I needed days, maybe weeks. I had only minutes.

I walked up behind Savannah as she swung, her sneakers scuffing the dirt into clouds.

“I’ll do the ceremony,” I said. “Your ceremony.”

“Really?” She twisted to look up. Then, seeing my expression, her grin collapsed. “I didn’t mean it, Paige. What I said.”

“What’s said is said.”

I turned and walked back to the car.

I drove in silence, answering only questions directed at me.

“Can I see the grimoires, Paige?” Savannah asked, bobbing from the back seat.

I nodded.

“Maybe I can help you learn these. Or we can learn them together.”

I had to say something. I’m no good at holding grudges. It feels too much like sulking.

“Sure,” I said. “That … sounds good.”

Cortez glanced back at the grimoire in Savannah’s hands, then looked at me. He didn’t say anything, but his look oozed curiosity.

“Later,” I mouthed.

He nodded, and silence prevailed until we reached the outskirts of East Falls.

“Okay,” I said as we drove into town. “We’ve got a decision to make. We need this grave dirt, but I’m not going near the East Falls cemetery. The last thing I need is for someone to look down from the hospital and see me darting among tombstones. So, we have two choices. One, we can go to the county cemetery. Two, we can go to the one here in town and you can get the dirt, Cortez.”

He sighed.

“Okay, I guess that answers my question. We head to the county cemetery.”

“It wasn’t the proposition to which I was registering my objection,” he said.

“So what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Savannah leaned over the seat. “He’s pissed because you’re still calling—”

Cortez cut her off. “I’m not ‘pissed’ about anything. The town cemetery is closer. I’ll get the dirt.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not at all. I should be able to retrieve dirt through the fence without having to enter the cemetery proper and therefore without risk of being seen.”

“Is that where they buried Cary?” Savannah asked. “By the fence?”

“I think he was cremated.”

Cortez nodded. “A course of action which, had it not been determined prior to the visitation, I’m quite certain would have been considered afterward.”

“No kidding,” I said with a shudder. “After that, I’m a cremation convert.”

“Wait a sec,” Savannah said. “If they cremated Cary, how are we going to take dirt from his grave?”

“We aren’t.”

“Lucas can’t take it from just anyone,” Savannah said. “It has to be from the grave of someone who was murdered.”

“What?”

“Uh, didn’t I mention that?”

“No.”

“Ummm, sorry, guys.”

“We have”—I checked the clock—“forty-five minutes to find the grave of someone who was murdered. Great. Just great.”

“Pull over again,” Cortez said. “We’re going to need to give this some thought.”

We’d been sitting at the side of the road for nearly ten minutes. Finally I sighed and shook my head.

“I can’t even think of the last person who was murdered in East Falls. The Willard girl was killed by a drunk driver before Christmas, but I’m not sure that counts.”

“We ought not to take the chance.”

I thudded back against the headrest. “Okay, let me think.” I bolted upright. “I’ve got it! The woman in the morgue. The one behind the curtain. Someone shot her. I don’t know the story, probably because I’ve been avoiding the papers, but that’s murder, isn’t it? Or could it be manslaughter?”

“Premeditated or not, it appears a clear case of homicide, and that will be sufficient. Is she buried in town?”

“Oh, God. I don’t know. I didn’t recognize her. She probably wasn’t from East Falls, but I can’t be sure. Shit! Oh, wait. It would say in the local paper, right? If we could get last week’s paper—”

“How are we going to do that?” Savannah asked.

“Hold on. Let me think.” I paused, then smiled. “Got it. Elena. She’s a journalist. She should have resources, right?”

“She’ll have access to online news wire services.” Cortez passed me his cell phone. “Tell her to search for anything on Katrina Mott.”

“Where’d you get the name?” Savannah asked.

“From the notice board outside the funeral home on Monday. There were only two services listed.”

“Good memory,” I said.

He nodded and turned on the phone for me.

As I’d hoped, Elena hadn’t gone to bed yet, though it was past eleven on a weeknight. Not that her social calendar was any busier than mine—she stuck pretty close to home, which was several hours from any late-night city clubs—but she had the advantage of having housemates over the age of thirteen, neither of whom had to get up early for work or school. Plus there was the whole werewolf thing, which often necessitated late nights. When I called, she was outside playing touch football with visiting Pack mates. Rough life, huh?

She took the information and called back within five minutes.

“Katrina Mott,” she said. “Died Friday, June fifteenth. Shot to death by her common-law husband during an argument because he—and I quote—‘wanted to shut her (obscenity deleted) mouth for good.’ Sounds like murder to me. Hope the bastard gets life.”

“Life in prison and a lifetime of haunting, if there’s any justice in the world. Does it say where she was being buried?”

“Uh … oh, here. Memorial at East Falls Funeral Parlor followed by interment Tuesday morning at Pleasant View Cemetery.”

“The county cemetery. Perfect. Thanks.”

“No problem. You sure you don’t need help? Nick’s here for the weekend. The three of us could come. Clay, Nick, and I. Or is that exactly what you don’t need?”

“Something like that. No offense, but—”

“None taken. If you need more subtle muscle, I can sneak down without Clay. For a while, at least. Until he finds me. Sounds like you have everything under control, though.”

I made a noncommittal noise.

“Call me if you need me, okay?” she continued. “Even if you just want a bodyguard for Savannah. She’s still coming up here next month, right?”

“Absolutely.”

She laughed. “Do I hear relief in your voice? We’re looking forward to having her.”

“Uh-huh. Let me guess, ‘we’ as in you and Jeremy.”

Another laugh. “Clay’s fine with it. Not counting down the days, but not complaining either. With Clay, that’s a sign of near-approval.”

“Approval of Savannah, not me.”

“Give it time. You’re still staying for the weekend, right? And we’re driving down to New York? The two of us?”

“Absolutely.”

Savannah was waving for the phone.

“I have to go,” I said. “Savannah wants to talk.”

“Pass her over and I’ll talk to you soon.”

As I passed Savannah the phone and started the car, I couldn’t help smiling. For two minutes there, I’d forgotten everything else. Two minutes in which I could again see the future progressing exactly as I’d planned it before all this started. I’d get through this. Then I’d go on to enjoy my summer. I’d have a Savannah-free week to squeeze in some social time with my Boston-area friends, plus a New York weekend to develop my friendship with Elena.

For the first time since Leah arrived in East Falls, I could envision a time when all this would be a memory, something to talk about with Elena over drinks at an overpriced New York nightclub. With that came a renewed burst of optimism. I would get past this.

Now, I just had to gather dirt from a murdered woman’s grave before the stroke of twelve. I could handle that.