“Dealing with family issues.” She turned away, abruptly dropping the conversation.
Ouch. I knew she was still upset with me, but I couldn’t understand why and didn’t want to start an argument over it. Instead, I helped Lauren clear away the plate of fruit, vegetables, and bread from the top center of the altar, then packed the black votive candle along with the cauldron into my box of supplies.
As I cleared the ashes of dead twigs, each having been named for things that needed to end—for myself, for others, and for the earth—Lauren crouched beside a stone statue in the yard and pulled a camera from her bag. She snapped a picture of herself and the marble lion. After a few more clicks, she checked the camera screen.
“Cool that Charles bought the old library.” She shoved her phone back in her bag and turned to me. “Cocoa?”
“Please,” I said.
She headed inside. I packed away the boline we’d used to cut our ritual apple. The crosswise slice had created a pentagram at the core, honoring the five elements—earth, air, water, fire, and spirit. I also put away the half-slice of apple we’d eaten from during the ritual, but the other half-slice I wrapped in a piece of cheesecloth to bury later—an offering to feed the souls of nearby spirits.
Ivory stood at the edge of the yard, staring off into space. I should’ve gone to her; instead, I folded the altar cloth away and carried the box to the back steps. She followed me inside, dragging her wine-colored nails along the wood-paneled walls as she peeked into every room. Old offices were now bedrooms, and the single-stall bathroom had been fully renovated.
“What did Charles do to this place?” she asked.
“He couldn’t live here the way it was.”
Lauren called from the kitchen: “Everything’s new!”
Ivory pointed down the hall. “I’ll wait in the parlor.”
I offered Lauren a hand in the kitchen. She nodded toward the mugs.
“So, are you calling him your boyfriend yet? You’re keeping things at his house.”
Lauren didn’t know I was actually living here. It was easier that way. “We haven’t exactly pulled out the label-maker.” I opened the cocoa packets and dumped them in the mugs. “Spoon?”
“I’m going say he’s your boyfriend.” Lauren poured the hot water over the cocoa mix, snatched a spoon from the dish rack, and leaned over me to stir. “I don’t see how he could be anything but.”
I moved the mugs to a tray. What made someone a ‘boyfriend’? I’d been avoiding any attachment to Charles. He would live forever, and I would not.
I carried the cocoa tray into the living room and pressed a steaming mug into Ivory’s hands before lifting my own. “Are you joining us for the grave-rubbings?”
Ivory’s gaze flickered upward, the flash of an eye roll I’d seen her give Lauren hundreds of times but never me. “Why wouldn’t I?” She set her hot cocoa aside. “We’ll visit the cemetery near my house.”
Back when our town had moved graves from the old cemetery, a few families insisted that their loved ones’ coffins not be moved to the new cemetery. In one newspaper interview, an elder of the town said the dead should never be separated from their ‘first soil’.
As a result, the town set up about fifty graves, all from the same three families, in a small cemetery at the end of Litton Avenue. They’d had to move not only the coffins, but the soil that had covered those graves as well. Moving the soil for all the graves would have been too much of a hassle. That was how our town ended up with two cemeteries. One much smaller than the old one, and one much larger.
A wide grin splashed onto Lauren’s face. “I heard that cemetery is haunted.”
Ivory spat out a laugh. “You’re the one who started the rumor!”
I wasn’t sure about that, but I didn’t say anything. Neither did Lauren.
Before we left the house, I made Charles a turkey and cucumber sandwich and left it in the fridge to hold him over until dinner. He’d once told me he liked to eat a human meal after hunting, because it reminded him that there was more to him than his need for blood. I’d been making those meals for him ever since. Maybe it didn’t feel safe to speak my affections, but I hoped he knew I cared.
Probably more than I should.
***