Page 33 of Wicked Witch of the Wolf

Well, he left after I threatened him with a wolfsbane herbal bath if he canceled our Friday date. With a smile. He knew I was joking.

Mostly.

By then, it was noon, so I went home to make some lunch. Cecil mostly ate what he grew, with an occasional sweet treat mixed in, and Fennel ate kibble, but my gastronomic needs were a little more refined.

I sliced my peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich diagonally, added some sliced carrots and kettle chips on the side, and carried the plate and a glass of iced peppermint tea to a small wooden tray in the living room. I propped my tablet on a pillar candle after opening the app of an online gardening channel and watched a video as I munched on my highbrow lunch.

Halfway through the host’s tour of a pumpkin patch, the picture flickered—not buffered,flickered. I hadn’t seen anything like that since my childhood when we’d had an analog TV.

A man’s head and shoulders appeared on the screen. It wasn’t the host or the owner of the pumpkin patch—no, this was a face that had launched a thousand haunted houses. It was cadaver thin, the flesh covering it white and membranous. Arched white brows sloped downward along with the corners of his eyes and mouth, giving him the countenance of a man who’d lost the battle with gravity some time ago.

I dropped the last bite of my sandwich to my plate and glared at the screen.

“Hello, Betty.” His voice frosted the corners of the screen. It made the tip of my nose itch, the way going from a warm room to the freezing outdoors sometimes does.

“What are you doing, Sexton?”

“You aren’t answering my cellular calls.”

He flicked his black robe over his shoulders, revealing the upper part of what was most likely his customary three-piece gray suit. He wasn’t only a graveyard demon but also the owner of Whispering Willow Cemetery, where most of the county’s paranormals were buried.

“I wasn’t ready to talk,” I said.

“You are angry.”

“That Mom never told me you were my grandfather? Nah, I’m totally cool with that. No problemo. Everything is coming up roses?—”

“Is it the worst possible news? To know that you’re my grandchild?”

Was I losing my mind or did Sexton sound hurt? “I don’t know what it is. Mostly, it’s just one more omission lie from Mom.” I asked him the question I’d been sitting on since I found out about everything. “Did she tell you why she lied?”

It seemed like he wanted to argue with my terminology, but he didn’t. “She felt the knowledge would put you in grave peril.”

“I find it’s the lack of knowledge that tends to kill you. When I was a kid, she would’ve said the same thing. You know, I’m seriously starting to think she just didn’t want to admit that she—” I stopped talking when I realized I was dangerously close to insulting him.

Sexton wasn’t stupid. He knew what I’d been about to say. “Didn’t want to admit she fell in love with one of …mykind?”

I wasn’t sure I should’ve felt ashamed—after all, I was the one they’d lied to—but I did. “Was he like you?”

“Yes and no.”

Whatever that meant. It was as if demons were allergic to straight answers.

Sexton’s eyes glazed over as if he were deep in a memory. “Your father was better than me in all the ways that matter to your kind.”

And that was as much about the man as I was ready to hear, so I took a conversational hard left away from the subject. “The hex bags Mom planted. Should I have dug them up? Me being ingreat periland all.”

“No. Though I don’t blame you for doing so, as you didn’t know what they were.” He looked thoughtful. “They were meant to keep our enemies from identifying you.”

“And yet Cousin Stalker McMurderface found me easily enough.”

“Yes. Lucien was determined.” His forehead crinkled, brows dropped. “As I said before, I am sorry about that. I had not accountedfor the depths of his anger. In truth, I hadn’t seen him since he was a child, though I was aware of his hatred for me. His mother cut off all contact with his father’s side shortly after he was born, and my son asked me to respect her wishes and stay away. In hindsight, perhaps that was a mistake.”

“Is his father still alive?” I asked.

“No. He died long ago, leaving behind a cruel wife and a monstrously angry son.”

Lucien Chevalier popped into my mind’s eye—nostrils flared, sneering lips peeled away from gritted teeth, spittle on his chin—and I flinched in remembrance. I’d come so close to dying that day. If my soil hadn’t responded to me, if one of my worst enemies hadn’t helped me, if Mom and Abuela Lulu hadn’t taught me the spells that saved me…

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