Page 24 of Wolves' Midlife Reunion
Sage gasped.
Dex thought he saw the shiny black surface of the mirror shimmer slightly.
“It’s Mommy!” Sage said, leaning closer.
9
Sparksfrom the bonfire flew up into the night sky, and Tina tipped her head back to watch them drift like little stars into the darkness until they extinguished themselves. She relaxed into her lawn chair, pleased but thoughtful.
Dex slid into the chair next to her. “I don’t know how late your gang usually keeps this going, but I have a feeling I’ll need the jaws of life to pry her out of here.”
Tina laughed. “You’re both welcome to stay as late as you want. Some of us will be up most of the night. It might surprise you to know that my mother is usually the last to go to bed.”
Dex looked over at Maeve, where she was patiently helping the children put hot dogs and marshmallows on their roasting sticks. It was late, but she still had a big smile on her face. “That actually doesn’t surprise me all that much. She looks like she’s getting some real energy from this.”
“I’m glad you said that.” Tina sat forward a little and let her fingers trace gently along his sleeve. “I’ve got a personal Samhain tradition that I’d like to do before midnight. Will you come with me on a little walk?”
“What about Sage?” he asked.
“She’s a kid at the covenstead, which means she’s basically family now,” Tina explained with a smile. Just for good measure, she caught her coven Sister Erin’s sleeve as she walked by. “Since Sage has been hanging out with your little cutie pie, Arden, all night, would you mind keeping an eye on her for a bit?”
“Sure.” Erin glanced at Dex and then back at Tina, questions in her eyes but not on her lips. “Not a problem.”
Tina led the way across the yard, down a path of paver stones, and through the gate in the fence that surrounded the backyard.
“Where are we going?” Dex asked. He slipped his hand into hers.
She clasped his fingers, glad that they had a moment to do something so natural. It was hard to be careful in front of Sage, even if it was the right thing to do. “Anywhere our feet take us.”
“That’s your tradition?” he asked.
“My own personal one, yes,” she told him confidently. At one point, she never would’ve told anyone about this. For non-witches, it was too woo-woo. For truly dedicated witches, it didn’t feel woo-woo enough. “It started when I was probably about fourteen or fifteen. I just had the urge to go for a walk in the moonlight, soaking up all the Samhain energy I could. It was always my favorite holiday, and I wanted to carry it around with me all year long.”
He smiled as he walked casually along next to her. “That sounds kind of nice. When I wasn’t too much older than that, my favorite Halloween pastime was getting drunk under the bleachers with the other jocks. I think yours has a slightly better ring to it.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t have thought so at the time,” she teased. “I have to wonder how you would’ve felt about this, as well.”
She turned off the sidewalk and into the entrance of a cemetery. The newer stones were large, low hulks of granite, deep shadows against the streetlights that reached this far. Tina moved along the twisting path that went between them, heading deeper and deeper into the graveyard where the older stones stood.
“I don’t know,” Dex admitted. “I might’ve been cool with it, especially if I was here with a pretty girl.” He squeezed her fingers slightly.
“I like cemeteries all year round, but today feels particularly relevant. Here, you can honor all of the dead, whether you knew them or not.” She looked to the left, at a towering limestone marker that was almost as tall as she was. Much of the epitaph had been worn down over time, but a carved hand pointing upwards could still be seen.
“Speaking of, I’m not sure what to think about Sage’s experience at the altar.” He rubbed the side of his nose with his free hand.
“You worry about her a lot,” Tina noted. She’d seen how distressed he looked during the ritual, but she was pretty sure it had nothing to do with meeting so many of her friends and family at once.
“Of course. I have to,” he said. “I really wanted the ritual to go well for her. She really respects you, and she was so excited to come tonight. I didn’t want her to leave feeling like she hadn’t gotten to participate.”
Dex sighed as they moved into the oldest part of the cemetery, where the trees leaned down low over little stumps of stone that could barely be called grave markers anymore. “Then she saw Marie. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but it wasn’t that.”
“Why not?” Tina asked. “I’ve often seen my father in the mirror. He just smiles at me, or sometimes he gives me a look that tells me to get back on track.”
Dex was silent and thoughtful for a long moment. “I was worried about how it might affect her. She’s got pictures of Marie, and we talk about her from time to time. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her to see her mother in the mirror like that, but I thought it might be too intense.”
“That’s understandable.” Tina had been a part of these rituals since she was even younger than Sage, so to her, they were familiar and safe. “Kids are often more resilient than we think. Sometimes they’re even more resilient than we are.”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s true.”
