Alabama, Bree? Your gran would have your hide and then some if she knew you’d come this way.” She’d rested her walking stick on one of the flat gravestones, and I just stared at her for a moment. Trying to place her. Because she spoke to me as if she knew me and Gran. Hell, she’d even used my name.
Memories bubbled under the surface of my mind again, more insistent. Was this woman why I’d wanted to be on this side of the highway?
“I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Course, you do, though maybe it’s been a few years and neither of us look like we did twenty-five years ago. Hell on fire, who does?” she huffed at me and tapped her stick twice on the stone at her feet. “What you doing with wraiths chasing you?”
I opened my mouth to say I didn’t know, but Feish cut in before I could get it out.
“She been accused of murder. They tried to execute her, but we got her out of the jail, and now wraiths after her,” she said. “Trouble follows her, you know.”
Kinkly made an appearance then, covered in what looked like pink powdered sugar that dusted into the air with each beat of her gossamer wings. “What did I miss? There was an open bag of candy at the gas station. I couldn’t help myself. I think I might be a little drunk.” And then she giggled.
I sighed and stood, pushing Corb back a little, and nodded at the woman leaning on her walking stick. “Thank you for your help. Assuming you’re the one who sent the wraiths packing?”
The old woman smiled and waved her walking stick in my direction. “It’s nothing to me to knock a few wraiths back on my own land, I’ve been protecting it for years. But they know better than to come into my territory, which tells me you have someone powerful after you. The wraiths didn’t realize where they were, girl.” Her eyes narrowed as she swept her gaze up and down my body. Assessing. “You know what your gran was after, what got her killed in NOLA, don’t you?”
She could have knocked me down with a feather at that point. I struggled to breathe around the shock, trying to find my voice. “You know what she was doing? What got her killed?”
“Course, I do. I don’t have all the pieces, but I know what she was after. Same thing that got your mama and daddy killed too.” She tapped her stick a couple times on the stone. “You think ’cause I’m old I can’t help?”
“Nope. I do not think that at all,” I said. “But are you going to tell me what they were after, or is it going to be some riddle or half-truth that I have to figure out because the shadow world does not give its secrets easily or some garbage like that?” I didn’t even bother to lift one eyebrow, skipping straight to raising both.
Her smile was wide, and she flashed perfect white teeth at me. “My name is Penny, and I am one of the last of Celia’s coven.”
And just like that, the memories finally surfaced. A twenty-five-year-younger Penny having tea with my grandmother in this very graveyard while I wandered about looking at gravestones, touching each one as if I could memorize them. I could almost feel the rough stone under my fingers again, could almost hear my grandmother’s laughter as she and Penny talked about this and that, things that had seemed inconsequential at the time.
“Penny Hannington?” Corb said her name in an almost reverent way, which told me two things. She was well known in the shadow world, and she was powerful. But I could have guessed that part anyway. Gran had been powerful too, and Penny had said she was in her coven.
She gave a genteel nod of her head and curled one hand into a sweeping wave as she did a mock curtsey that obviously cost her some effort and was stiff as hell. I was impressed. “The one and only. Most people think I’m dead, but I’ve just kept a low profile. Especially with all my friends dying.” She leaned heavily on her stick and narrowed her eyes on me, sharp as knives. “You killed Hattie, didn’t you?”
I nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Yes, she was going to sacrifice a bigfoot to raise some sort of demon. And she tried to finish me off in the midst of it.”