The Source (Witching Savannah, Book 2) by J.D. Horn Read Free Book Online Page B

here with his mother. That’s why I’m calling. The man who the police found. He was . . . he was family.” I grasped the bar to keep from falling flat to the floor. Accident or no, the guilt of what I’d done squeezed my chest like a boa constrictor, pressing the air out of me. “We won’t be opening tonight, so you best lock up and head on home.”
    “Wait, Mr. Tierney. I’ll stay. I’d like to be here for you and Claire,” I said, even though my head reeled at the thought. I had no idea how I would ever face Peter’s parents after what had happened. Somehow I’d have to find a way to own up to it.
    “I don’t want to hurt you, my girl, but Mother and I need some time for private grieving. We’ll be relying on you and my little grandson for comfort soon enough, but tonight, you’ll have to leave us be. Mother wants her boy with her, so I wouldn’t count on seeing Peter till tomorrow. I should get back to them now.”
    “Mr. Tierney,” I called out before he could disconnect.
    “Yes?”
    “Who was he?”
    “My Uncle Peadar, my father’s brother. Here for a surprise visit, I guess. We haven’t seen him in decades now, not since Peter was still in diapers, but Claire still felt very fond of the old fellow. Good-bye, Mercy.”
    “Good—” I began, but he had already hung up.

SIX
    I spent a nearly sleepless night and was haunted by nightmares of Peter’s great-uncle each time I drifted off. When I woke from the one that ended with a cottonmouth snake hissing out through the hole I’d left in the man’s chest, I decided that enough was enough and that I’d rather stay awake to greet the dawn. I found my phone and saw that Peter had texted me at some point while I was wrestling with his relative’s zombie in a dream. Peter’s messages said that he loved me. That his mom was upset. Really upset, considering that they hadn’t even seen Uncle Peadar in over twenty years. Maybe because the police thought he might have been murdered? He’d call after he finished the walkthrough with Tucker at the site of the job he was taking on.
    First light found me up and heading to Colonial Cemetery, looking for Jilo. She did her magic a bit farther out, at a crossroads hidden off the dead end of Normandy Street, but she handled the money end of her business here in Colonial.
    “Well you been busy, ain’t ya?” she said as she plodded across the field toward me, using the lawn chair she always carried with her to Colonial as a makeshift walker.
    “How did you know?”
    “Girl, they a police station right next door to this here boneyard, and Mother may be old, but she ain’t deaf. Now you tell her what you been up to.”
    “A man showed up after you left the powder magazine,” I confessed, relieved to share with someone. Maybe it was unfair, maybe not, but I couldn’t help resenting my mother for her silence. She had to know I needed her. I touched the chain of her locket and pushed the thought away. “The poor man was sick,” I continued, trying to focus on the story I could share with Jilo. “Confused. I think he might have had Alzheimer’s or something.”
    “Mm-hmm,” she prompted me.
    “I was talking to him, trying to figure out where he belonged, when he keeled over. He wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse . . .”
    “And you thought you would jolt him back to life with a wee touch of magic?”
    I nodded.
    “And ended up burning a hole clean through the old buzzard,” she said, and then started laughing, that unnerving wheezing of hers that always ended up sounding like a death rattle. She winded herself, and leaned most of her weight against the folded chair while she wheezed. I reached out toward her, but she held up her hand. “Don’t you go helpin’ Jilo none. She done seen what yo’ kind of help leads to, and she ain’t ready to stand outside them pearly gates just yet.”
    She burst into another bout of laughter, but managed to gain control of herself again when she took note