Thunder Moon (Nightcreature 8)

Something tickled in my memory. I waited for it to tumble free.

“Aren’t you going to get dressed? Not that I don’t like this robe and what’s under it.” Ian untied the sash. “Or rather not under it.”

“Shh.” I held up my hand.

Ian had the sense to go quiet.

“Sharpened sticks. Set at the corners of a house. Point facing skyward.”

“Right.” He smiled as if we were sharing a secret. “What we call old tobacco, a sacred blend used only for rituals, smoked just after dusk. Walk around the house, puffing the smoke in every direction, repeating the incantation. When the witch approaches, the stick will shoot into the air and come back down, fatally wounding the creature, be it in human or animal form. How did you know that?”

“I saw it.”

His smile faded. “Where?”

“Quatie’s.”

Chapter 32

“If she knew how to repel a Raven Mocker, then she knows there is a Raven Mocker.” Ian held on to the dashboard as I took the winding roads to Quatie’s place faster than I should have.

“That doesn’t mean she knows who it is,” I pointed out.

“No. But we can ask.”

And maybe we’d get lucky. Although I had to think that if Quatie knew the identity of the evil, shape-shifting witch, she would have told me.

“Quatie isn’t a medicine woman,” I said. “She doesn’t know any of this stuff.”

“Some of this stuff is common knowledge.”

“I didn’t know it.”

“Grace, I’m sorry to say so, but you don’t know much. What was your great-grandmother teaching you all those years?”

My great-grandmother had tried and I had refused, for the most part, to listen. So we’d made do with what we were both comfortable with.

“She spent time with me,” I said. “Talked to me. Walked with me. Showed me her things. Told me about my mother. I didn’t have many women in my life.” Except for Claire and Joyce, but as much as I loved them, they weren’t different, like me.

“She didn’t tell you about your heritage?”

“She spoke of the clans, specifically our clan. She showed me a few spells, taught me how to go to the water. She wanted to teach me the medicine, but I got freaked out.”

“Why?”

“She was...” I glanced at him, then back at the road. “Well, she did some things I couldn’t explain.”

“Like what?”

I’d never told anyone about this, because I’d known no one would believe me. There were times I’d convinced myself I’d imagined it, that I’d dreamed of Grandmother performing impossible feats, and as time passed I’d come to believe those feats had actually happened. But this was Ian, the man who could change his eyes to an eagle’s and back again. He’d believe me.

“She was an old woman, but she never walked like one. She had this gait that reminded me of—” I lifted a shoulder. “A big cat. Once when we were out walking in the mountains, she tripped over a stone in the path. Instead of falling and breaking a hip, she did some fancy tuck and roll. She bounced back to her feet like a five-year-old. Wasn’t a mark on her.”

“Spry.”

“Very. Another time she saw some root or herb she needed. She got so excited she leaped onto a boulder. That rock had to have been seven feet high.”

In my mind’s eye I saw her flying up, up, up, and landing on top. My brain added Six Million Dollar Man sound effects.