Everyone in the room—maybe forty people in all—lined up on the dance floor, five lines, seven people long.
“What’s happening?” Abbi whispered.
I glanced at Cassia. She sashayed out from behind the bar, plunked a pink cowboy hat on her head, and centered herself in front of the people.
“Hit it, Jerry!”
“Oh,” Abbi said, as the slow mellow tones of bass and sweetly pitched steel guitar filled the room. “I like this song.”
The people on the dance floor seemed to like it too. It was “Neon Moon,” sung by Carrie Underwood. I’d heard it on the radio more than once while driving the long, lonely Route.
The line dance was intricate and hypnotic, an easy roll and swing, each person separate but joined, linked in those steps, that movement, that song.
They sang along to it, too—not everyone, but most of them—humming, harmonizing, riffing on the melody, and making it something more. Something magic.
It was beautiful. I couldn’t look away, didn’t want to miss a single move as I tapped my thumb against the table.
Lula had lost the hardness in her body language and was swaying to the soft vocals, a rapt expression on her face.
Even Lorde was sprawled on the floor, eyes closed, sleeping happily.
Why was she so relaxed? Why was I?Witches, a part of my mind reminded me. We’d walked right into a coven of honky tonk witches.
They were dancing. Singing.
They were casting a spell, springing a trap we’d walked right into.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The room faded, walls fell away. We were surrounded by massive, ancient trees. The moon—not neon but full and white and pure—shone down around us, lighting the forest, the grasses we sat upon, the arc and jut of leaf and branch.
Flower petals tumbled from the star-speckled sky—roses, mountain laurel, blue bonnet, sage—blending with the scent of juniper pine on the air, creating a heady perfume.
It was a spell. It was more.
Sorrow, hope, a plea.
The song lyrics spoke of missing a lover, but the spell spoke of missing the moon, missing the full pure light—and of missing family, home, life.
They had lost someone.
That realization hit hard, and I knew it was true. They had lost someone they loved, and now they were bearing witness, promising worship, and asking for blessing and guidance as they tried to right this terrible wrong.
This dance, this spell wasn’t about trapping us. It wasn’t about me and Lu at all.
It was for Abbi. It was for the moon deity.
Abbi was there, somehow now in the center of their dance, perched on a small hill, the dancers circling around her.
She was still the Abbi I knew—a young girl with the huge eyes and a round face—leaning so far forward over her knees and watching them all so intently, it seemed she’d topple.
But she was more than just a girl. She was a rabbit, strong and lean, both midnight and moonlight, her long ears lifted and turning, her eyes jade green.
Hado was there too, a shadow in man shape, a shadow in cat shape, a shadow in rabbit shape, toad shape, guarding, watching.
As the dance went on, I caught glimpses of another child, a ghostly image, maybe four or five years old, being guided gently from dancer to dancer.
The child was a phantom, a memory of a girl, pale, dark haired, expressionless. Her eyes, when the moonlight touched them, were blood red.
