“I thought you didn’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo nonsense,” I playfully said as I sat across from him with the warm mug between my palms and the nightmare still sticking to my mind.
Gramps’ eyes hit mine above the rims of his bifocals. “I’m done talkin’ to yah today.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I stood when the bread popped out of the toaster. I plucked the toast at the hot edges of the crust and dropped it over a plate. Last night I’d left my scooter at Voodoos and walked the rest of the way home. Kane’s words of “Morgans are Sacred Sea territory”lodged itself into my brain. Morgan’s were someone else’s territory?Territory.
When Kane had said the word, it felt as if he had bound my arms together. A shiver jumped up my spine to the back of my neck.Territory. The single word had stayed with me the entire way home, and last night I’d dreamed of the night I’d desperately wished I could erase. Blood and blackness and the blistering cries—what those kids had done to me seventeen years ago. My thumb anxiously twisted my mood ring around my ring finger.
“Moonshine,” Gramps’ voice broke apart my thoughts. “My toast.”
I dropped my gaze to see the toast already on a plate waiting for me to spread the butter. I let go of a breath and pulled a knife from the drawer. “Do you know anything about Dad’s side of the family and Sacred Sea?” I asked casually, spreading the creamy butter over the toast.
Gramps leaned back in his chair and dropped his pencil, the crossword puzzle far from finished. He would never leave the table until it was. “I know-a lot about a lot around heyah. Why ar-yah askin’ about Sacred Sea?”
I licked a splatter of butter off my thumb and rested the fork over the sink. Walking toward him, I continued, “I met some people last night. One said something about Morgans being Sacred Sea…territory,” the word wouldn’t roll easily off my tongue. It clung to the back of my throat as if my mind refused to say the word aloud.
Kane had gone from uninterested to overprotective in the blink of an eye. He’d rather see me hit the ground than have a Heathen come near me.
Territory …trapped.
I retook my seat and leaned over the table with one elbow propped near the edge and blinked up at him. “What does that even mean?”
The old man cocked his head and looked out the window into the sea, his jaw grinding and jowls shaking. Inside those tired eyes rested a museum of history and secrets and conspiracy theories. When his gaze returned to me, his brows furrowed. “What do yah know already?”
My lips moved faster than I’d intended. “What doyouknow.”
“I asked yah first.”
His stubbornness was uncanny, comical even, but this was hardly the time to laugh. We stared at one another in a standoff, neither one of us Grimaldis backing down.
But after a few seconds, I cracked first. “When I was a little girl,” I started to say then paused to find the right words, to think it through. I dropped my gaze from his and pinched the seam of my oatmeal-colored cardigan draping over my knees. “I would sleep all day and stay up all night. Marietta called me her Moonshine. I thought that was the reason why too. Because I would ‘Wake and sleep with the moon,’ she’d say,” I returned my eyes to his, “She would tell me stories, Gramps. About Weeping Hollow and Norse Woods and Sacred Sea. Some I still remember, some are so vague it feels like a dream. But I thought they were just stories. I didn’t believe any of it until I started getting your letters. Then I get here, and Weeping Hollow isreal. Dad was part of a coven! and my mom…my mom, I still don’t even know anything about her, but this town knows. Everyone seems to know everything but me. All I know are vague memories of these bedtime stories my nanny used to tell me.”
Gramps’ hard eyes locked on mine, and a long pause dragged between us.
“Tell me what it means,” I pleaded.
“Yah shouldn’t be hangin’ around fopdoodles who have the handshake of a wet sock,” Gramps spat, red replacing his pale cheeks. “Yah shouldn’t even be heyah at all! Yah ask too many damn questions, just like yah mothah. And I’m gonna tell yah the same thing I told her. Theya’s a burden that comes along with knowin’ the truth. It’s heavy and cripplin’ and comes at a price. Don’t ask questions yah not ready to heah.”
“You never talk about my mom. You never wanna talk about anything important,” I pointed out, and I hated how my voice sounded like a whiny child who got sidelined during recess. “Why do I feel like everyone’s keeping a secret from me? You and Dad, no one wants to talk about—”
“Yah have no ideah what yah talkin’ about!” His voice was harsh and eyes wide. “Tobias took yah away to protect yah. Best decision that dumbass evah made!”
My face cringed from the blow, the way Gramps had spoken ill of my dead father. A father who never visited the daughter who could see the dead when his spirit was the only one I looked for in every room I walked into.
I bit the inside of my cheek and let thedumbasscomment slide. “What does it mean I’mSacred Sea territory, Benny?” I repeated, sterner this time—more adult than child. I’d realized this was my last hope of getting anything out of the man.
“It doesn’t mattah anyhow!” he shouted. “Yah wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“Because even though yah a Morgan, yah a Grimaldi too! Yahmyblood,mygranddaughtah,” Gramps finally said for the first time with a glimmer of compassion in his features, his cheeks and finger shaking. “Yah no one’s territory, Moonshine!”
My Mini Cooper passed by the living room window facing the street, stealing my attention.
“What is it?” Gramps asked, disturbed. I got up from the small table in the kitchen when Gramps shifted in place as if he were to get up, but we both knew he didn’t want to. The crossword puzzle wasn’t finished yet.
“I think someone’s here.”
I walked through the living room, craning my neck to see outside the window to the driveway. My car was parked in the gravel driveway. Barefoot, I shuffled down the porch steps. Black clouds were rolling in from the east over the Atlantic, and the air was dew-like and misty. A storm was coming.
