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Prelude / After Life
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November 5th / 2000
Mom and Dad were buried in New Orleans.
Their headstones honed nothing special. Surrounded by trimmed grass, weathered through the years — seven years, to be exact — just two lone graves on family land. There is plenty of space for Reese to be buried with them when the time comes. If someone remembers it — they're not just buried in New Orleans, they're hidden there. On sacred Raven land that had been abandoned centuries ago. Ancestral witches had driven them away.
That was part of why she visited first. If nothing but to confirm that she couldn't just stay there with them. All sorts of people were after her now. The obvious place to check was her old home. After all, they'd gone to devious lengths to stay hidden — from Geminis, from Ravens, from Originals. Motivation to actually want to remain free.
Second, she'd wanted to write them a eulogy. To bring their favourite flowers and weep and say, I'll be okay and pretend to mean it and then walk away and never look back. Instead, she'd dropped to her knees and sat there till her legs went numb and spoke to a fucking headstone.
Mama, I wanted to write you a eulogy . . .
She'd wanted to hide there with them forever.
But bygones, bygones.
Seven years after their death, Reese was the epitome of a Raven Coven witch and everything they'd tried to keep her from becoming. An uncanny resemblance to her mother — hickory brown eyes, chubby cheeks, pin-straight black hair, and perhaps the strangest feature to inherit: a thunderous insensitivity to violence.
That was what Diane Crowley said to her, "You look just like your mother."
Reese stared at herself in the mirror. Jet black hair tumbled down her back; she was all rosy lips and shiny skin, dressed in white. The necklace clasped around her neck — silver-chained with a deep purple amulet — was mom's too. She was mom.
