The ghost’s translucent form rippled into view. “Oh, you know. Neither here nor there. Unlike you, graveyard keeper. You are both here and there, aren’t you? How do you manage it?”
“Creepy ass poems, creepy ass questions, Cora. I couldn’t tell ya. Say, can you tell me anything else about what you saw the night I hit my head? You mentioned there was a tussle. Was I fighting someone?”
The ghost floated closer, so unnervingly close that I could make out her facial features through her ghastly glowing sheen. I suppose in life she could have been pretty, but in death, she was something from nightmares. I suppressed the urge to take a step backward as she surveyed my face. “You know… the last emotion I had before I died was regret. Now, it’s all I can feel. Deep, deep regret. Can you make it go away, graveyard keeper, Shiloh?”
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. “I’m no priest, Cora. In fact, I reckon I’m pretty far from holy. But I’ll listen if you ever want to confess your sins. That might help.”
Suddenly, the wind howled, and the branches of every cemetery tree clanked together. Cora’s eyes grew unnaturally wide and dark. Her face contorted into an oblong, sorrowful expression as she floated backward, repeating:
Swing, swing,
Bleeding by the sea,
Lost lovers cry
Oh, why didn’t you flee?
Sigh, sigh,
Sailor bold.
You lost your lover
In high tide,
You watched her die.
You watched her die, Shiloh Solair.
You watched her die, Sailor Solair.
You watched her die.
You watched her die.
My palms were slick and slightly trembling as I picked up my worn shovel. Goddamn, that ghost was spooky as hell. It was an effort to shake off the ominous feeling that she was still watching me, still reciting her poem, and wading through regret. Ghosts’ minds weren’t always left intact. Some were sharper than others. Though for a few unlucky ones, they seemed tormented for eternity. What had Cora done to deserve such a wretched fate?
Unable to resist, I paused, resting on my shovel outside Alaric’s grave. Lunette stood, hands together, wearing her wedding dress. An angel in the cemetery. Her spellwork of asking, begging, pleading for her love to find her was finished, and now she swayed in the frigid October breeze and waited. Waited for Alaric to rise from the dead. I half hoped he would, so I could meet him with a swift fist to the nose.
“I know you’re watching me,” Lunette said without turning around.
“I’m the graveyard keeper, you’re in my graveyard, it’s kind of my job.”
She turned around, her face like a sad porcelain doll in the moonlight. “Just doing your duty, then?”
“That’s right.” I leaned forward on my shovel for support, squaring my shoulders. Lune was smaller than me, but even so, she often made me feel about two feet tall.
Sauntering closer, I noted her misty, swollen eyes. She’d been crying. Crying for Alaric or crying for me?
“How can I repay you for your diligent protection?” Her voice cracked. My white witch was searching for an escape again. Would I give it to her? Would I continue to let the girl I was falling for use my body and reject my bids for her heart? I probably should have said no and had some self respect. Instead, I dropped my pants. Standing naked from the waist down, she took me in with satisfied surprise. “Well, that’s certainly a steep payment.”
“You can afford it,” I replied. “Now, on your knees, Lune.” Before she could protest over getting her precious wedding dress dirty, I reached down and held the skirts, freeing her knees. “Go on, now you have no excuse. Or can those little knees not handle the mud?”
Her mouth curved into a smile as she knelt, breath warm against my cunt. “How did you know I was starving?”
Trying to bring your cheating, no good fiancé back to life probably takes it out of you,is what I wanted to say, but I refrained. Of course, every thought left my brain as soon as her tongue met my clit. I bundled her dress up and held it off the ground. With my other hand, I balanced on my shovel as she ate me out. My wetness dripped down my thighs, and my girl took her dear sweet time. Shoving her chin between my legs, getting her nose and cheeks soaked with me, her mouth worked. “Fuck, Lune,” I groaned. “I’m going to come.”
“Come in my mouth,” she demanded, the words muffled because she refused to pull back from my wet cunt. What a sight to behold, her on her knees, Alaric’s headstone behind her, lit by only the moon. Her wedding dress and white hair seemed to glow. I desperately and wickedly hoped that wherever his spirit was, he could see her now, somehow, with a mouth full of me. Nodding against me, her tongue continued to probe. “Please?”
