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Aunt Savannah had said it would be around here.
Instead of lying to her when I’d called, I’d tried a weird approach.
Honesty.
I’d admitted to my aunt I’d made arrangements with Beau Cain that would help save a pack member’s life, and the reputation of the pack as a whole, but in return he wanted Mercy’s head. I wasn’t sure what possessed me to do this, but something in the back of my mind had insisted bullshit wasn’t the right technique with my aunt.
Turned out, my intuition was sometimes right.
“Well, I guess it’s not doing anyone any good where it is, though what that man wants with it, I’m not sure I want to know.”
That was all she’d said before giving me detailed directions on where I could find the burial site.
I crossed the creek and started looking for two birch saplings that had fallen in an X shape. She’d been very specific about the marker. I had to walk another quarter mile before I found them, bowing one over the other like they were genuflecting to their monarch.
Pushing aside the layers of leaves on the ground, I found a piece of limestone in an almost perfect square. In the surface, Savannah had scratched the letter M. No birth and death dates, no full name, just my mother’s initial. I ran my fingers over it, tracing the shape of the letter, and debating—not for the first time—if I should really go through with it.
I replayed Savannah’s word
s in my head.
It’s not doing anyone any good where it is.
It also helped some to remind myself my mother had been a horrible killer who abandoned Ben and me and tried on repeated occasions to murder Secret in cold blood.
Keeping that cheerful thought at the forefront of my mind, I started to dig.
The dirt was cold and hard, making the exhumation a bit of a process. After thirty minutes I was sweaty, dirt-stained, and grouchy from the exertion.
I had also found the box.
Savannah had buried Mercy’s head in a square wooden box, but she hadn’t put a lot of effort into sealing it. The thing opened with a hinge and didn’t have even a basic padlock to keep it closed.
I steeled myself, ready for either a skull or something a bit more grisly to be staring back at me when I opened the makeshift coffin. When I got it open though, what greeted me was so much worse than bones or rot or decay.
The box was empty.
My heart stopped, my pulse stuttering in my neck, then speeding up to a breakneck pace.
This was impossible. The box was here precisely where Savannah had told me it was, still bearing the grave marker. Nothing had given me any indication the site had been visited or tampered with before I’d found it.
Where was the fucking head?
A twig snapped behind me, so close the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I clambered to my feet, spinning around to put the crossed birches at my back, offering me a tiny amount of coverage from behind.
More branches snapped, and a figure emerged from the shadows, shuffling stiffly through the dried leaves and debris on the forest floor.
“Hello, Genie,” said my mother, whose head was very much unblemished and attached to her shoulders. “You’ve been a naughty, naughty girl.”
Keep reading for the original Secret McQueen short story “A Harmless Little Secret.”
A Harmless Little Secret
A Secret McQueen Short Story
Sierra Dean
