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His smile grew wide, and he gave my arm a short tug. “I would literally do anything you wanted right now, baby.”

I could think of a few things I wanted to do with Gabe, and none of them involved a cemetery.

I smiled, and his deepened right alongside mine. “You’re sick,” he teased.

“Well, I wasn’t talking about doing that here,” I said, pretending to be affronted.

The truth was, I might consider it. They were dead. None of them would be complaining. On the other hand, I was brought up to respect the dead, so I probably wouldn’t. Granny would have a field day if she’d known the previous thought even entered my head.

We walked out of the peaceful cemetery and then followed the sidewalk around. It led us right to our destination. The sidewalks did that around here. A red line, also known as the Heritage Trail, led to all the popular tourist stops in Salem. If you followed the red line around the city, you’d see everything you came here to see. Of course, everywhere you looked in Salem, there was something to see. Despite what I’d thought earlier about being over the tourist traps, I really did think Salem was a beautiful city with an abundance of historic New England charm.

He pulled me to a stop in front of the walkable monument. Flat stones jutted out from a rectangular rock wall, each one depicting one of the souls Salem lost during the hysteria. My skin crawled just thinking about what this place represented. To think that witches were persecuted like that, and now, those that claimed to be witches and psychics and mediums were out and proud in a very big way around Salem. Most of these people were Wiccans, but there were real witches here too. That’s why we were here, to enforce the magical laws.

“It’s sad,” I finally said. We walked around the paved perimeter and I read each of the victim’s names and the manner of their deaths on the flat rocks. The majority of them were hanged to death.

Gabe walked alongside me, his head hung low as we took in the site.

I envisioned their bodies hanging from a noose and shivered as one by one I read “Hanged” carved into the stones. I flashbacked to the Order placing the Akasha mark on Travis. Wasn’t that kind of the same thing as this? They had trials to determine their innocence the same as the Order did. I supposed the only difference was the magic in the Akasha. We were never wrong. The magic didn’t lie, just as it hadn’t when it knew Travis was truly good, despite the fact that he’d saved his friend Jax from his fate.

“Hey,” Gabe said. He pulled me toward him, sliding his hand up my cheek and into my hair. “I don’t think you’re getting the point of this little outing at all.”

I smiled up at his teasing tone. “I do get it. I just suck at it.” Here he was trying to get me to forget everything that happened for a while and no matter where I looked, I kept going back to everything we were faced with.

He dropped his head back and sighed. “Please don’t make me go back to headquarters with all the sulking. There’s so much sulking.”

I chuckled. He wasn’t lying. There was a hell of a lot of sulking going on back at the wharf headquarters. We’d chosen that over the headquarters in the woods. At least there was running water there, and I still got to be by the ocean. I rose to my tiptoes and kissed his soft lips. “Why don’t we move on to the restaurant?”

His thumb traced over my cheekbone. “Whatever my baby wants.”

“Your baby wants food, and a happy ending.”

He laughed—loudly—gathering the attention of some other tourists taking in the sights. Most of them smiled when they looked at us. Maybe we reminded them of a certain time in their lives. Maybe we just looked like two people having a good time.

When we turned to walk back toward the car, I smiled up at them, wishing we were exactly what they thought in their heads.

As we turned onto the block where we’d parked the car, Gabe pulled out the key fob and unlocked it. The car made two short beeps, and the lights flashed. He smiled at it as if he was in love.

“You really like that, don’t you?”

“Oh, you have no idea.”

He guided me toward the passenger side of the car and opened the door. The new car smell wafted up and both of us breathed in deep.

That was right. The Salem Order was driving around in a brand-new car. It was on the small side, nothing fancy, but at least it would help get more of us from point A to point B. No more having to finagle the ride situation. This, of course,afterwe decided to move back into Salem city limits at the old headquarters instead of Liam’s parents’ house. We thought it was safer for us there.

“I just love new gadgets,” Gabe said, beaming. He held my hand as I lowered myself into the front seat. When I pulled my feet in, he shut the door for me.

After he ran around the car and got in the other side, I turned toward him. “You better have a full report ready for Liam when we get back. You know he’s going to ask you all about the car, right down to the nitty gritty detail.”

“Oh, I’ve been working on my write-up ever since our date started.”

“Oh really?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m quite the multitasker.”

This I knew to be true in some very delicious ways.

Gabe winked and then pushed the ignition button to start the car. It came to life underneath us and Gabe looked like a kid on Christmas morning with a new toy. “I know we could’ve walked there,” he said as he put the car in Drive, “But this was much more fun.”