I open my eyes.
Anneliese. My name is Anneliese.
Her voice is a frail, fey whisper in the loamy air of the cabin, but she ain’t there anymore.
She’s all through me.
I go outside, my legs wobbly, the taste of ash thick on my tongue. There’s a new magic to the dappled light shining through the cedars. The cicadas drone loudly around me. I touch the trunk of the locust tree and feel its old pain. It was put to a purpose it never wanted and cursed because of it. Anneliese was a part of the land and it loved her—as much as it loves every bramble of blackberry and wild running thing that refuses to be tethered.
That land is a part of me. Part of us.
And it wants a reckoning for the wrong that was done on it.
EIGHTEEN
DEIRDRE
1881
Summer rolled on for Deirdre in a haze of longing for home, though home didn’t seem like an auspicious place. She’d written Robbie three letters but had yet to receive a reply. Pa had written twice. In his letters he’d been spare with his words except to say the constant rains had rotted every crop the Rays and Nilssons grew. Children fell ill with typhus, and some had died. Reverend Stack was stricken down during a church service and passed two days later. Bad heart, the doctor had said. Deirdre had no quarrel with that. It was long past time for Old Stack to stand in judgement before his maker.
According to Pa, Ambrose Gentry had moved his ragtag brush-arbor congregation to Reverend Stack’s Lutheran church that next Sunday.
Somehow, he was able to be in two places at once.
He was still stalking her. Taunting her. Deirdre had learned not to react to her visions of him, at least in a way that others might see. Still, her skin nearly crackled when she sensed his presence. She’d gotten brave and tried touching him once—to see if he was corporeal. He’d laughed when her hand glided through him, leaving an oily sensation on her fingertips. He usually appeared to her at night, hidden in the shadows, the silvery glint of his eyes the only thing visible. But right now, in broad daylight, he sat on the corner of Esme’s bed, watching Deirdre while Esme snored on, none the wiser.
Deirdre glared at him and shut the grimoire, the skin on her neck prickling. “Why won’t you leave me be?” she hissed.
Gentry smiled his mocking smile. “Now, where would be the fun in that?”
“What do you want?”
“I think you know, little rabbit. Tell me you don’t dream of me. Tell me you don’t want the same thing.”
Deirdre blushed. “I don’t.”
Gentry stood and walked toward her soundlessly. As he approached, the shadows around him blurred and shifted. He reached, gently cupping her jaw with his hand. His touch sent discordant tendrils of horror and shameful lust through her all at once.
“Our kind have always belonged together, Deirdre.”
“What are you?” she whispered, flinching away.
Everything and nothing. What you desire and what you hate.
His voice swirled like smoke in her head. Deirdre scrambled backward on the bed, the grimoire clutched to her chest. She pinched her eyes shut. “Go away. Go away. Land sakes, leave me be.”
His laughter echoed in her ears, but when she opened her eyes, he was gone.
Esme blinked awake, as if she’d heard Gentry’s wicked laugh. She stretched slowly, regarding Deirdre. “What’s the matter? You’re all pale.”
“I’m not feeling well.” It wasn’t a lie. Her stomach always went bilious when Gentry’s specter was nearby.
Esme uncurled from the bed, slowly, like a cat. She was dressed only in her corset and drawers. Deirdre couldn’t help but admire the swell of Esme’s breasts as she raised her arms in a graceful stretch. Esme was lovely, like a rose in an oil painting, rendered in soft shades of pink and white. Deirdre envied her, but not maliciously. It was more like a covetousness that bordered on infatuation.
“Hadn’t we better dress for dinner?” Deirdre asked, sliding the grimoire under her pillow.
“I suppose it’s nearly time,” Esme said, yawning. “These afternoon naps are never quite long enough, are they?”
As if on cue, the dressing gong rang down the hall.
Deirdre shrugged off her day dress and petticoats, then unhooked her new corset and let it fall to the floor. Esme padded across the room, watching her through heavy-lidded eyes as Deirdre slid her shift up and over her shoulders and then replaced it with a freshly laundered one made of fine, sheer voile.
“I’ve been wondering something. Is that a birthmark? On your back?”
Deirdre’s cheeks warmed. She hastily pulled the shift to cover the mark. “No. It’s a scar. It came on after a rash this spring.”
“Well. It’s beautiful.” Esme smiled. “Let me help you re-lace your corset.”
“All right.”
Esme picked up the corset, and wrapped it around Deirdre, bringing it up snug beneath her breasts and pulling the laces tight. “That book—the one you were just reading. Old, isn’t it? If it’s what I’m thinking it is, my mother had a book like that. My grandmother passed it down to her. Mama studied it, just like you, until Daddy forbade it. Said it was evil and took it away.”
Deirdre brightened. “Really?”
“Yes. It’s a common enough thing among women, I think. Hers had recipes and charms. What does yours have in it?”
Deirdre remembered Pa’s admonition to never show the book to anyone outside their family, though she longed to share everything with Esme. “Only recipes.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone if it’s more than a cookbook.” Esme smiled teasingly at Deirdre and bit her lip. “Are there any love spells?”
Deirdre grinned. “A few.”
“How delightful. Perhaps we should try them out.” Esme hummed beneath her breath, resting her hands briefly on Deirdre’s hips after she’d tied off the corset laces. “All done. I think you should wear your yellow batiste tonight. It’s lovely on you.”
As Deirdre finished her ablutions, the temptation to share the grimoire with Esme grew stronger. After all, Esme had shown nothing but kindness to Deirdre, and had shared so many of her own secrets—even Sam’s love letters and poetry. Some of Sam’s poems were scandalously funny and described salacious, erotic things.
Surely it would do no harm to share the innocent parts of the grimoire with Esme.
That night, after dinner, when the house went quiet, Deirdre slid the grimoire from beneath her pillow. Esme was resting against her headboard, feet propped casually on the mattress, crafting a letter on her lap desk, likely to Sam.
Deirdre thought of the unanswered letters she’d sent to Robbie and vowed to send no more until she received a reply. She had the feeling he was cross at her for leaving, even though she’d done her best to explain why she had to go without saying goodbye.
She crossed the room barefoot, the grimoire in hand. Esme looked up from her writing, her eyes sparkling with candlelight behind her glasses. “Well, hello.”
“I can show it to you, if you’d like. My book.”
“Oh, I would most certainly like,” Esme answered eagerly. She folded the unfinished letter, then set the lap desk aside and patted the mattress. “Come sit.”