Sheer terror floods through me. I’d had my doubts about who and what he was before—had wondered if everything I’d seen him do was akin to a magician’s illusions, or a figment of my own imagination. But whatever he is, it’s powerful. I need to use my wits. Disarm him like he’s trying to disarm me. “Sounds fair,” I say. “And you’re right. I been mighty curious about why you’re here. What you want.”
“We’ll get to why I’m here and what I want . . . later. I like to take my time with such things.”
“I saw you that night in the woods. With Val.”
“Oh? What did you see, Gracelynn?” He tethers me with his eyes. Something within me weakens under his gaze, and I fight his strange allure, clenching my teeth.
“I saw you . . . change. Become someone else.” My heart beats so hard I can feel it in my throat, but I refuse to let him see my fear. “I reckon maybe you’ve had a lot of faces over the years. Names, too. Nathaniel Walker. Ambrose Gentry.”
“You are a smart girl,” Bellflower says coldly. His smile turns malicious.
“People tell me that.”
“I’d just bet they do.” The tip of his tongue snakes out, flicking over his lower lip. “This town, though.” Bellflower gestures at the run-down buildings, gone silent. The air is so heavy and hot I can barely breathe. “Smart hasn’t gotten you far in a town like this, has it? Petty, small-minded people, with their dreary church socials and gossip about the neighbors. No. You’re meant for greater than this, Gracelynn. I know you want more. I can give you more than you ever thought possible. Make you more.”
“You gonna take me up on a high hill and show me all the kingdoms of the world? You should know I don’t like heights.”
“Spirited, aren’t you?” Bellflower laughs, and it runs all through me. “You’ll find you may have need of me, soon. But I am a gentleman with an abundance of patience. I’ve waited a long time for you. Half a century. A few more days will do no harm. I’ll come to you again, and we’ll talk like this. Just you and I.”
A cloud blots out the sun, sending Bellflower into shadow. Down the road a coonhound starts howling. Another starts up. A low humming rings in my ears. I close my eyes and shake my head to clear it. When I open my eyes, Bellflower’s gone. The old men on the mercantile porch pick up their frozen conversations mid-sentence. Kids run laughing and shrieking out of the schoolhouse. It’s like a still frame turned into a movie. People walk past me, looking at me as if I’ve gone crazy, standing dazed in the middle of the road.
Not a single soul knows what just happened but me.
The next morning, when Caro sleeps long past the time she’s usually expected in the fields, I don’t wake her. I ain’t sure how I’m gonna support all of us, but I’ll be damned if I make that young ’un toil in the sun anymore. Ain’t nothing growing in this hateful, cursed drought, anyway.
I stoke the fire as low as I can to keep the heat out of the house as long as possible—just enough to scramble some eggs and brew coffee. My mind goes spinning back to the day Granny took ill. I want to believe that Val is innocent—that she wouldn’t hurt her own mother. But what brought it on? I sort through the day, remembering. I’d given Granny a cup of coffee not even a half hour before she sickened, and I’d cut it with ground acorns and chicory root, something all hill people did in lean times. Me and Ebba had both had the same coffee in the days since. And we were both fit as fiddles.
Maybe Granny had eaten something poisonous? I look through the greens wilting next to the sink. There’s nothing that could cause an accidental poisoning—no water hemlock, jimsonweed, or death camas. Besides, me and Granny are careful. She knows everything that grows in these hills and has taught me the same. She would never knowingly eat something harmful.
My eyes drift to the open cupboard and land on the sugar dish. Only one person in this house likes sugar in their coffee. Granny.
I take the sugar bowl down and look inside. Nothing but pure white granules. I dip my finger in the bowl and taste the sugar. There’s a metallic twinge to it. Not arsenic, then. I poke my finger deeper. I feel something hard, buried in the sugar. I hook it around my fingertip and pull it to the surface. It’s a nail, bent at an angle and rusted red. I reach in again and find another. Then another. I drop the sugar dish. It shatters, spilling a handful of nails and sugar onto the floor.
I’d read in the grimoire that iron is poisonous to witches. It leaches into their blood and blunts their powers. Makes them weak. Enough iron can kill a witch. It’s the reason Granny never cooks with cast iron unless it’s enameled. She claims raw iron takes the charm right out of her work.
Given her guilty air earlier, it must have been Aunt Val who put the nails there. It makes me so angry I could spit.
But why would she want to hurt Granny? Had Bellflower made her do it?
I clean up the mess in the kitchen, then go out to the sleeping porch, bringing Ebba a plate of eggs and coffee. She’s curled on the rug next to Granny’s daybed, sound asleep. Apart from going home briefly to tend to her goats, she’s been here every hour since Granny fell into her coma. I can’t help but be reminded of a loyal dog. Stubborn as she is, Ebba’s good people. The best.
Granny’s color looks a little better—pink instead of gray. She just looks like she’s sleeping, instead of near the brink of death. It gives me hope she’ll come through.
Hope’s all I have to bank on right now.
I leave the food for Ebba to find when she wakes, then climb back up to Val’s loft. The grimoire’s still open on the mattress, beckoning me. After my encounters with Anneliese and Bellflower yesterday, the call to turn its pages and seek its knowledge is even stronger.
As I search the fragile pages, the scent of dandelions wafts out. A few pages on, I find an ancient drawing—more primitive than Anneliese’s finely drawn illustrations—that sends the all-overs through me. It looks like a human at first glance, but there’s something about it that’s wrong. Uncanny. The eyes are set too far apart, and the fingers end in daggerlike claws. The word incubus is scrawled above it, and a description:
An incubus is a demon in male form who seeks sexual congress with a woman. Incubi are inexorably drawn to witches, and the attraction a witch feels for an incubus is nearly irresistible. Each time she succumbs to the demon’s seductions, her gifts diminish, until she is left entirely weak and powerless. When the inevitable pregnancy occurs, the witch’s health will falter—and the birthing process will be arduous. The infernal offspring of this union is called a cambion. When a witch births a cambion, her descendants are forever tainted with demonic blood.
As if an unseen hand is guiding me, the crinkled and worn pages lead me onward, to passages about the gifts witches might possess. Divination. Healing. Clairvoyance. Even the ability to resurrect the dead. Only the most powerful witches were able to do so.
I remember Anneliese’s account of reviving her dead chicken. I wonder if she’d ever brought anything else back to life. If she’d been powerful enough to raise the dead, why hadn’t she been able to prevent her own death? If Nathaniel Walker was one of the incubi, in the guise of a man, he might have stolen her abilities.