Page 29 of The Devil Knows Her Name

“Am I so repulsive to you?” he called as I walked away. “You would rather let him destroy everything than let me help you?”

I didn’t trust myself to answer. I put my hand on the door, and there was the sudden sound of feet rushing through the grass, bearing down on me. I jerked my head up, fear clogging my throat, just in time for a strong northeasterly wind to buffet me, carrying the petals with it. The devil was gone.

Breathing hard, I slid into the truck, and it was only then I remembered I’d brought the fawn with me. She was standing in the back seat, her nose leaving a smudge on the window as she stared northeast.

“He’s gone,” I told her. “For now.”

Chapter

10

The devil was right, of course—it had taken eighty years for the rose wards to reach the height of their power, and I couldn’t replace them before the cascade of failure began. I had the plants to do it: the delicate yellow rose rambling over the barn was a ten-year-old cutting from the east ward, and I had others waiting in pots, their blooms all echoes of their mothers. Despite my bravado, the idea of planting such young things in the cavernous places of the originals filled me with despair. It would be years before they truly bonded with the magic, decades before there would be enough power to draw on.

Besides, I thought with gritted teeth, if I plant more, the pastor will just rip them up again.

I didn’t quite know if that was true. If the devil was telling the truth and Zeke had a sense for magic, then it was possible he could discern the roses’ connection to me as well, and any attempt to replace them would fail. But if, as I suspected, the devil had simply whispered in his ear of nameless evil and witchcraft, then I could begin to rebuild, as long as I kept my efforts hidden.

On a hunch, I drove into the village, seeking out the smaller sources of magic I’d surreptitiously created for myself—little charms slipped into the roots of shrubs, runes cunningly woven into the branches of decorative trees. These plants were young compared to the roses, tamed, pruned, and they could never fill the same well of power, but they were not useless; they connected me to the talking heads in the village, and if Zeke could really sense my magic on his own, surely he would’ve targeted them.

First was the dwarf acer in front of the village office—a non-native plant I’d recommended against but been overruled, planted just too close to the sidewalk so its branches overhung. Despite my misgivings about it, it had been receptive to my magic and a devoted emissary, brushing people’s shoulders and ears as they passed by on the way to pay their water bill or parking ticket, lacing every touch with my influence.

As I drove by, I saw it was still standing and in fine fettle, its leaves a mound of fiery red. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised; to cut it down in the dead of night would’ve been vandalism.

Next was the lilac bush planted at the town hall. I’d put my foot down on this one; they’d nearly planted it in the northwest corner of the property, where the shade and the wet would’ve killed it. Here, in the sunshine next to the front path, it thrived, and every morning in the spring, the mayor paused on his way to the door and took a heady sniff.

There were no blossoms on it now, and it was in desperate need of a prune, but it looked no worse for wear.

The same was true of the serviceberry planted on the banks of the reservoir, the beach plums gracing the yard of the veterans club, and the hawthorn guarding the entrance to the cemetery on Cross Street.

Not reassured but feeling grimly vindicated, I wheeled the truck around and headed for home. It was another day of sunshine and unseasonable warmth, and for once, Burrsville didn’t look like a ghost town. I saw more people outside than I had in months, and almost all of them were raking their leaves into fat black trash bags.

They never fucking learn, I thought irritably.

Back home, my irritation still simmering, I waded out through the grass to the well and my half-forgotten weather spell. The pans I’d set out were still there, the water dried to nothing but cloudy spots on the bottoms, and I stared at my distorted reflection in the metal. This spell was one I’d had to do at least once a summer in recent years, and despite the amount of energy it required, I’d never hesitated, confident in my web of power. Now I calculated the cost like a miser, and the cautious part of me warned against it, saying the balance of nature was not so far gone that it couldn’t right itself eventually.

But there was a louder, angrier part of me that could not accept restraint. This was what Zeke wanted, for me to compromise piece by piece, to rationalize my losses until I had nothing left. My life already demanded so many hard decisions, so much acceptance of loss—the fox kits or the rabbit, the fawn or the coyote, and I refused to be driven to another one. I filled a bucket at the pump, its handle warmed to blister-heat by the unrelenting sun, and splashed fresh water into the vessels.

As I prepared myself, I tried not to fixate on the loss that still echoed in my mind. Here in the sanctuary, where my wards remained, it was easier to ignore, but I could still feel it. It was like walking over a ridge that had eroded from underneath—it wasn’t that it trembled under your weight, but you could sense the emptiness below, the way your feet failed to root to the core of the earth.

And yet, resonance hummed between my little vessels of warm, metallic-tinged water and the cool depths of the well, between the well and the threads of cloud that spooled high above in the flat blue sky. I breathed deep, connecting the vapor in my lungs to all that resonance, and tapped into the web of magic.

My vision whited out briefly, my consciousness pulled into phloem, into sapwood, into heartwood, dispersing through leaves and into roots, alighting like a water strider on the surface of the vessels, plunging like a kingfisher into the well. I pulled my pieces back, just enough to form thought and intention; I could still taste the deep earth the roots ate and feel the flick of bird wings through cloud vapor, but I was separate and distinct, the intercessor.

I siphoned the power of the wards, amplified it, poured it into the water. The connections between these small bodies grew, the vague vibrations becoming fibrous with tension, the tension strengthening to a pull as like called to like. Did water have desire? Did each molecule long to be reunited in a single great ocean? Probably it was nothing more than my own humanity molding the rhythm of nature into a form I could recognize, and yet whenever I worked this spell, I was struck with unease, as if I’d stumbled upon a secret so old even water itself had forgotten.

I braided the water’s desire with the energy of the wards, creating a loop that would continue to feed until vapor burgeoned into clouds and clouds into thunderheads. The trees and the well pulled at me, beckoning me to diffuse like mist into their many roots and their unrippled depths. I drew back fully into my body and released the spell, and it peeled away like a great bubble from its wand.

There was always a brief instant of hollowness after working such a spell, my body reorienting to its own flow of energy. This time, though, it took me to my knees. Without even realizing it, I had supplied what was lacking, lending my bones and blood in place of my lost roses, and now I was sapped. My vision swam and nausea roiled my stomach; I bent to press my forehead to the ground, closing my eyes and breathing in the scent of the hot, dry grass. The spell wouldn’t take right away—it needed time to build enough energy—but I hoped that, within a few days, the dusty earth beneath my nose would be watered.

“Hello?”

I jerked upright, twisting like a startled hare. The voice, while not immediate, was too close. Someone was in my sanctuary.

I staggered up, leaving the well cover where it lay for now, and stalked around the front of the barn. Someone was on my porch, their back to me. Even from a distance, I recognized the breadth of the shoulders, the shape of the frame, and for a moment I considered shouting at him to get off my property. But something didn’t look quite right—he was hunched forward, the breath working his ribs short and fast.

“Hello?” I said.

David spun, and a quick glance told me he was carrying something in the front of his shirt. He rushed down the porch steps, too fast and too heavy, relief painted clearly across his face. “It’s you,” he said. “I need your help.”