Page 3 of The Devil Knows Her Name

Christine and Max arrived first, as they always did. Both retired teachers, they looked as much like brother and sister to me as husband and wife; they both had short gray hair and small rectangular glasses, and they spoke in the soft, gently curious way of people who had never stopped learning.

“You didn’t do pecan, did you?” Max asked, handing me a pie and glancing worriedly at the loaded table.

“I didn’t, but I don’t think you can ever have enough pecan pie anyway,” I said.

“I brought this!” Christine chirped, gaily waving a slim book of poetry.

They made themselves comfortable, pouring each other glasses of wine while I searched out a spare pie server, commenting on the food and asking if this or that was new.

“Here’s Georgie and Evelyn,” Christine said, and I heard the crunch of tires on the gravel outside.

Georgie and Evelyn went nearly everywhere together, as Evelyn no longer drove—no small feat in a town whose only public transportation was a two-run bus. She’d started working for the village as soon as she could hold a job, outlasting every good old boy who chortled and groped his way through local government. She was the only reason there was any bus running in Burrsville.

I saw Georgie the most out of the group. She ran the local feed store, one of the only independent businesses left in town, and she carried some of the less common milk replacers, insects, and seed mixes for me. She’d become a fixture of my days, and for as long as I could remember, I’d walked into her store, taken a deep, soothing breath of sawdust and fertilizer, and found her behind the counter reading a vintage Vogue. She hardly seemed to have changed at all in that time; her dark, tight curls showed touches of frost at her temples, but her skin was unlined.

The conversation picked up as soon as the two women entered the house, exchanging hugs with Christine and Max even though they’d probably seen each other earlier that week. “You started the party without us,” Georgie chortled, tracing two circles on her cheeks that mimicked the twin spots of bright red that appeared whenever Christine had wine.

They all sat down at the table again, and after a few minutes of uncorking bottles and rearranging plates to make room for Evelyn’s crescent rolls, I glanced up at the clock. “Has anyone heard from Paul? Did he say he would be late?”

Everyone shook their heads; only Evelyn bothered to actually check her phone. “Nothing to me, but you know how it is with the cows. I don’t think he’d want us to wait.”

“Not like we’ll run out of food,” Max chimed in.

Paul arrived fifteen minutes and a bottle of wine later, still smelling faintly of the cow barn. He was the youngest of our group, but with his leathered skin and deep crow’s-feet, he hardly looked it. His little truck was so covered in dust that the green paint was hardly visible beneath it.

“We need some damn rain,” he said gloomily, shucking off his boots on the porch. “Nobody wants to call it a drought yet, but they ought to. If we have another winter with no snow, we’re going to be in real trouble.”

As long as my magic was intact, the valley would never suffer the same climate extremes that other parts of the country did, but I couldn’t deny that it was getting worse, demanding more and more intervention from me. I’d been thinking of working a weather spell for days, but I kept holding out, hoping it would correct itself. I couldn’t wait any longer.

My expression must’ve fallen, because Paul patted my shoulder awkwardly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to bring the mood down. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

He handed me his offering for the table, a wheel of cheese, and our fingers brushed. He jolted like he’d been shocked and hurried inside, muttering an apology under his breath. There had been a time when Evelyn gently tried to push us together, and maybe a time when Paul would’ve been open to it, but I was no farmer’s wife.

I belong to someone else, I thought, tonguing the devil’s stamp on the inside of my mouth.

By the time I’d sliced up the cheese and brought it out on a board, the group was already halfway through a second bottle of wine. “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Tess,” Christine said.

“I could see the house glowing from the other hill,” Paul added.

“It’s been a good year,” I answered. “It only felt right to put a little extra into the celebration.”

We dug into the food, saying no blessing and eating in no particular order, devouring desserts along with appetizers. We drained bottles of wine and cider until Evelyn’s laugh was loud and raucous and even Georgie’s cheeks were flushed a deep crimson. My friends didn’t seem to notice the dipped wax seals on the bottles were marked with runes; they didn’t know each flower in the centerpiece was carefully chosen; they didn’t see how their laughter made the candles glow brighter.

“Almost called you the other day, Tess,” Paul said around a mouthful of pie. “Smiths’ dog got loose again and was harassing my cows. Couldn’t get a hand on him for a good half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you? That’s what I’m here for. That would’ve been their third strike and I could’ve written them an appearance ticket.”

He shrugged. “Shep chased him off eventually. Seemed silly to waste your time.”

I knew the real reason, of course. Dairy farmers, even decent ones like Paul, had a deep-rooted suspicion of anyone who worked in animal control or welfare. Even if they didn’t have a pile of dead cows rotting behind the manure lagoon, they didn’t want anyone poking around who saw a cow as anything but a source of milk and a dog as anything but an alarm system. They’d sooner shoot their neighbor’s dog than call animal control on them, which was exactly why most of my duties as the town’s animal control officer dealt with wild animals rather than domestic ones. Paul liked to give me a reminder of where I stood every now and then, and I let it slide. There was a time when I wouldn’t have, but I had gone soft for the sake of friendship.

The conversation lifted and swelled around me—Christine and Max were eagerly awaiting the birth of their first grandchild and were already making plans to stay with their daughter; Georgie had tracked down a particular issue of Vogue from 1967 in near mint condition; Paul had sold off his bull. I sank into the folds of my friends’ voices as I would into a blanket. We’d been doing this for almost ten years now, but my friends always had news to discuss. I was the only one who remained in place, my days varying only as the seasons did, and what small changes there were, I could not share.

Eventually Christine remembered her book of poetry. We were all full by that point, lounging around the table and swirling our wine like bacchanals. She fumbled her reading glasses from where they hung on hand-strung beads around her neck, giggling slightly as Max helped her find the poem she’d selected. It was a rambling, rhyming thing with more than nine stanzas, and the poet was a man who the educated few in Burrsville tried to claim as a local although he lived two hours north of us, which might as well have been another world. But Christine lost her reserved nature when she read aloud, and even more so when she’d been drinking, and we all listened with rapt attention as she wound her way through the poet’s remembrance of an autumn trail.

As she read, I noticed one of the three candles on the table had gone out. The black and red ones still burned brightly, their flames like drops of molten gold, but the white one, symbolizing generosity, balance, and togetherness, was out. A thin stream of smoke curled from its wick, eddying as if a passing hand had stirred it. I frowned, leaning forward to strike a match and light it again; these three were meant to burn until the wax was gone.

When Christine finished reading, she sighed deeply. “I rescued this one from the library sale,” she said, waving the little yellowed paperback. “I had a feeling it was destined for the landfill.”