Page 49 of The Devil Knows Her Name

Why didn’t he accuse me?

Because he doesn’t have to, hissed the voice, which I now recognized as my mother’s. It doesn’t matter whether he says it; what matters is that he could, and they would believe him. He holds all the cards.

“The darkness over this place is strong,” Zeke went on. “I don’t exaggerate when I say you have been held in bondage. To break that will not be easy. It will require work, it will require belief, and it will require boldness. Coming here today is the first step, but there are many more to come. Believe me when I say that God has plans for Burrsville.” He nodded sagely, making sporadic eye contact again, and I saw heads bobbing in the crowd. “God has plans for Burrsville. There may be times when you wonder if they’re really possible to achieve, times when you’ll think you’re not strong enough to raise this place up. I’m here to help you shoulder that burden, to guide and direct and show you what is possible when you have faith.”

On the wall behind the pulpit, the large projector screen lit up. After a few seconds, an image flashed on it—a digital rendering of a massive white church. Even without the scale markers at the bottom, I could tell the sanctuary and its steeple dwarfed the church I stood in now, to say nothing of the atriums and outbuildings that sprouted from it like tumors. The parking lot would befit a mall; it was an endless stretch of black asphalt and harsh yellow lines broken by the occasional concrete island for trash cans and green blobs I assumed represented bushes. Behind one of the outbuildings there was a huge playground, and to one side I saw the beginnings of a golf course.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Zeke said, ascending the two steps to the low stage once more. “ ‘Why would we build a church so big when we can’t even fill this one?’ And that’s a sensible question, because this is the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve filled this church—first time we’ve needed more than the front two pews, actually.”

He chuckled at this, and the crowd relaxed, laughing shyly along with him. All around me I sensed relief that he’d forgiven their lack of attendance, while inside me every muscle and tendon and bone was twisting itself into a knot of dread. Burrsville had collapsed into his grip even faster than I thought possible; I saw Broder in one pew, his arm around his wife, jowls shining with passionate sweat. I saw Evelyn nodding along emphatically. The whole room was in thrall to him, except for me. He could’ve leveled the charge of witchcraft at me at any moment, and they would’ve set on me like dogs.

“I’ll tell you why,” Zeke went on, and his audience leaned forward as one. “Because God does not do ‘sensible.’ He is not limited by what we believe is smart. God does not do ‘reasonable,’ he does not do ‘recommended,’ he does not do ‘safe.’ God does miracles!”

This last was shouted, and someone actually cheered. Zeke paced the stage, his footsteps booming, his forehead glistening under the lights. “When the disciples said, ‘Send these people away, we don’t have enough food for them,’ what did Jesus do? He fed four thousand people with five loaves and two fish! Isn’t that right?”

There was a murmur of assent.

“And if he can do that, surely he can take two pews full of people and fill this church!” He jabbed his finger at the screen, then waved his arms over the assembled crowd. “It’s already happening! We’ve already overflowed this church—we’re standing room only in here!”

Everyone cheered that time. The energy in the place bordered on frenzy. The woman on my left turned to me, and I reeled back at the wild gape of her mouth, the swollen tubers of her eyes. The place was so full of eyes, made of eyes, eyes that saw I did not rejoice with them, eyes that knew I was powerless.

“God did not call us to be limited by these four walls, did he?” Zeke shouted, and the crowd settled slightly, anxious to hear what else he had for them. “He did not tell us to stay within our boundaries. He doesn’t tell us to think small and do small works. He said, ‘You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.’ ”

With those words, the rendering on the screen zoomed out, changed angles, and the knot of dread inside me tightened until I couldn’t breathe.

The pastor’s city was on my hill, overlooking a Burrsville that had spilled its boundaries, crept up the sides of the valley like mold. The church sat where my house was now, the meadow buried beneath the parking lot, the outbuildings and playground and golf course where the forest now stood. Every tree on the opposite hill had been razed too—new roads cut into the hillside, farms sprung up where there were none, houses spreading unchecked from the actual village, which was almost unrecognizable with its four-lane Main Street.

But I had seen this before, of course, and not in the flat pixelation of a digital rendering but in living, hellish detail. The bones I’d cast in the thicket had not lied, and that future was upon me far sooner than I’d anticipated. I knew now why Zeke hadn’t played his hand before, why he never sent a letter telling me to vacate his property; he’d held back until he had the full weight of the town behind him. He wanted me to know there was no one on my side.

Which meant the only thing standing in his way was the gate across my driveway, and my single biggest weapon was now a collection of bone fragments and twigs at the front of the church. It had only inflamed him against me, and now I had nothing.

“This will be our city on a hill,” the pastor said. “The church will look over the community, as it was meant to be. God provides through the church—should we not give him a bigger vehicle through which to bless us? Should we not make ourselves ready to accept every gift he has to offer?”

Whatever inhibitions or doubts the crowd had had were gone; they responded with the vigor of a trained congregation. Every second that passed, I became more paranoid that someone would notice my stillness and call it out, that this feverish energy would turn into a mob. My mother’s fear had become mine.

“As I said, it will not be easy,” Zeke called over the fray. “This is no small undertaking. But the power of God is no small power, and he will move in ways you cannot even imagine!”

“Amen!” someone shouted. The whole church rose with the sound, the space filling with the sound of stamping feet and creaking benches. The allure of his promise was strong, and they surged like a wave toward him, even the people at the back—especially them, desperate not to be left behind. My restraint broke and I fled, clawing through the press of bodies until I reached the door. I slipped out, desperately hoping not to be noticed in the rush.

I was almost to the truck when someone called my name. I whirled around, my stained hands closing into fists. It was David, and he came up short when he saw my face.

“Tess, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I would’ve told you in a second. I really didn’t know.”

I barely registered what he was saying. All I could think was that someone must’ve seen him run out after me, and how they would talk, and what Evelyn would say. I wondered if his mother had watched him go, if his father had seen him run after my retreating back.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, turning away. “You couldn’t have stopped him.”

“But you could’ve. Tess, please—”

The slam of the truck’s door cut off the rest of what he said. I roared away, leaving him standing alone on the sidewalk.

Chapter

16

The belladonna abandoned me as I drove home, satiated by my terror, and in place of the syrupy sludge of paranoia was the knife’s edge of despair. There was no doubt in my mind that Broder was already offering to track down whoever had left the hex bag, and if Zeke allowed it, my hair would lead them to me so fast I might as well have signed it. I also knew for a fact that Burrsville still had an ancient statute on the books forbidding witchcraft, although the court of public opinion would be far more effective for Zeke’s purposes.

Worse, I had no good options to counter Zeke’s plans for his megachurch compound. He might not even be the one to force the issue; he’d probably make a show of offering to buy my land, and when I refused he’d make sure the entire town knew about it. The harassment campaign would begin, and eventually someone would go digging through the records, looking for a loophole to use against me. They’d find what they needed—that the land belonged to Zeke all along, and it would seem like a miracle to them, a perfect ending to a story in which I was the villain. Without my magic, there would be no way to redirect their attention or make them forget—at least not without direct, forceful intervention.