Page 58 of The Devil Knows Her Name

“It’s good to know where you stand on helping your community—”

For a moment we were both shouting over each other. I pulled the phone away from my ear, came a hairsbreadth from smashing it against my countertop. Hot liquid ran over my upper lip, and I dabbed furiously at my nose.

“Listen to me,” I breathed. “You and your pastor and the whole town can go to hell. Do not ever call me again.”

I ended the call and set the phone down with exaggerated gentleness. A scarlet drop hit the screen a second later, and I grabbed a kitchen towel and stuffed the corner up my nose. A moment later, the fawn wandered into the kitchen, her nostrils flaring.

“Oh, fuck off,” I told her.

Chapter

19

I kept waiting to hear from Chief Broder or the DEC or someone about the fawn, but I didn’t. For three days, the only time my phone rang was for animal control calls, and even those had begun to settle.

When I got a call early on a weekend morning, I was sure it would be Broder, thinking he’d lulled me into complacency and ready to take me by surprise. But the number that showed was Christine’s, and that did surprise me.

“Hello?” I answered, trying not to sound overly suspicious.

“Tess, I’m so sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but we’ve got an animal situation here.”

“Okay,” I said, thankful to skip any awkward small talk. “What’s the situation?”

“There’s some kind of animal here that looks really bad—I thought it was a possum but Max says it’s a fox. Hard to tell, honestly. Scared the bejesus out of me when I went to take the trash out, and it’s still in the yard. It keeps trying to drink from my watering can and I feel awful.”

“Don’t feel awful; it’s not your fault,” I said. I guessed it was a fox with mange, which wouldn’t have been common at this time of year, but since the weather had stayed warm, wasn’t impossible. “I’ll be down in just a couple minutes.”

When I arrived at Christine and Max’s Queen Anne Victorian—unmissable, as it was painted pistachio green and vaudeville maroon—they were both out in the driveway in their matching robes and slippers. They looked anxious, and Max came right to the curb to greet me.

“It’s still in the yard,” he said without preamble. I realized abruptly that, except for my single glimpse of him at the church meeting, I hadn’t seen him since that last night at Paul’s house. Hello to you too, I almost said, but I could already taste the cruel edge on the words, so I bit them back.

“How’s it acting?” I asked, unloading my carrier and grabbing a few tins of sardines out of the back.

“Thirsty. I read that can mean rabies.”

Why the fuck does everyone see rabies everywhere? I wondered. “It can,” I said. “It can be a sign of a lot of things. Let’s take a look.”

I waved Christine and Max back inside and went down the driveway to their yard. It was a far cry from the golf course postage stamp most elderly suburban couples maintained, tithonia and rudbeckia ran rampant along the borders, the former so tall that the tree peonies I helped Christine plant were almost lost. I never managed to weave a spell into their roots, and I regretted it now even though I wasn’t sure it would help. There were a couple dolly tubs that had been upcycled into water features, although it looked like Christine had let them run dry.

The fox was scrubbing itself back and forth on the corner of the shed, apparently undeterred by the voices out front or the opening and closing of doors. It seemed frantic, and there were chunks of hair being left on the siding. It definitely had mange.

Far from just a patchy coat, mange was one of the biggest killers of red foxes in the northeast. What began as hair loss became manic, single-minded scratching while the infection attacked the immune system, and in the winter, the hair loss could contribute to hypothermia. This fox already looked like it was in bad shape, and I just hoped I wasn’t too late.

I approached slowly, keeping my gaze averted and my movements smooth. The fox still darted away, but it only moved a few feet before it stopped to scratch again, mouth quirked up in a grimace and fur flying from its claws. It was a good sign that its survival instincts kicked in, even half-heartedly.

I nestled the carrier into a cluster of tall grasses Christine had let go—“It’s my micro prairie,” she’d told me, although the grasses were, unfortunately, not native—and spilled a little sardine juice on the ground before sliding the tin inside. The fox perked up at the scent of the fish, which made me hope this capture would go quickly. When my magic was intact, it wouldn’t have been a question; I would’ve woven a little suggestion of sleep around the fox to give it relief and simply bided my time, but now I needed tricks.

I retreated back behind the corner of the house to watch, the remote for the carrier’s door in my hand. Christine and Max came hurrying up to me and I waved them away, holding a finger to my lips.

“Where is it?” Max whispered.

“Still in the yard,” I hissed back impatiently. “It’ll probably take a while, so why don’t you two go inside and I’ll let you know when I have it?”

Christine, clearly more attuned to my building irritation, tugged Max’s sleeve. They went back into the house, and I returned to my corner to observe.

The fox took its—his, I eventually saw—sweet time approaching the carrier. He continued to circle Christine’s watering can, trying to stick his nose into it between fits of scratching, and I wondered if I should’ve lured him with a bowl of water instead of food. Eventually, he started to pay more attention to the carrier, approaching and then darting away again.

My patience, which had always been so steadfast, wore thin. I could feel my undone tasks piling up on my shoulders; the weeding that had to be done as the summer vegetables died back, the windows that needed to be resealed before winter, the roadkill that needed to be processed. The thing I’d always considered the driving purpose of my life suddenly felt like a burden.