Page 48 of Wretched Thorns

The candles had burned out or gone dead, leaving only the sour smell of smoke and whatever had spilled out of the shattered basin. Thick black liquid soaked into the bedspread and dripped slowly onto the dark hardwood below, leaving behind its dead mouse stench.

The circle painted across the floor wasn’t a circle anymore. The chalk had been smeared, clumps of flesh dragged through warped symbols and bloody streaks where the shadows had moved through it like claws.

And for the first time since Marcus had taken me, I wasn’t afraid of him.

I was afraid of myself.

Chapter ten

Sit Down, Wolf

The truck came through the gate in the early afternoon.

Jasper saw it before he heard it. He was on the porch with Mom, hands in his pockets, and the wrought iron at the end of the drive flickered the way it always flickered when somebody supernatural crossed the boundary. The truck climbed the curve and resolved into a black F-150. Not Dex’s truck. Replacement. Bodie had said as much in a text.

The truck rolled up to the front of the house and stopped.

The driver-side door opened.

Dex came around the front. Grease across one cheekbone. He swept the porch with his eyes, the way Bodie had taught all of them to sweep a porch. Mom. Jasper. Callum standing at the screen door. His eyes held on Callum a beat longer than the rest. Jasper let out the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.

The passenger door opened.

Tara Baptiste came down off the running board.

Tall. Wary. Her eyes went to Mom first, the way the eyes of women who knew good southern manners required acknowledging the woman of the house first. Then Jasper.

She didn’t smile.

He liked her immediately.

“Mrs. Voss,” she said to Mom, formal in a way that was its own respect. “I’m Tara.”

“I know who you are, sweetheart.” Mom came down a step. “Get your grandma out of that truck before she decides to do it herself.”

Tara turned.

Grandmère was already out. She stood beside the rear passenger door with her chin lifted slightly, radiating the same quiet, immovable certainty Jasper had spent his whole life watching in Rowena.

Mom went the rest of the way down the steps.

The two older women met at the foot of the steps and embraced. Grandmère reached up and rested her hand on Mom’s cheek.

They turned together and came up the steps.

***

The kitchen filled.

Jasper held the door for the procession. Grandmère. Tara. Dex. Then Mom. Eli was at his usual spot at the table. Callum had moved from the screen door to the bench at the head of the table

Miss Delphine was also at the table.

Jasper had been buying ribbons and herbs from her at Magnolia Creek festivals every year since he was old enough to fish a five out of his pocket. He had not, in all those years, seen her anywhere but behind a booth.

A leather book sat by her elbow.

Her eyes came up and found Callum across the room.