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He was standing at a sweetgrass stall, tall and thin, maybe sixty, with the stretched, sunburnt look of a man who'd spent decades in climates that didn't want him. Khakis, a linen shirt, a wooden cross on a leather cord around his neck. He was talking to an older Gullah woman at the stall. Though he was smiling, his smile didn't reach anything.

"—just curious whether the tradition includes any protective symbolism," he was saying in a soft Virginia accent. "It wards against spirits. Against the Hag, for instance. Or the thing the Ewe called the Adze.”

The woman kept weaving. "Baskets is for holding rice, sir."

"Of course." He laid a hundred-dollar bill and his card on her table. "For your time. I'm staying at the Mills House if you remember anything.” He turned, and his eyes found me across the aisle like he'd known exactly where I was standing.

He walked over, and up close, he smelled of cologne and gun oil.

"You're the Londoner," he said pleasantly. "Owusu. The ethnobotanist." He put a slight ironic weight on the last word. "I saw you at Penn Center. Yvonne doesn't give out that back room to just anyone."

"Do I know you?" I asked, playing coy.

“Not yet, Harlan Vance. Comparative folklore, Washington and Lee." He extended a hand, but I didn't take it. He let it drop without offense. "We're hunting the same thing, I think. You should know that I've done this before. Benin, 2009. A gbɔgbɔ vɔ̃ (evil spirit) that had taken eleven children. Haiti, 2014, something similar wearing a market woman. I know how they work, I know how they recruit.” His gaze flicked over my height, my skin, the week-old cuts on my palms. "They start with the lonely ones with a connection and family history in the old country—a grandmother with stories."

The hair rose on my arms as I realized he’d done his research on me.

"I'm not your enemy, Professor," Vance said. "I'd like to help you before she sinks her hooks in, because once she does—" he shook his head, almost gently "—there's only one cure, and it isn't pleasant. Sadly, I've administered it more times than I'd like."

"You've killed people,” I rebutted.

"I've released people; there's a stark difference." He smiled again. "The Gullah here have been consorting with that thing for three centuries. Whole families raised to believe she’s misunderstood when she’s nothing more than a blood-sucking disease who’s hypnotized them. It's in them now—generationally. You can see it in how they talk about her. Like she's a grandmother." He said the word like it tasted rotten on his tongue. "I'm going to burn it out. All of it and then this place can finally be clean."

He turned to go before calling out over his shoulder: "Mills House, room 412. When you're ready to be sensible."

I stood in the market with my heart pounding, my palms stinging, and the smell of gun oil in my nose. The old woman at the stall caught my eye.

"That one," she said quietly, "gonna end up in the marsh."

"Yes," I said. "I think he is."

On the seventh day, Seabrook examined my basket. It wasn't beautiful. But it was tight. It would hold water.

"You got the touch now," he said. "Tomorrow, you go to Wadmalaw. Be at the dock where the shrimp boats come in by sunset, and she'll find you,” he instructed.

"Vance was at the market,” I told him.

"I know. He's been to three Praise Houses asking where the elders sleep." Seabrook's face darkened. "He's going to make his move soon, and when he does, you'll have that iron in your hand. That moment is when you're gonna have to decide what it's for?” He spoke as if it had already happened and he was reliving the future.

I nodded, and suddenly the knife felt heavier than usual, its purpose shifting under my hand like something alive.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE LADY OF THE MARSH

Iwent to Wadmalaw Island the next evening with my palms still stinging, the cuts fresh and tender from weaving. The blood dried in dark patterns that looked almost like writing. I found the dock where the shrimp boats unloaded as Seabrook told me. The men moving with the slow grace of people who knew the water better than the land, who understood tides and moons and the moods of the marsh in ways no book could teach.

She stood at the end of the pier, watching the sunset paint the marsh aurum, purple, and crimson.

She wore wax-print cloth that shifted in the dying light—amber and scarlet, the patterns seeming to move independently of the fabric, like they were breathing. She was plus-sized, her voluptuousness speaking to abundance rather than excess—her back bare and striking, only a thin tie of fabric around her neck. My eyes traveled down to her full waist and wide hips. Though I could not see her legs, I knew they were thick and strong like oak trunks. She had skin dark and luminous, similar to polished obsidian that drank the light before giving it back as warmth. Her hair was natural, thick and coarse, flowing down her back. Her feet—I noticed this before I noticed anything else—didn't quite touch the wood. A millimeter of space that told me gravity was optional for her.

"Malik Owusu," she said, without turning. Her voice arrived like she'd spoken directly into my ear. "I wondered when you'd stop talking to old men and come find me."

It was more than one voice. I could hear my grandmother's in it and even my mother's. Something sultry and deep, speaking in tones the human ear wasn't built to receive, vibrating in my bones and making my blood sing.

“You have my cousin," I said.

"I have many cousins. I'm cousin to everyone who came over that water. Everyone who died in the holds and jumped in the sea to greet their soul." She turned finally, and her eyes were captivating—reflecting light like a cat's, the pupils vertical slits that saw through me, into me, past me. "But David is safe. He's learning to dream and what it means to be held. Would you like to see him?”