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“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wills,” Henry called out. “I’m sorry,” he said again, even though he was already leading the pastor away from them. “I didn’t want to do it, but he said he’d kill my little sister if I didn’t get you out here. He said he’d feed her to the devil. He promised he wouldn’t hurt you if I did bring you.”
“Go on, boy.” Sterling said, miming a pistol with his hand and aiming it between Henry’s eyes. “I ain’t gonna tell you again to move.”
“I’m sorry,” Henry dared again before turning. May watched the boy and the pastor disappear into the darkened cemetery.
Maguire let loose a deep laugh. “How the boy exaggerates. Not the devil. Just a devil. My old friend Barron. You remember him, don’t you?” He reached for her, moving too quickly for her to avoid his touch. He caught her arm in his grasp, tightening, tightening, until the pain drove May to her knees. “You know, May, it’s funny how the world can change in an instant. Not so long ago that demon, that old genie in a bottle of mine, was my most prized possession on this earth. Now, he’s completely superfluous to my exis
tence. Just like you and your seed.” He knelt before her without ever relinquishing his grip. “So today is his Emancipation Day.” He nodded, his eyes opening wide in parody of her own horror. “That’s right, May. I just let him go. I let him go right outside your sweet little quarters.”
He released her and stood. “Tell me. Just how fast can you run?”
May forced her way to her feet and began struggling across the gravel drive that separated the glowing remains of the church from its cemetery.
“Call to your Beekeeper, woman,” Maguire shouted after her. With each step May was doing just that. But she felt nothing. No response. “Call to her.” His mania overtook him, and his voice rose in pitch, following her as if he were shouting directly into her ear.
In the dark, in her panic, she tripped over a low stone and landed on the ground, scraping her hands and knees.
Maybe, she wondered for the first time ever, the White King could be right.
SEVENTEEN
None of this made any sense at all to Poppy. She and Henry had been writing each other since the day she got to Charlotte, and with each letter he seemed to grow more and more determined to have her hand in marriage. She’d always been in love with him, she figured, only it had taken leaving Savannah for her to realize it. Every time a boy came calling for her in Charlotte, she would find herself thinking “Henry’s taller,” or “Henry’s smarter,” or “Henry’s more handsome.” Maybe “Henry always makes me laugh” was what had finally tilted the scale of her heart, convincing her that she belonged with Henry. That her heart belonged to Henry.
So when she heard his voice by the front door, Poppy had felt sure he’d come to ask Nana for her hand. The last thing she’d expected was for Nana to go off with him. Hug him, maybe. Scream at him, more likely. But instead the two had flown the coop, heading out to who knows where.
It was growing colder. Much colder. After buttoning up her cardigan, she turned her focus to the woodstove. Nana kept a mitt hanging from a hook on the wall, so she slipped the enormous padded glove over her right hand and grabbed the fire poker with her left.
She knelt beside the stove and turned the handle on its side door. The wood beneath had burned to nothing but glowing red coals. She pierced them with the poker, giving everything a good shake until the logs on the top of the pyre fell to the bottom, popping and shooting sparks. Something about the sparks fascinated her. They felt like little eyes peering out from the smoke. She shuddered, then laughed at her own silliness. Working quickly, she leaned the poker against the wall, pushed another split log into the stove, and closed the door before any more smoke could spill out into the room. Coughing, she waved her gloved hand before her face to dissipate the smoke. She stood and returned the mitt to its holder. And then she froze.
Poppy knew she was just letting her nerves run away from her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching. She looked over her shoulder and then turned all the way around. She could see she was alone in the room. Her eyes fell on the windows. The curtains had been pulled tight. Certainly no one could be peeping. She made her way to the house’s front window and pulled the drape aside, looking in the direction the truck had gone, hoping to see its cockeyed headlights pointing her way, but the overhead light was still on. In the glare, her own reflection and the image of the room behind her was all that she could see. She leaned in, nearly pressing her face to the glass, but the world outside was still hidden by her own features.
Though Poppy had promised her nana she wouldn’t worry, she couldn’t help it. She recognized this feeling for what it was. There was magic in the air, and it made her queasy. She loved her nana, but she couldn’t wait to escape back to Charlotte, where she could just be a simple working girl, a seamstress, not Mother Wills’s granddaughter.
She and Henry had made a plan. They were going to marry, and he was going to join her in Charlotte. They’d leave Savannah and its ghosts and magic behind. Lead a normal life. She felt a smile come to her lips. Soon she wasn’t going to be a Wills girl at all. She was gonna be Poppy Cook. Mrs. Henry Cook.
She would miss her nana. She would always love her, but a part of her could never forgive her for getting messed up in such dark forces. Poppy worried about her younger sisters. She felt guilty about leaving them trapped in Nana’s odd world. Maybe after she and Henry got settled, they could send for Jilo and Binah. But what if she and Henry started having their own children right from the get-go? Would Henry want to take responsibility for a brood?
In the distance she heard a rumble, a sound she recognized as Henry’s truck. Her shoulders relaxed, and she only then realized she’d been holding her breath. Poppy pulled open the front door, a lingering sense of disquiet prompting her to leave it gaping wide in spite of the night’s chill. She eased the screen door forward so its protest wouldn’t wake the little ones. She stepped out onto the porch, drawing her arms around herself to fend off the cold. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Here, without the glare of the electric light blinding her, she could make out the approaching truck pulling onto the tracks that ran up to the house. The one headlight seemed permanently aimed at heaven, but the other sputtered to life and lit the ground. Poppy was surprised to find the house surrounded by a dense, low-lying fog. Thick, dirty billows had turned it into a virtual island.
Henry pulled the truck up before her, stopping nearly on top of the bottom step, but he didn’t kill the engine. Poppy did not see her nana with him. He banged his shoulder into the driver’s door until it popped nearly halfway open.
“Where is Nana?” she asked, her stomach falling into her shoes as she ran down the steps to greet him.
“Don’t worry about that now,” Henry said, pressing her back with such force she nearly stumbled backward onto the stairs. “Get the girls. We gotta get out of here.”
Poppy dug in her heels. “What is wrong? You tell me where Nana is, or I ain’t taking another step,” she said, although her eyes remained fixed on the fog. It began to glow.
“What . . .” she said, pointing down, but a sound cut her off. A roar, filled with violence and hunger. She grasped Henry’s hand. Tried to step backward. To pull Henry and herself up the steps and into the shelter of the house. But by the time she’d begun to move, it was already too late.
Red eyes consumed her. Her mouth opened to scream, but something rushed inside it instead. The pain was so keen, she felt like she was being ripped apart. Skinned alive from the inside out. She was in a dark room. No, she was imprisoned in her own mind. And this thing inside her was suppressing her will, taking her over, striking out at her from within.
“Poppy,” Henry called. The familiar sound of his voice pulled her above the wave that had invaded her, and she saw his blood dripping from the points where her hand, transformed into a claw, had pierced his skin. She managed to release him, but in the next instant, like a man drowning, she was back under. Though she could watch what was happening and feel her body move, it was the intruder wearing her, rather than her own will, pulling her along.
“Run,” Poppy screamed from deep within to Henry, to her sisters, but the sound never reached her lips. Instead, she heard a gravelly laughter, much deeper than her own voice could ever muster. The invader raised her head and sniffed the wind. Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God, she prayed. The beast within her was searching for the children’s scent. She could smell the sweet scents of Jilo’s nighttime bath and Binah’s talcum. The saltiness of their flesh that lay underneath. Feel the heat of their pulsing blood. And it made her hungry. Her body mounted the first step, and although she struggled to pull back from the house, the second. She bounded over the last and onto the porch, and her hand reached out to grasp the handle of the screen door. It screamed in protest as she flung it open. Her body began to cross the threshold, but she stood frozen, pressed up against the open air as if it were a brick wall.
The thing inside pushed forward, straining so hard it felt like her skeleton would rip from her flesh. Something overhead caught the thing’s eye . . . caught her eye. The haint blue of the overhang was glowing, its enchantment preventing the beast from moving her forward. But its hunger drove it like a wild dog. It clawed at the opening, stretching, straining. Whining.
Henry, unknowing, unaware, thinking he was out to protect her, pushed her forward, his force enough to carry the beast inside her past the blue’s protection. Poppy screamed in anguish as the beast stumbled into the front room. Once inside, it pulled her body to its feet and turned to look at Henry. When his terrified eyes met with the thing looking out from her eyes, she could tell he realized his mistake. He stood there for another long moment, seemingly frozen. Uncertain of which way to turn. Then he made a dash around her toward the hall.
