Page 42 of The Devil Knows Her Name

I distracted myself with other tasks for the remainder of the afternoon—there were more than enough piling up, and I had barely made a dent in the laundry when I glanced out the window and saw the sun was dipping behind the tree line. I still had preparations to make, but for the rest of my materials, I’d have to go to the back room.

The cellar of my house was like any other cellar; dim and low-ceilinged, with spiderwebs in the corners and a hard-packed dirt floor. I kept a larder down there, but didn’t have much reason to visit it otherwise. Years had passed since I had cause to go through the plain wooden door at the back.

No one else had ever seen what was in the back room, and no one could.

I built the room when my mother and grandmother’s fear was still running strong in me, and back then, there was cause. I had dug it out myself, shoring up the walls with plaster and stone. There was no electricity, and no windows either; I took a candle in with me and didn’t flick the wheel of my lighter until the door was locked behind me.

I had never killed for my magic, but I wasn’t above harvesting from the dead. In my line of work, there was plenty of it. It was not uncommon for me to take the fur or teeth of a dead mother possum or raccoon and weave it into the spells of healing and growth I spoke over her offspring.

But none of this was so innocent. Even the hex bag, full of malice as it was, was purer than the things I kept in the back room. That had been forged in the hot, cleansing fire of anger, and these I had allowed to sit and suppurate in the secret dark, their presence a growing stain on my soul. Here were the hearts of predator and prey alike, suspended in formaldehyde and lined up neatly in their jars. Here were the vials of snake and spider venom, the wines I’d dosed with mandrake and lily of the valley. Here was my grandmother’s grimoire with its homemade goatskin cover, its yellowed pages full of magic my mother refused to teach me—love potions, spells to call on the dead, curses, hexes.

These were all the things I’d harvested for myself, forbidden knowledge, bones and claws, eyes and organs. And my mother—or what remained of her.

There was not much left of her hair and lashes, despite my efforts to ration them over the years, but her teeth and finger bones had not been touched. I only handled them in their little box, but that didn’t stop the memories that wanted to flash before me—the way the pliers slipped, the bristling crack of cartilage, how black her cold blood looked under my fingernails. I pushed the thoughts aside, gathering up the box and the wooden trencher that sat on the shelf beside it, its bowl worn glossy smooth.

The last thing I needed was in the medicine cabinet upstairs. The bathroom seemed bright and homey compared to the back room, but I avoided my reflection in the mirror, only glimpsing the darkness that clung around my eyes and in the hollows of my cheeks. I opened the cabinet and pushed aside the soaps and gauze packets I used to hide the bottle, then stopped short.

The bottle of belladonna antidote was tipped over on its side, sitting in a tacky puddle of what once was clear fluid. I snatched it up as if it would prevent any more from leaking out, but the damage was done; I heard only the barest rattle of liquid inside. The label was stuck to the shelf of the cabinet along with most of the contents, but there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was.

Cursing whatever hurried moment in the past led to this, I tore open the drawer beneath the sink. The syringes were still there, safe in their wrappers. I’d just have to hope there was enough left in the bottle for one last use.

I bundled everything into a basket and went outside, trying to ignore my waning confidence. The spilled bottle of physostigmine seemed like a sign if ever there was one, but it wasn’t the one I needed now. There was simply too much at stake, and besides, it was only a backup plan. I’d used belladonna enough in the past to get the dosage right.

I came to the small, stone-circled firepit in the center of the yard and stopped, finding myself unwilling to set the basket down. It was fully night now, but the moon was shining above like a great silvery eye, laying down a blanket of pearlescent light so bright I could make out the colors of the dahlias in their bed. Even up here on the hill, behind my gate and safe within my remaining wards, I felt exposed. Anyone could walk up the driveway and see what I was doing—they could leave before I even knew I’d been observed, or worse, take advantage of my vulnerable state. No, I couldn’t do it in the yard.

I readjusted the basket on my arm and went down to the gate, looking out across the lustrous, billowing sea of grass and the towering dark of the forest. Once again, it looked peaceful from here, but I wouldn’t know the truth of its mood until I ventured out. I opened the gate and entered the meadow.

It seemed to take a long time to reach the trees. A breeze moved through the grass as I walked, turning the moon-soaked leaves to liquid, and for a moment I had to shut my eyes and take a long, slow breath through my nose. The sensation of drowning passed, and I pressed on, the forest rising like a black wall before me.

No sooner had I crossed the line of the trees than the light faded. I turned, apprehension skittering down my spine, and found only darkness; perhaps the moon had gone behind a cloud, or perhaps the trees had closed behind me. I pressed on into the forest, seeking a place for the ritual.

I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, other than a place to build a fire. I’d never done a ritual like this beyond the safety of the yard. Like belladonna itself, the trees kept their own secrets and were not to be trifled with, and unlike now, when raw panic was a breath away, I wouldn’t notice the creeping roots and stretching limbs when my gaze was only half in this world.

Just when I was beginning to think I’d have no choice but to fight my way back to the yard, I pushed aside a curtain of pine boughs and found myself before the bramble thicket. The rose blossoms glowed like little ghosts in the dark, and the way was open for me, a gap in the tangle of thorns beckoning me inside. I followed it down gratefully, surrounded by the heady perfume of roses and overripe blackberries. The thorns still dragged lightly at my skin, but they felt curious rather than hostile, as if they were teasing—or perhaps testing.

The farther I went, the darker it got, until even the silver sheen of the roses was reduced to a mere impression of gray. By the time I found my way to the center of the thicket, the brambles had completely closed over my head and I was walking nearly bent in half, the basket of materials bumping awkwardly against my shins. It might’ve made someone else claustrophobic, but it was exactly what I needed. No one could spy on me here.

I only guessed I’d come to the center when the thorns on either side of me gave way. I settled onto my haunches and fished a candle out of the basket for light. As the flame took hold of the wick, I saw there were no roses in this place, nor blackberries, nor even leaves. Here in the heart of the thicket, there were only massive, gnarled vines and thorns as long as knives. They curled and twisted over my head, and even when I lifted the candle above me I couldn’t see a hint of green.

With no light reaching this deeply, the ground was soft dirt, and it was littered with the bones of trees that were taken by the thicket. The limbs were dry and nearly petrified, and it didn’t take much to snap off a couple pieces and start a fire.

The first thing I did was unwrap the syringe and draw off as much physostigmine as was left in the bottle. It was only half as much as I needed, but it was better than nothing—in theory, at least. I laid the syringe where it was easily at hand on the corner of the basket, then arranged the trencher and the bones in front of me. At last, I considered the belladonna.

The berries were black as pitch in the glow of the fire, eating the light in a way the surrounding darkness did not. I plucked three of the largest ones and dropped them into my mortar along with a single leaf, and the rest of the boughs I tossed on the fire, where they began to smoke.

I dipped my fingers into the mortar and coated them in the pulped flesh, drawing a single line down the center of my forehead and two others down my eyes. The rest I strained into a cup of water, which I placed near the fire to warm while the pungent leaf smoke curled around the space in gossamer strands. When the outside of the cup grew warm, I lifted it to my mouth.

Don’t.

I stopped, the black liquid resting against my lips. The voice sounded like my mother’s.

Don’t look unless you’re prepared to face what you see.

“You don’t even know me anymore,” I said. “You don’t know what I’m prepared to do.”

There was no answer. I tipped the cup and drank it all in three long swallows. It went down easy, faintly sweet, and it was only after that I felt how it had coated my throat, my tongue, my teeth, possessive and inescapable.

Now came the hardest part: waiting. Belladonna usually acted within an hour, and I should’ve used the time to focus my mind on what I needed to know: whether the hex bag would work, whether the pastor would leave, whether my sanctuary would be saved. Instead, I found myself ruminating on the poison in my body or the too-empty syringe sitting on the edge of the basket. I placed another log on the fire and watched the flames lick up the sides.