Page 52 of The Devil Knows Her Name

“Then the next time you are feeling bored or petulant you take it all back again and leave me with nothing.”

“I think you forget that I am not a man.”

No, I thought. You’re something far worse.

His eyes darkened, as if he could read my thoughts in my face, and I braced myself, as if anything the devil wanted to do to me could be mitigated by the strength of my own body. But instead he backed away, nodding as if to himself.

“Fine,” he said. “I believe you, Tess. Your mind is made up.”

I had thought I’d feel relief if I ever heard those words, and instead there was only panic. I stepped forward, thinking to close the gap again, but he had turned his back to me now.

“You had your own little Eden here,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll be sorry to see it die. At least it won’t be my fault this time.”

He was gone between one blink and the next. The forest was quieter in his wake, and a breeze moved through as if to clear away the lingering scent of salt. The apple, forgotten in my hand, leaked juice from where my nails had bitten into it. I dropped it, finding I was no longer hungry.

Chapter

17

The next morning, as gray was fading into the pale yellow of dawn and I was grinding comfrey to a paste in the barn, a shadow darkened the doorway.

I knew you wouldn’t stay away for long, I almost said, but the words died on my lips as I realized it was not the devil.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I said instead. “And how did you get in?”

The pastor’s son stepped into the light from the overhead bulb. He looked better rested than he had a few days ago, but more troubled, his brow drawn into a knot.

“I just went around the gate,” he said. “There’s a little spot on one side between it and the ditch.”

My cut finger throbbed in its bandage. By the time I’d staggered back into the meadow yesterday afternoon, my head had been swimming from anemia. Were the runes truly so useless? Or had I created a weakness in them without realizing?

“You should be in school, or at least on the bus.”

“I have a free first period.”

“Shouldn’t you be using that to study or do homework or something?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

I turned away, scooping the comfrey paste out of the mortar and into a jar. “I don’t have time to talk.”

“Tess, please. I really didn’t know what my dad was going to do. He’d told me about the new church, but he never said anything about where it would go.”

I kept working, my mind racing. Why did he say nothing of the hex bag? Surely he must know it was real, that it had real effects. Did he not assume I had planted it?

“I believe you,” I said. “I believed you the first time. There was nothing you could’ve done if you had known.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“Refuse to leave, of course.” As I said it, I longed for it to be that simple.

“But what happens if everyone else sells? He’s already talking to the farmer down the road.”

David doesn’t know about the deed, I thought. Zeke clearly didn’t trust his son. “Then everyone else sells. If your dad wants this land, he’ll have to take it over my dead body.”

He winced. “He’ll try to get you arrested. Or get other people to harass you. There was a lady in our old church who left her husband, and he didn’t like that. Everyone just treated her like a ghost until she left. Aren’t you worried about what people will try to do? It’s so dry—what if they try to start a fire or something?”

That was exactly why I’d made the runes, but now I doubted they’d be enough when Zeke decided to make his play; clearly, he had practice with this. I shoved the thought aside to deal with the matter at hand. “David, why are you here? Aren’t you going to get in trouble?”