“Yes. Inexperienced … but she has the creds.”
This wasn’t heartache. This was a body-and-soul ache. A toxic mixture of shame, anger, hurt, mainlining into her veins. “You used Priscilla to come here and prey on me. You were planning to take the Triodecad from the beginning. Before you even knew me!”
At least Jason didn’t insult her by trying to deny it. “After I met you, the reasons changed. Before, I was going to do it out of self-interest. Now it’s because I want to be with you. Because I—”
“I don’t give a damn if your reasons changed, or what your motivation is,” she said hotly. “Your actions are the same. And whatever you try with my grimoire is going to backfire.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I’m not just talking about you, you self-absorbed ass! It could backfire on Priscilla, or me, or someone else down the line who had nothing to do with this. Listen to me: The burden of proof falls on the crafter to make certain the spell won’t harm anyone. You don’t know who will be affected.”
“I know there are risks if I go ahead with this. But if I don’t, Justine … I have no chance. No sand left in the hourglass. And to be with you—for as long as possible—is all that means anything to me now.”
“You can’t use magic to screw around with matters of life or death. The spirits will find a way to turn it against you.”
“Then you make the choice,” Jason said coolly. “You love me. We know the consequences of that. You want me to sit back and wait for the anvil to drop?”
“I don’t love you,” Justine tried to say, except that she was forced to stop between words and take a painful extra breath, and to her disgust, she was fighting not to cry.
Love, she reflected bitterly, wasn’t something you bargained with or negotiated terms with … it lived by its own rules. Love appeared when you didn’t want it and refused to go. It was like an invasive species that entered your garden without warning, and proceeded to grow wildly out of control, resistant to every method employed to kill it.
Basically, love was pigweed.
“All I want,” Jason said, “is to take care of this and come back to you. I’ll do whatever you ask from then on. I’ll give you anything you’ve ever wanted.”
“Don’t you dare try to buy me!”
“I’ll rub your feet when you’re tired. I’ll hold you when you’re lonely. I’ll love you like no woman has ever been loved on this earth.” He paused. “You just have to give me a pass on this one little thing.”
Her brows rushed down. “You don’t get a pass for stealing my grimoire.”
“Borrowing.”
“You’ll do the same thing again when you decide you need some handy spell to fix something.”
“I won’t.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that? How stupid do you think I am?”
A long pause. “You’re not stupid,” he said quietly. “You care about me, and I took advantage of that. And I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry for anything you’ve done. You’re only sorry that I’m angry.”
“I’m not sure what kind of sorry it is. I only know I feel a lot of it.”
“If that’s true, then don’t let Priscilla try to cast a spell from the Triodecad. Send it back to me.”
“And then what?”
“I’ll find a way to keep you safe. I’ll stop … caring about you. I’ll cut my heart out if necessary.”
Silence, and then a slow exhale. “You can’t do that,” he said. “You’ve already given your heart to me.”
The call ended.
“Jason? Jason—” Frantically Justine went to the recent calls list and autodialed the number. She was sent directly to voice mail. “Oh, you bastard.” As she glared at the supplies and equipment piled around her, she trembled with the urge to do something drastic, destroy something.
A woman in this mood, she thought vehemently, should not be left alone with power tools.
Twenty
“Another message from Justine,” Priscilla said grimly, sliding her phone back into her bag. “She’s madder than an Amish electrician.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“I wouldn’t, if I was her.” Priscilla looked down at the bulk of the Triodecad, smoothing her hand over the linen that covered it. The book and the cloth were saturated with the pleasantly dry, sweet scent of white sage. Although Jason had suggested that she put the heavy volume in one of the backseats, she had insisted on holding it on her lap.
“You seem nervous,” Jason said, driving the rented Nissan away from Little Rock National Airport. The afternoon light was strong and yolk colored, causing him to squint through the lenses of his polarized sunglasses. “Is it because you don’t want me to meet your family, or because you’re not sure the spell-casting will work?”
“Both, I guess. My kinfolk take some getting used to. Most of ’em have always lived within ten miles of Toad Suck Park.”
“I won’t have any problem getting along with them, and … Did you say ‘Toad Suck’?”
“That’s where we’re headed. Toad Suck, Arkansas. People call it a town but it’s really an unincorporated community.”
“Where did the name come from?”
“The story is that back in the old days, the steamboat crews would hole up at the tavern and wait for the Arkansas River to rise. Local folk said those rivermen would suck on a bottle till they swelled up like toads.”
Jason grinned, turning onto I–40 to head north.
“There’s another story,” Priscilla continued, “that the original French settlers called the area Tout Sucre, which means ‘all sugar.’ Over the years people kept pronouncing it different ways until it turned into Toad Suck.”
It was easy to understand why the settlers had first called it Tout Sucre—the land was abundant and fertile, hills covered with hardwood trees, valleys rich with alluvial soil. Forests of sugar maples were starting to turn, their branches clouded with fire-colored leaves. Scores of creeks cut from the Ozark plateau through the river valley and down to the Ouachita Mountains.
“The Fiveashes have lived in Toad Suck for as long as anyone can remember,” Priscilla said. “They work hard, go to church, and send their kids to school. They shop at Dollar Tree because they don’t want to get dressed up for Walmart. They think eating local means shoot your own squirrels. And when my kin start talking, you’ll wish they came with subtitles.”
“There won’t be any problem,” Jason said, mildly surprised by the defensive note in her voice. “You know I’m not a snob.”
“Yes, sir. All’s I’m saying is, you thought I had rough edges when I started working at Inari. Well, compared to the rest of the family, I’m Princess Di.”
“Understood,” Jason said, inwardly amused. “There won’t be any problem, Priscilla.”
She nodded, still looking troubled. “You’re not going to meet my mama, by the way. Ever since Daddy died, she wanted nothing to do with the craft. We’re going to Granny Fiveash’s double-wide. You’re going to meet her and my great-aunt Bean and my uncle Cletus. Cletus won’t help with the spell-casting, of course, since he’s a man.”
“Is there such a thing as a male witch? A warlock?”
“No, that’s just a myth. It says in the Malleus Maleficarum that—”
“What’s that?”
“A witch-hunting book written by a Catholic priest in the fourteen hundreds. It says the devil tempted women by sending handsome fallen angels to seduce them … and the women became his handmaidens. That’s how witches were started. Hypothetically. But there’s nothing satanic about the craft now.”
“Does it bother you to think about the witch’s bane?” Jason found himself asking. “It must. You must worry about falling in love with someone.”
Priscilla looked disconcerted, her color rising. It was rare for them to have such a personal conversation. “Actually, I don’t. My whole life, I’ve been single-minded about getting away from Toad Suck. Gettin
g educated, working my tail off … no time for romance.” She looked thoughtful as she added, “Even though I don’t live here anymore, it still feels like I’m trying to get away. I’ve always wanted something different. Not sure what. Money, I guess. Mama says I’ll never be happy till I have enough money to burn a wet mule.”
“No,” Jason said quietly. “When people are driven to make a lot of money, it’s never about the money.”
Priscilla fell silent as she pondered that.
After a couple of minutes, Jason said, “Don’t get worked up over this spell-casting. Just do your best.”
“Easy for you to say. I’m the one who has to get it right. Magic isn’t like mathematics where there’s a right answer. Sometimes it’s a choice between a lot of bad answers. Or worse, a lot of right-sounding answers.”
Jason tried to think of something that might lessen the pressure for her. “Priscilla, do you know what the most difficult shot in golf is?”
“The windmill,” she said decisively.
“The what?… No, I’m not talking about Putt-Putt. I mean real golf. The most difficult shot is the long bunker shot.” Glancing at her blank expression, Jason said, “When the ball gets stuck in a sand pit. You have two ways to handle it. You can either pitch it or blast it. Pitching is a short, low-risk shot, just to get it out of the pit. Blasting it with a long power swing ends in either glory or total defeat.”
“So you’re saying when we try this magic spell tonight, you want to take the big risk.”
“No. Play it safe. It’s too important to risk everything. Just go for the short pitch, get me out of the damn pit. If you can buy me a few years with Justine, I’ll make them count for a lifetime.”
Priscilla stared at him in wonder. “You’re in love with her.”
“Of course I am. What did you think?”
“I thought you were just shining her on to get the spellbook.”
He shot her an affronted glance. “Why is it so hard to believe I might fall in love with someone?”
“Because every time you break up with a woman, you tell me to buy some expensive jewelry and have it wrapped up for her. Your Tiffany’s bill caused the economic bubble in the precious metals market.”
Jason scowled, keeping his gaze on the road. “Justine’s different from the others.”
“Why? Because she’s a witch?”
“Because she’s Justine.”
Priscilla stared down at the Triodecad, smoothing circles over it. “Is she in love with you?” she asked carefully.
“I think so.” Jason swerved slightly to avoid a vulture feeding on roadkill. “And I’d like to live long enough to try and deserve it.”
“Then I’d better find an extra-strength spell” came her tart reply.
After a thirty-minute drive, they took the exit for Toad Suck Park. Priscilla directed him along a series of turns, the roads getting narrower and rougher, until they reached a private drive lined with eroded gravel, the car wheels dipping into deep potholes. They pulled up to a double-wide tucked into a grove of dogwood trees. The trailer home was fronted with a patio improvised from a sheet of buckled plywood and a set of plastic lawn chairs. A dog of indeterminate breed lazed on the corner of the plywood, his scraggly tail thumping as he saw the car approach.
“They’ll probably seem a little crazy at first,” Priscilla said as Jason stopped the car. “But after you get to know ’em … they’ll seem even crazier.”
“No judgment,” Jason assured her. It was one of the things he’d learned from living in San Francisco for nearly ten years. A person with rainbow hair and multiple piercings could be a millionaire, or someone who’d dressed as if he’d harvested his clothes from a Dumpster, a respected community leader. Preconceptions were useless, not to mention foolish.
Getting out of the car, Jason was struck by the serenity of the area. All he could hear was the tapping of a woodpecker in a nearby thicket of pine and cedar, and the trickle of a creek. The air steamed as if it had been freshly ironed. A flat, languid breeze was stitched with the smells of cooked grass and stewed pine pitch.
The silence was shattered by the cacophony of a pair of elderly women emerging from the trailer, both of them clattering with jewelry. Neither of them was a day under eighty. They were dressed similarly in flip-flops, brightly colored tunics, and cropped pants. One of them had hair swirled like a vanilla cone from Dairy Queen, and the other, a shock of flamboyant red. Whooping and chattering, they both hurried to Priscilla and hugged her between them.
“Prissy, honey, you’re all skin and bones,” the red-haired one exclaimed. “Don’t they feed you out there in California?”
“’Course they don’t,” the other woman said before Priscilla could reply. “All them West Coast hippies eat is kale chips.” She beamed at Priscilla. “We cooked you up some real food, girl. Hot dog casserole and fried apple biscuits.”
Priscilla laughed and kissed her leathery cheek. “Granny, Aunt Bean … I’d like you to meet my boss, Mr. Black.”
“He own that computer company you work at?”
“Video games,” Jason said, walking around the car to reach them. He extended a hand to the red-haired woman. “Please call me Jason.”
“Computers will be the ruination of this world,” she said, ignoring his outstretched hand. “We don’t bother with handshakes, honey, we just do hugs.” She threw her arms around him, enveloping him in a bewildering mixture of scents: hair-styling product, perfume, deodorant, body cream, and a distinct tang of bug spray. “I’m Priscilla’s granny,” she told Jason. “You call me that, too.”
The vanilla-haired woman came to hug Jason, as well, her torso strong, short, and barrel-round. “I used to be Wilhelmina, but folks took to calling me Bean when I was a kid and it stuck.”
Since neither of the women seemed inclined to release his arms, Jason went to the trailer with Granny and Bean on either side of him. Priscilla followed with the spellbook. A blast of icy air hit them as soon as the front door was opened. An air-conditioning unit hummed in a window space, chilling the interior of the trailer to an arctic level. They entered a living room, the main wall covered with tin license plates.
The home was clean but packed with tables and shelves of collectibles; figurines, vintage hook and flies, bottle caps, cookie jars. It made Jason, who preferred spare and uncluttered space, feel vaguely claustrophobic. As he saw that both kitchen windows were fully blocked with rows of beer glasses and metal thermoses, he was forced to take a calming breath.
“Now,” Granny said to Priscilla, “let’s have a look at the spellbook.”
“It’s very old,” Jason said, uneasy at the sight of Justine’s treasured grimoire being set on the same dining table as a foil-covered casserole reeking of hot dogs and ketchup. “I can’t let anything happen to it.”
“We’ll be careful.” Granny gave Jason an astute glance. “Never thought I’d see one of these, specially not one with a name.”
“We never learnt our magic from a grimoire,” Bean said, following Jason’s gaze to the casserole. She took the dish from the table, turned to set it on a kitchen counter, and wiped her hands on her tunic. “Only the elite-type crafters have those. We’ve always kept our spells and formulas on recipe cards.”
“A book like this,” Granny said, “has more power than what’s written on the pages.”
The older women let out little breaths of appreciation as Priscilla unwrapped the Triodecad. The leather cover gleamed with a black-plum finish. A copper keyhole was centered in an unusual clock face design. Even if Jason hadn’t known the supernatural value of the book, he would have instantly recognized it as something ancient and priceless.
“Why a clock face?” he asked.
“It’s not a time clock,” Granny replied. “It’s the phases of the moon. The earth is here at the center.” She traced invisible lines from the keyhole to each of the points of the outer circle. “First quarter moon at the top … waxing gibbous next … full moon ri
ght there…” Her finger moved to the edge of the cover. “The sun would shine from this direction.”
A perturbed frown crossed Priscilla’s forehead. “It’s a full moon tonight, Granny. Is that the right time to cast a spell?”
“Depends on the spell. We’ll need to read some, you and me and Bean, to figger what’s best.” Granny turned to Jason and said, not without sympathy, “Prissy told me what we’re dealing with. Between the lack of a soul and the witch’s bane, you got more problems than a math book. And we can only cast one spell at a time, or they start canceling each other out.” She paused. “Who’s got the key?”
“I do,” Jason said, fishing out the chain from beneath his polo shirt.
Granny received it from him with a businesslike nod. “Bean, before we open the book, I think we’d best sweep the kitchen with the besom broom.”
“I’ll find it,” Bean said, and hustled down the narrow hallway.
“Jason,” Granny continued, “we’ll be reading for a while. Put your feet up, if you like. You could watch TV. The Razorbacks are playing the Aggies.”
“Would you mind if I took a walk?”
“Go right on.”
As Jason picked up his sunglasses from the table and turned to the door, Bean hurried up to him with an aerosol can and started spraying. He backed away reflexively while Bean directed the spray over his pants legs and even reached for the hems to mist his ankles. The smell of insect repellent filled the air in a noxious cloud. “No. Really. I don’t—”
“You need it,” Bean said with authority, going behind him, spraying busily without stopping.
“You don’t know about Arkansas skeeters,” Granny told him. “In ten minutes they’ll bleed you dry as a hog on butchering day.”
“My, my” came Bean’s voice from behind him. “This is what I call a superior posterior.”
Jason slid a narrow-eyed glance at Priscilla, who appeared to be repressing a grin. “Thanks,” he muttered, and fled as soon as Bean was finished.
“One more thing,” Granny called after him. “If you see Cletus upstairs, don’t pay him no mind.” The door closed.
Jason stopped in his tracks. “There’s no upstairs on a trailer home,” he said aloud.