Chapter 14
Chapter
After three days, the landscape stopped receding and encroaching as I looked at it, but I began to see eyes in every circle—clocks, plates, lids from jars.
Time dripped like cold honey, and I became convinced I was losing minutes or hours as I washed my hands or sat in the truck.
Those three days brought new animals who needed my care, and I quickly had to start splitting up stalls and pens.
On one hand, these new demands on my time helped keep me distracted as the belladonna worked its way from my system, but the exhaustion only extended the length of time I felt its effects.
With so many new arrivals, my existing supply of food pellets and antibiotics quickly dwindled. The medication I had to order through a vet, but the food I could get from Georgie. My stomach twisted in a knot at the prospect of seeing her.
I hadn’t heard from any of my friends since my encounter with Evelyn at the library, and the silence was loud.
The group had had its fair share of little spats and ruffled feathers over the years, but I couldn’t recall any of them getting iced out—Christine was always the mediator, always bridging the gap and patching things over.
She would insist on the group getting together as usual, and we’d all pretend nothing was wrong until finally, one day, nothing was wrong.
But not this time, apparently. She hadn’t called, and if there had been any group get-togethers, I hadn’t been invited.
They were never your friends, the belladonna whispered. You had them snared in your magic, and now they’re finally free.
I didn’t want to listen, because the belladonna was also making me think eyeballs were popping out of the stove dials, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the truth. Maybe Georgie would tell me.
I took pains to clean myself up before I saw her.
My fingers and tongue were still stained black, but I washed my hair and cleaned the dirt from beneath my nails.
My arms were a crosshatch of scratches and welts, so I found a shirt with sleeves just a little too long.
I considered the newly sharp cut of my cheekbones and the dark circles under my eyes, but a hat would likely only draw more attention.
On the drive to the store, I avoided my own reflection in the truck’s rearview mirror and tried not to look at the eyes swimming in the hubcaps of other vehicles.
Georgie’s store was empty except for an old woman buying birdseed, and Georgie raised her eyebrows when she saw me. “Well, what do you know—she lives.”
For a moment, it felt like nothing had changed, and I suddenly realized how much I’d missed her. I was taken with the strange and sudden urge to win her back—from whom, exactly, I didn’t know.
“Barely,” I said, laying the joking tone on a little thick to compensate for how close to the truth it was. “What have I missed?”
She spread her hands wide, indicating the largely empty store. “Nothing much changing around here. Everything okay up there on the hill? We’ve been a little worried about you.”
I paused, struggling to keep the smile on my face. That felt like a lie; if they had been worried, someone would’ve checked in.
“Just lots of calls,” I said. “That’s why I’m here, actually. Need to stock up.”
I walked the aisles, filling up the cart with pellets and seed mixes and powdered colostrum. The only thing I didn’t need was meat; there had been as much roadkill as there had been calls, and late every night I’d been at the rear of the barn with a skinning knife, salvaging what I could.
When I’d filled the cart, I made my way back to the register, waiting patiently behind the old woman with her packages of suet and songbird feed. She turned to look at me, taking in my stained fingers and chapped lips, and gave me a thin, uncomfortable smile.
“Awfully warm out for October,” she said, and one of her eyes bulged out of its socket.
I swallowed the urge to scream. She continued to smile as the jelly of her eye dripped down her face, leaving slug tracks on her wrinkled skin.
I knew it couldn’t be real, and yet I couldn’t look away as her tongue, too long and too red, stretched from the corner of her mouth.
It hooked into the wet, empty hole where her eye had been and pulled, peeling it back like a sock turning inside out, until her entire face was a glistening mass of flesh—
“Tess?” Georgie asked loudly.
I started, and the vision disappeared. The old woman was frowning at me, and Georgie looked concerned.
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, half to the woman and half to Georgie. “I didn’t mean to. I’ve just had a long day and I wasn’t paying attention.”
The woman said nothing as she turned around to wheel her cart out of the store. Georgie whistled when she saw my haul. “Guess you weren’t kidding about the number of calls.”
“Nope, and if you could order more of this and these, that would be great,” I said, tapping the bags. “Have you guys heard from Paul at all?”
“Not the past couple days. He let us know when he got there, so I figure he’s probably just getting settled. And when you have to cut the cord, you know—it can be easier to go cold turkey for a little bit.”
“Sure.” I wished suddenly that I had left things better with Paul. Even if he disappointed me, I should’ve scraped up more than bland pity as we said our goodbyes. When he did come back, for Evelyn’s funeral, or perhaps Max’s, not so many years away, I wouldn’t know where I stood.
“I got the sense you two weren’t on the best terms when he left,” Georgie said, as if reading my mind. “When we showed up the next morning to see him off, he’d cut down the apple tree in the backyard.”
“I saw. I drove by his place the other day after a call and saw it down.” I shrugged. “I suggested planting it when he bought the place, and he always said it would stand as long as the farm did. I think it had more to do with him laying his dream to rest than it did with me.”
Georgie nodded, not looking convinced. “Well, it made everything a little awkward when we said goodbye, but he seemed pretty chipper so we weren’t too worried. So, what’s up with all these calls you’re getting? Kind of unusual for you, isn’t it?”
To my horror, tears pricked suddenly behind my eyes.
“Uh, yeah,” I said, my voice overloud to cover the thickness in my throat.
I ducked my head and pretended to be fishing in my pockets for my phone, but that did nothing to mitigate the abrupt urge to tell her everything—the magic, the destroyed wards, exactly what I was.
There was some desperate part of me that wanted to confess, wanted to be rid of the secret that hung over my head like an executioner’s axe.
For one wild second I thought I could make her believe me, and perhaps this was how I could win—revealing what I was and trusting my friends to see the truth of me.
But I had so many secrets. So many lies burying other lies. The truth of me was ugly.
“Yeah,” I said again, recovering myself. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but if it keeps up like this, I won’t be able to stay ahead of it.”
“Do you think you’d ever expand? Take on some volunteers?”
I thought bitterly of David Abdee, the eager gleam of his smile as he scrubbed dried viscera from the feed bowls.
“I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Christine hasn’t been able to get volunteers other than us for the harvest festival for five years, and that doesn’t involve cleaning up shit or harvesting the eyeballs out of rats. ”
“Yeah, I guess I can’t argue with that. Do you need me to order in anything special?”
“I don’t think so—not yet, at least. But I’m sure I’ll be back for more of this stuff soon.” I hesitated. “It was good to see you, though. Stop by sometime and we can catch up. I’m never too busy for friends.”
She gave me an easy smile. “I will. See you, Tess.”
I was nearly to the door with my laden cart when she said, “Oh, I forgot—there’s a town hall meeting tomorrow night. Anyone and everyone is invited.”
I turned, curious. We’d stopped trying to have town hall meetings ages ago, mostly because they only attracted a handful of ancients who wanted to complain about their taxes and the migrant farmworkers. “Oh, thanks for the heads-up. What are we meeting about?”
“The usual, you know—problems in the town, what to do about them. But we figured the more people we can get there, the better chance we have at getting everyone behind a solution.”
Who’s “we”?
I wanted to ask the question, to force the issue, but I was afraid of the answer.
I had been part of that “we” once, the people who cared about the town and tried to make it better, but I’d always been just a little bit on the outside: I lived up on the west hill, not in the valley, and my sanctuary thrived no matter what businesses closed down here.
But she had invited me, and that was something.
“Sounds good,” I said carefully. “I’ll be there.”
“It’s, uh, not at the town hall. It’s at the church.”
No need to specify which one. The warmth I’d felt at our repaired friendship evaporated.
I felt with sudden keenness the bleak emptiness where my magic once was, the hollow furrows where the web of my power lay.
I’d thought being on the outside might be for the best, but I now saw I’d made it easier for Zeke to replace me.
“I’ll be there,” I repeated, but the bitterness slipped into my voice, and it sounded like a threat. I didn’t attempt to amend it, just turned my back and left.