Chapter 16
Chapter
The belladonna abandoned me as I drove home, satiated by my terror, and in place of the syrupy sludge of paranoia was the knife’s edge of despair.
There was no doubt in my mind that Broder was already offering to track down whoever had left the hex bag, and if Zeke allowed it, my hair would lead them to me so fast I might as well have signed it.
I also knew for a fact that Burrsville still had an ancient statute on the books forbidding witchcraft, although the court of public opinion would be far more effective for Zeke’s purposes.
Worse, I had no good options to counter Zeke’s plans for his megachurch compound.
He might not even be the one to force the issue; he’d probably make a show of offering to buy my land, and when I refused he’d make sure the entire town knew about it.
The harassment campaign would begin, and eventually someone would go digging through the records, looking for a loophole to use against me.
They’d find what they needed—that the land belonged to Zeke all along, and it would seem like a miracle to them, a perfect ending to a story in which I was the villain.
Without my magic, there would be no way to redirect their attention or make them forget—at least not without direct, forceful intervention.
My only alternative would be to retreat to my mother’s land, to try to hold the remains of the sanctuary together even while most of it was destroyed.
It would become a protracted battle, and all the while I’d lose the war.
While I didn’t believe Zeke’s vision would do anything but bankrupt the town and leave them with nothing but a monument to their own idiocy, Burrsville had no protection from other unwelcome eyes now.
A project like this would bring companies sniffing, although not the kind Zeke had promised—developers, miners, loggers, they’d all come to strip the valley of everything it possessed.
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I was pulling into my own driveway before I realized it.
The thing that broke me out of my reverie was the sight of the gate, and I paused to get out and lock it behind me; I could not be lax with it now, no matter how many times a day I had to leave.
I went up the drive to the house, my mind already turning back to the larger problem, and I was brought up short by my own locked door.
It had been years since I locked it, and I fumbled for the old house key on my ring, expecting to hear the complaining of the squirrels even through the door.
But I didn’t.
I stopped, ceasing the jingling of the keys, holding my breath. I heard nothing.
I went inside, glancing at the clock on the range. It was past time for the evening feed, and lately the squirrels were impatient, chittering at me even on the rare occasion I was early. But the house was silent as a tomb.
I glanced into the living room. My flannel lay in an empty pile by the couch. There was a strange scent mingling with the usual musk of animals.
For a moment, I was stunned into utter stillness. My fear of the pastor and his new body of congregants and their plans for my land was swallowed whole by the empty space where the fawn should’ve been.
Someone took her, I thought wildly. The meeting was a ruse, a way to get me out of the house. Someone took her from me.
I went half-blind with helpless rage, my breath heaving through gritted teeth, my nails digging grooves into the wooden counter.
My mind was running too fast, tripping over itself, rational thought buried beneath the urge to chase the trespasser down, claw their eyes out, wrap my fingers around their throat and squeeze—
But where to look? Who to blame? Who to call? What would they do with her? I was on the verge of hyperventilating, black spots fading through the red in my vision.
It was then I heard the sound—soft, too soft to distinguish it above my own rasping breath. I only knew it was a sound I didn’t make.
Maybe if someone got in, they never left.
Cold, black hope filled my heart. I reached above the door, pulled the shotgun from its rack. A shell winked at me from the mag; I pumped the fore-end, and the reverberation of the action bar went straight into my spine.
The sound reached my ears again, an indistinct crunch. It was then I noticed the little gate that blocked the rehab room from the main living area was down. I crept forward, gun raised, craning my head to get an angle into the room.
To my disbelief, I caught a glimpse of a little spotted rump, a white tail wagging furiously as it did when she was on the bottle. I cried out, the shock and relief too much to keep inside. I dropped the gun to one hand and ran into the room.
There were small bodies all over the floor. Both the plastic bins had been dragged or nudged off the table and lay tipped on their sides, and the squirrels were scattered across the room along with bits of nesting materials. They were all dead.
The fawn was standing over one of the bins. She spun around as I dashed into the room, tail still wagging, eyes bright and ears pricked. Her mouth was working rhythmically, and from it dangled the hind feet and tail of a squirrel.
A moment passed. I wasn’t aware of when I lifted the gun, but I found myself staring at her down the barrel, and it felt right somehow, as if this was how I should’ve seen her the very first time.
I should’ve known, and perhaps I did know, that there was something profoundly, monstrously broken about her.
Perhaps I knew when Mac tried to kill her.
Perhaps I knew the moment I saw that doe on the side of the road, the moment I stopped myself from thinking that she’d been eaten from the inside out.
The fawn gazed straight back up the gun into my eyes.
I saw no innocence there now, just satisfaction.
Her jaw shifted, and there was another grisly crunch as she maneuvered a soft bone between her teeth.
The still-healing bite wound on my own hand twinged in response, making my finger tighten on the trigger.
But another moment passed, and I didn’t pull it. On every exhale, I thought, You must do it now, she cannot be allowed to live, but then I found myself breathing in again and I had not done it. I adjusted my grip, set my teeth, but all that did was make the gun shake in my hands.
She cannot be allowed to live, I told myself again. There is something wrong with her. She’s a killer for killing’s sake. She is an affront to nature; if you hadn’t stepped in, nature would’ve taken care of her. If you don’t step in now, she will hurt something else, maybe someone else.
I resented the words as I thought them. They seemed like something my mother would say, rank with cowardice masquerading as concern. But this was my responsibility, one I had taken willingly, knowing this was always a possibility.
And yet I did not pull the trigger. The gun felt ever heavier in my hands, a lead weight begging to be dropped. The fawn finally seemed to sense my mood and ceased chewing, her grisly prize still hanging from her mouth. A slow drip of blood patted to the floor.
Who are you to judge? a voice in my head whispered. You know better than anyone they would call her a monster just for having teeth, so why should she not use them?
That thought startled me so much that my finger twitched on the trigger again, and at long last I lowered the gun.
The dread and rage and horror of the last hour all piled up and crashed down on me like a wave, and when they receded they left only exhaustion in their wake.
I stumbled back until I hit the wall and slid down it, a deep-muscle quake in my limbs telling me I wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.
As I came to a hard stop on the floor, hot tears jostled over my lashes.
I wiped them away roughly, but it was too late, and the ripping sob that originated in my chest cut off all my air.
I wept for the life I might’ve had, and what the sanctuary might’ve been.
No matter what happened now, even if I avoided complete annihilation, it would not be what it could’ve been.
Should I restore my magic, it would be decades before it could effectively counter the destruction that was inherent to humans, and there would be years of struggle before I could reach what I had before the pastor arrived.
When night fell, I was too tired to cry anymore.
The lights were off in the room, leaving me in the only shaft of illumination from the living area, and I heard the soft tock tock tock of the fawn’s hooves across the rough wooden floor.
When she emerged into the light, there was no sign of the squirrel remains save a rime of blood on her chin.
I took her face in my hands, feeling the ridges of teeth through the thin skin of her muzzle, and planted a kiss between her eyes, right where the bullet should’ve gone.
“It’s you and me now, my little abomination.”
The strangest thing about impending doom was that life had to go on despite it.
I still had animals to care for, more than ever before, I could not take a day or even an extra hour to grieve or plan.
If anything, I awoke the next morning with a renewed determination to strengthen the sanctuary’s protections and take more stringent care of the animals; I could not control everything, but I could control that much.