I waited until they both stepped outside before I slipped off my sneakers and knelt on the braided rag rug beside the couch.
He opened his mouth to speak, but it took him a second. “I knows your kind of people before,” he managed. Then he took a ragged breath like those few words had already worn him out.
His right hand gripped mine, the back side scarred over from a bad burn. I felt the echo of someone else. Someone like me. A Fire Talker, I guessed. I’d heard of them in the stories Grandmama told. Stories of magic and witchery that still went on up in the hills, hidden from the modern day, clinging still to the traditions and ways of old. But I never knew they existed for certain.
I rid my head of the thought, and focused again on the task in front of me.
And then I began.
I rubbed my hands together to awaken my soul’s energy, letting that sweet hum of my soul-song rise. Cupping my hands, I ran them over my face, then pushed that energy onto him. Then I scooped up the energy from his soul-song, that powerful gospel choir that lived inside him, and dumped it back onto myself. Back and forth, I did this, until the outlines of our souls blurred and death could not tell us apart.
Hot as it was in the house, a chill set upon us.
Into the palm of his hand, I whispered to death the secret Bible verses. I rocked on my knees as the words drifted over his skin.
Our soul-songs hummed in harmony. Tempting death.
Two for the price of one.
Eyes closed, I rose up on my knees. Fingers rubbing his palms where our souls danced.
Lucky’s in my left hand.
Mine in my right.
I opened my mouth for death—then I clapped. A loud smashing that made no sound but popped your ears from the stark silence of it.
Lucky gasped, a grand and powerful wheeze that lifted him upright as death unsheathed itself from his body. The black smoke of death, now with no home, barreled itself inside me, looking for its prize. The force of it knocked me to the floor.
It pushed inside every corner of my body, searching for my soul. Under my skin. Over marrow and bone.
But I waited, curled against the floor while my insides were pillaged. The death flu began to rack my body, eating me up with sickness. I kept my clasped hands gripped tight together. Not allowing our souls to return just yet. Holding them outside our bodies a moment longer. My arms quivered from the effort.
Then there it was—death began to slow, finding nothing inside me to feast upon. Nowhere to gain purchase within my body. Without a soul, it thickened into a useless sludge, that slipped helplessly back into my lungs.
My eyes scanned the room for something, anything to spit in.
“Here.” Miss Dora had come back into the room and thrust a blue Mason jar into my hands and pulled my long hair out of the way for me to puke. Black bile gurgled up in my throat and dribbled out of my mouth in tarry clumps of phlegm. Sin Eater Oil.
The coppery tinge of Lucky’s cancer coated my tongue. I purged once more, then spat to clear the last out of my mouth.
“You poor girl.” Miss Dora used a wet rag to clean my mouth. The cold compress felt like heaven to my forehead. “Is it always this bad?” she asked Bone Layer as I wilted onto the floor into a limp pile.
“Only once before.” Bone Layer’s eyes narrowed on me a moment. His deep voice might have sounded concerned if it didn’t come off so brusque.
“Agnes will want it as payment.” Miss Dora tried to hand Bone Layer the blue jar filled with my Sin Eater Oil.
He eyed the jar, then her again. “Burn it.”
Bone Layer scooped me up like I weighed nothing and carried my limp body to the truck.
Later that night, I found the strength to leave my bed—or maybe delirium fueled my willpower. But I walked across the scant field of trees, from my house to Adaire’s. Weak as a kitten, I climbed that familiar old oak tree, the one that led to her bedroom upstairs. Through her window, I crawled, the one she left open for me, like always. Fever burned up my brow. My bones ached from the flu my body would go through until it purged out the last of the death I’d talked out of that young man...and hopefully Blue.
Adaire pulled back the covers, and I curled up in the bed next to her, shivering so hard I thought I’d crack my teeth.
Three days I lay in her bed, fighting for my life. She never left my side.
FOUR
Fetch the Death Talker
Whoever said “Time heals all wounds” is a liar. It’s been five weeks since we lost Adaire, and that hole in my chest has only grown.
Angry dust clouds huff around the car as I pull into the church parking lot. Greenwillow Baptist is a simple lap-joint-sided white building. Picturesque and quaint, it sits off the side of a country road nestled in a cluster of oak trees. A moat of wild tiger lilies surrounds it, clawing their way out of the ditch.
Adaire’s presence feels so strong. The end of a joint still sits in the car’s ashtray, something she rolled one Sunday two months ago while the preacher reminded us hell was just a breath away.
Though not for Stone Rutledge, apparently.
The car door rips a shriek through the quiet country air as I get out. I cut across the grass toward the garden shed where they house the mower and other tools that keep the church’s property looking respectable.
Every day these past few weeks, I’ve been meeting my stress-release right here.
Waiting inside the shed, smelling like a pack of smokes, is Ricky Scarborough. He’s a scrubby fellow with a too-tight muscle tee for those dumpy muscles. Baggy jeans hug his barreled waist. His camouflage baseball cap is permanently glued to his head. He isn’t ugly, by any means, but he ain’t nothing to look at, either. He and his group of redneck friends sit around drinking beers, talking cars, and smoking cigarettes all day. They’re each just a slightly altered version of one another. Like a pack of coyotes, you can’t really tell them apart.
Ricky doesn’t even go to church here. Heck, I’m not even sure he goes to church at all. But he works at the gas station off the main highway down the road. He’s close and convenient.
I kick the door shut behind me. Words aren’t even spoken. Just hands and tongues and raw aggression. He cocks up my dress and grabs the back of my legs, lifting me on top of the plywood worktable. One of my flip-flops drops onto the floor. A splinter stabs the back of my thigh and digs in. I ignore it.
