EIGHTEEN
Sins of the Father
Grandmama’s recipe box has eyes.
No matter where you are in the room, it always seems to be watching you. Or maybe it was because no matter where I was in the room, I was always watching it. It’s sat in that tiny window in our kitchen for as long as I’ve lived.
I’ve only ever seen Grandmama’s family recipes in brief glimpses. Something I snooped over her shoulder when she didn’t realize I was near. A few words here. Drawn sketches or instructions there. Never a fully detailed “how to” list of what to do. They are ways for her to fix things that medicine or practical means can’t. Things that require unnatural remedies. Like how she knows just the right measurement of Sin Eater Oil to bake in a pie that would make you sicker than a dog or one that would kill you from a single bite.
Or a recipe to help an old blind woman to see the sins people try to hide.
And whatever is in there can help me see what Adaire’s trying to tell me. I’m sure of it.
As far as magic keys go, they aren’t universal. When I tried the bone-tooth key Adaire found under the floorboard in her house, all I got was a zap of energy telling me Wrong lock. If I’m going to break into Grandmama’s recipe box, I’m going to need her bone-tooth key.
“Why do I have to do this?” Raelean scowls from the other side of my bedroom window. Her voice whisper-quiet so she doesn’t wake Grandmama.
The night air is musty from the day’s rain. The crickets and the bullfrogs celebrate with chattering conversations.
“Because you love me.” I blaze my biggest smile. She harrumphs, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?”
See now, this is the sticky part. I don’t have a clue what I’m after, just a recipe to see, whatever the hell that means.
“I’ll know it when I see it.” Or...I hope I will. She stands there, not budging. “Are you going to help me or what?”
She stares at me for another long cockeyed moment. “You do realize this is a me-always-helping-you, one-sided kind of friendship, right?”
Raelean’s not wrong, but I’m not going to concede to it now.
“Okay, fine. If you want me to go to jail, then go on home.” I make like I’m closing the window, sealing my fate.
She grumbles a few swear words and something about murdering me if she winds up in jail. “You owe me.” She points a finger at my chest. “Twice now,” she adds.
“You’re the best.” I blow her kisses, which she swats away like pesky flies. “Don’t forget to be overly loud.” I close my window and sneak over to my bedroom door and wait.
Anticipation revs up my blood. I wait a few seconds. Then a few seconds more. After a short piece longer, I strain my ears, wondering if maybe she’s being too quiet. I’m about to go over to the window to ask her what’s taking so long. Then I hear the bang-bang-bang clobbering of her fist on Bone Layer’s smokehouse door.
Perfect.
I take a deep breath and ready myself.
I can’t make out Raelean’s exact words, but they’re exasperated and panicky, enough that it will get Grandmama’s attention. Seconds later, I hear the creaking squeak from the unoiled hinges of her bedroom door as she wanders out to investigate.
I’m relying on the fact that she has to know everything that happens around here.
“What’s going on out there?” her scratchy voice demands from the porch as she makes her way to the smokehouse to see what all the thunder is about. That’s when I make my move.
Quickly, I slip out of my bedroom and dash into hers. Leaving the lights off so I don’t attract any unwanted attention, I blindly feel around in the dark on her nightstand for the bone-tooth key.
The magic from the key warms as my hand crosses over it. I snatch it up, fear and excitement fueling my blood. I skitter out of her room and into the kitchen.
In the backyard, Raelean apologizes for waking them up and gives the fake story that Violet is drunk and drove her car into a ditch again—which used to happen more often than not. She needs Bone Layer to pull her car out. I “borrowed” Aunt Violet’s car, and Raelean helped me stage it in a shallow ditch to bring the lie home.
The recipe box growls at me from the window, reminding me I’m not allowed to touch it. I swallow back my hesitation and pull it down.
To my surprise, it doesn’t bite.
One might expect a click or a snick as with a turn of a key in a locked box. But no such sound comes. The lid simply pops open and the world inside is mine for the taking.
I pause, reveling in the power at my fingertips.
“Please don’t be angry, Mrs. Wilder,” Raelean says rather loudly, stopping Grandmama from returning inside.
Shit. Hurriedly, I thumb through the recipes, no idea which one I need. There’s promised warts to plague a straying lover. One about talking fire out of burns and blood-stopping with Bible verses. Remedies for a broken heart. Rashes for your enemy. Some cards have a classic title, then list out the ingredients and their proper proportions—tongue of a cat listed specifically for stopping gossip. Other cards have sketched images of rare medicinal herbs or diagrams of body parts and what you can inflict on them. Just when I’m about to give it up, I find a card with a perfectly sketched image of our perfume bottle with a stopper that matches.
A Way to See, the scrawled handwriting reads. Hope thrums in my chest. I pluck the card from the cache.
“You know Violet,” Raelean says, extra loud. “She’s always getting herself in a pickle.”
The porch creaks.
I shove the card down my tank top and snap the lid shut and return the recipe box back to the windowsill where it lives. Before I duck underneath the dining room table, I grab the bottle with my Sin Eater Oil in it.
The recipe card burns with awareness. The bottle stopper rattles lightly in my pocket, and I clamp a hand around it, trying to calm my nerves. Outside, there’s the rev of Bone Layer’s engine as he wakes the truck to fetch the wrecked car out of the ditch. Grandmama shuffles back inside the house.
Then I feel a soft buzz in my hand, and I open my palm.
