The magic of the bone-tooth key thrums. Waiting for me to return it back to where it sleeps, next to Grandmama’s bed.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Grandmama stops mid-shuffle as if she’s heard my thoughts. Her gauzy white gown sways slightly around her thin shriveled-up legs. My chest burns for taking such shallow breaths.
Please, God, I beg. Push her to go.
God doesn’t give in to my pleas often, but tonight He’s feeling generous. She moves on, shuffle-step, shuffle-step, back to her room.
The second her door closes, I make my escape. The bone-tooth key a damning piece of evidence in my possession. On the wall, Grandmama’s baking apron hangs. I stow it in the pocket, hoping like hell she assumes she forgot where she left it.
I flee out my bedroom window.
Drink with the spirits.
Taste the death.
Walk the veil.
“That has to be the vaguest recipe of all time,” I say to Raelean from her bathroom, putting on a fresh set of clothes she let me borrow after my shower: a WKRP radio T-shirt and red shorts. “I have no clue how I’m supposed to ‘see’ anything with these instructions.” I towel dry the ends of my hair and run a brush through it.
Raelean’s trailer is a tiny place with a bedroom at each end and a kitchen and living room in the middle. Her vintage melamine table, aqua-blue-rimmed in chrome, something that stepped right out of the ’60s. We sit at it, she’s across from me, the amber glass shade of the hanging light casting a yellow light on us.
The lined card stock, once white, has aged to a dingy beige. In the top left corner, a printed rooster sits, similar to the one on the outside of the recipe box, a set that dates back to the ’40s I’d guess.
Notes scrawled at the bottom, probably in my great-grandmother’s hand, talk about seeing the sins of others, you’ll need markers to reach them. Markers can be objects from the dead or something associated with them.
“What in the hell are you making there?” Raelean tips a chin toward the jar I’m filling.
“A witching jar.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“It’s nothing too bad. It’s just graveyard dirt and objects from the dead.”
A piece of orange reflector from Adaire’s bike I took from the cemetery. The blue bottle stopper. Adaire’s last note. The picture of my mom and Gabby. Stone Rutledge’s cuff link—something I should have gotten rid of already. Random pieces I’ve collected that might help me.
I’m about to screw the lid back on, but I stop. I tug the initial R pinky ring off my finger and drop it in there, too. I don’t know why I do it, but something about it feels right. That’s how witching works sometimes, fueled by thoughts that pop in your head out of nowhere. But I’ve learned over time that ignoring those little hints typically means things don’t turn out very well.
I poise the lid over the jar, leaving a small gap where I can whisper the secret words that bind these objects together and ask them to help me discover what it is I need to know. Quickly, I screw the lid on tight.
“And what do you need that for?” Raelean points at the perfume bottle sitting in the middle of her kitchen table. The yellow light above shines through the blue glass and casts a small green halo onto the table.
I flip the card around so she can see it has the same bottle drawn on it, a watercolor image—except this shows the bottle full of the black ooze of death, where the one here barely has a half inch in the bottom. A black smear was wiped off the corner of the card at some point; in the light I see a faint iridescent oily shine of Sin Eater Oil. From my Papaw’s mama, since she’s the one who passed her gift on to him.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this.” Raelean crosses her arms over her chest and gives a sour disapproving expression. One that says she isn’t the authority on stupid, but she recognizes it when she sees it.
“Well, I need your help figuring out what this recipe means.” It isn’t so much a recipe as vague instructions. “‘Drink with the spirits.’ You think that means I need to have a beer in a graveyard or with a ghost?”
Raelean snorts at my suggestion.
I kick her under the table. “Okay, Miss Know-It-All. What do you think it means?”
She straightens up tall and takes the card out of my hand and stares at it. Thinking.
“‘Walk the veil.’ That sounds like a place that’s neither here nor there, right?” I nod. “So maybe that’s where you’ll ‘see’ what you’re trying to find? Like if you do these first two things, this will be the result.”
Sounds solid enough to me.
“‘Taste the death.’” She looks up at me. “When you talk the death out of someone, does it have a taste?”
“No. Not a taste, but it has a sound.” Which I know doesn’t make sense to her and probably isn’t helpful. “And it has a smell.” I suddenly remember. “That’s similar to taste.”
She shakes her head, mouth pursed. “Not the same thing, though.” She studies it a bit longer. “That stuff right there...what did you call it—Sin Eater Oil? That’s what you cough up after you talk the death out of someone, right? So it’s kind of like death in a liquid version, wouldn’t you say? I feel like this card is telling you to taste it.”
“Drink my own Sin Eater Oil? I’d rather not die, thank you very much.” I snatch the card back. The idea of putting death back into my body is enough to make my skin crawl.
“But wait,” she says. “What if this recipe is telling you how to do it without dying? Maybe you’re right. You need to do shots with a ghost.”
“Now you’re just making fun of me.” It was a dumb idea in the first place, and I don’t need her bringing it up a second time to rub it in.
But something about what she said stops me.
“Oh!” I stand, excited, realizing what it’s telling me. “Sin Eater Oil can never be in a cup that’s had whiskey in it.” I fan my arms open wide with a voilà motion.
Raelean isn’t impressed with my revelation. “Oh-kay?” She waits for me to elaborate.
“So. No whiskey or vodka or any alcohol for that matter can ever have been in a cup where you’re going to put Sin Eater Oil. Now why is that?” Raelean holds strong to her unimpressed look. “Because I bet you something happens when Sin Eater Oil and alcohol are mixed. Maybe that’s what gives the oil it’s ‘seeing’ properties? ‘Drink with the spirits.’ Not with a ghost. Spirits. As in alcohol. I have to drink my Sin Eater Oil with some kind of liquor.” I’m sure Raelean must have something around here. I check her pantry.
