“I thought maybe it came in to escape the heat, through the vents or somethin’,” he said. “But that don’t make sense. It was a timber rattler, not common out here…and it wasin my bed, June. Curled up neat like it was waitin’…but instead of gettin’ me, it got you.”
His voice cracked on that last part.
“You think someone put a snake in your bed?” I asked quietly.
Silas stood up, paced to the end of the bed and back…reached up to swipe his hand down his face.
“Not someone,” he said. “Something. The curse, maybe…or Amelia, back to take me down with the same thing that killed her.”
I went still. “She…she was bitten by a snake?”
He froze like he hadn’t meant to say it—like the words had slipped free before he could snatch them back. And yeah, maybe someone else would’ve thought he sounded crazy…but I didn’t.
I sat up a little straighter, ignoring the fire in my wrist. “Silas.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, eyes flicking anywhere but me. “It was a freak accident. That’s what they told me. She was out working a back trail in the park, alone. Got bit in the leg. Tried to make it back to her truck, but…they found her too late.”
My stomach turned.
“You know this isn’t your fault, right?” I asked.
Silas didn’t say anything.
I shifted a little, adjusting the blanket. “Silas…it was an accident.”
Even as I said the words, I wasn’t sure if I believed them—because on some level, I was confident it wasmy fault. Years of therapy and divinity school would never be enough to entirely shake off the guilt I’d been raised with—the feeling that, if you sinned, if you desired, you deserved to die.
Snakes were a symbol of the devil…and I’d been about to do something horribly, deliciously sinful with Silas Ward when I’d been bitten.
Silas sat back down, not meeting my eyes.
“Another freak accident,” he muttered. “June…I’ve heard all that shit before and I don’t fucking believe it. Even if it’s really an accident…it’s not. There’s somethin’ out there that will not allow me to be?—”
He stopped short, running his hand down his face.
“To be what, Silas?” I asked.
Again, he didn’t answer.
I could see him cutting himself off from me in real time, closing doors, putting up barriers and laying down salt. This was what he did; it was why he lived in the church parsonage all alone, why he hung ghost traps and painted sigils at thresholds, why he had copies ofThe Lesser Key of SolomonandProtection Rites.
Because Silas Ward didn’t believe in accidents.
Not after every love story in his family had ended in tragedy.
Not after his parents’ car accident.
Not after Amelia.
…and not after me.
I’d ministered to a lot of people over the years, set them at ease…but I didn’t know what to say now—because honestly, I wondered if there was something to this. Snakes didn’t just end up in people’s beds. A phrase came unbidden to my mind, almost slipping past my lips:
In the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke this spirit of lust, this spirit of deception, this Jezebel, this witch, this want?—
I flinched.
I hadn’t thought of it in years…that prayer, an exorcist’s chant deep in the muggy, mosquito-ridden reaches of southwestern Louisiana. Didn’t realize it still lived inside me, coiled up like the snake that bit me.
