“Don’t look like Larry is of a mind to listen to Daddy or the law neither,” Mud said.
Larry started up the steps. He was an average-looking man with an obstinate jaw and broad shoulders. He looked capable if not kind, determined if not affable.
“Has he been coming around?” I asked. “When you’re at Mama’s or Esther’s or Sam’s?”
“He was at Sam’s when we was talking about the greenhouse—” She stopped, realizing that talking about anything in the presence of churchmen was dangerous.
I looked Larry over. If he was armed, it was in an ankle or spine holster, hidden under his church-made jeans or his church-made, starched, ironed, cotton plaid shirt. “We’ll see what he has to say. But he’ll be talking to the business end of the shotguns.” I opened the door. Stepped out, shotgun at the ready. Mud moved out beside me. Larry stopped, his eyes going wide.
He swallowed, the sound rubbery, and he wilted like the flowers he carried. “I...” He swallowed again. “I come to call on Miss Mindy.”
“Mindy’s daddy told you no.”
His chin went up. “I’ve been led to understand that you’un had taken custody of her, so I don’t rightly think it matters what her daddy done said.”
I hadn’t been expecting that one. But he had a point. “No. Not now, not later, not ever.”
“I’d like to hear it from Miss Mindy herself.”
“Mindy’s a minor.”
“Not by church law.”
“No,” Mindy said. “I ain’t interested in marrying into the Aden clan. I ain’t interested in marrying at all.”
“Every woman wants to marry, little miss. Your witch sister been spreading her lies to you? Sounds like you’un’s needing some protecting from her and her devil talk and her devil ways. I aim to make you’un respectable and keep you’un safe from the world and its dangers.” He held out his bouquet and took the final step to the porch. “I brung you’un flowers.”
“I said no,” Mud said, her voice as cold and hard as mine.
“Okay. Let me make it plain.” I slid into church-speak. “Get offa my land or we’uns’ll fill you so full a holes the undertaker will have to hold your corpse together with duct tape and baling wire.”No. I’d feed him to my land. There would be nothing left but his gun, if he was carrying. Even his clothes and shoes would be gone, absorbed by Soulwood.
Beneath me, the land came awake. And hungry.
Bloodlust slammed through me. And for maybe the first time in my life, I laughed at a man who was threatening me and mine. “You can get off my land, church boy. You can stay away from my sister. Or you can die. Not many choices between life and death.” I stepped toward him, the barrel aimed center mass. “I said, get offa my land.”
Something in my face made Larry Aden pale and his eyes dilate. He backed slow down the steps and headed to his truck. Somewhere along the way he dropped the flowers.
I felt his fury as he strode across the land; felt the land’s response as Larry took his last step and got in the cab, started the engine, and backed away fast, throwing gravel. All along his trail between steps and truck, vines erupted from the ground. Vines with dark, thick green leaves and scarlet petioles, vines with thorns and self-will. Parts of the vampire tree.
As Larry whipped his truck around and roared down the road, I fired into the ground, directly at the vines. Furious and angry and scared all at once. I yelled, “I told you to get off my yard. Don’t make me fight you, you danged tree!”
“Nellie?” Mud asked, her tone doubtful.
I pointed at the gravel parking space. “Two birds, one stone, as it were.” Then I saw my fingers and the fresh leaves uncoiling from the tips. “Dagnabbit!”
Mud giggled, a tiny, tentativesnurfof sound, took my elbow, and led me back inside. “I’ll make us some herbal tea. Somethin’ with chamomile and lavender.”
“I do not need to be calmed down,” I said, holding my cell. “And it’s too hot for tea.”
“Uh-huh.” She took my gun and pushed me onto the couch. Secured the weapons just like I’d taught her.
“Leave my gun on the chair near the door,” I instructed into the silence.
“Okay. Who you calling?” she asked.
“Sam. Then Daddy. Then my boss.”
“I understand family. Why your’n boss?”
