“It is, Mother,” she confirms. “And my third daughter, Misty, was sixteen.”
The old woman’s eyes narrow. She looks at me. “Olea took her first last year. And before we know it, Scarlet will be following in her footsteps. Verna, Tina’s daughter, bloomed at seventeen if I remember correctly, and, Myrtle, weren’t you only fourteen?”
“I was,” Myrtle admits.
“So young,” Bella comments. “Made my sister proud to see it. But Angel—she was the prodigy. Tell us how old your sister was when she took on the mantle of being a bane witch.”
Myrtle clears her throat. “Thirteen.”
Everyone gasps even though it is clear from their slack faces it’s not news to them.
“And poor Lily,” Bella finishes. “Your mother took her first mark at twelve,” she tells me. “It remains debatable if she was truly ready.”
What would they say if they knew my first victim died whenI was barely five years old? So much younger than anyone here. My mother had her faults, but maybe she was right to put me on medication. How might I have turned out if I’d been allowed to go on killing, too young to comprehend what I was doing and why? My eyes meet Myrtle’s and the secret sparks between us. She will not tell them. She fears their reaction as much as I do.
I swallow the revulsion that has wadded itself in my throat. I belong to a family of murderers,proudmurderers, who began killingas children.I don’t know how to reconcile this with the kindness Aunt Myrtle has shown me, the goodness I see in her every day. The way she helps Ed and tolerates Terry and Amos, the free bananas and bowls of soup she gives to anyone who wanders in off the street without money to buy their meal. Her community may be rough around the edges, but Myrtle is certainly one of its pillars, someone the residents of Crow Lake can count on. Even I have spared a life against the three I’ve taken. Certainly, to that man and his family, I am a hero. I am good. If he only knew the savage truth. My stomach turns inside my ribs, as if it can outmaneuver these contradictions.
Reaching down, Bella picks Rowena up and settles the chicken in her lap, stroking its head with a finger. Its papery eyelids close in response as she continues talking. “I took my first mark at almost twenty,” she says after a moment.
From the disks of their eyes, the wet, crater mouths, some of the younger women are surprised by this. They’ve not heard it before.
“Unspeakably belated for our kind,” Bella elaborates. “I was, quite literally, a late bloomer. But I still remember him well, his high-waisted pants and little vest, even the width of his red silk tie. It was the very start of the war. The venery had all but given up on me. The Golden Gate International Exposition had people flooding into San Francisco’s Treasure Island to commemorate the city’s now storied bridges. Men, in particular, came to ogle the female attractions, like burlesque dancer Sally Rand and her so-called Nude Ranch.”
She eyes each of us in turn before continuing. “I felt him coming three days on. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t do anything except wander the sea-swept hills looking for the lavender flowers and purple berries that called to me like a lover in the dark. I fed until my ribs ached and my head burned. And then I slipped on my mother’s slinky green dress with the little buttons down the front, wandering the fair like a waif, trying to sift him from the throngs of horny, clownish men. They were all greedy, like half-starved children at a birthday buffet, but his fetor was laced with evil, the stink of a putrid wound. It called to me. It begged me to disinfect it.” She sighs as if remembering a passionate embrace.
“I thought I’d never find him. It must have taken me two whole days. But when I did, he was so eager, so ready to show me what he was truly capable of. I let him lead me away from the crowds into the isolated back alleys. I could still smell the last woman on him. She probably wasn’t more than fifteen. Certainly unwilling. Her fear clung to him, clouding the air like smoke. I was inexperienced, of course, and small framed. He tried to take me, his head turned away so I couldn’t see his face. Had he succeeded, he still would have died, but I would have learned a painfully unforgettable lesson that scarred me for life—we are not invulnerable.” Her eyes target mine, searching.
“Fortunately, he finally glanced down, and I spit in his face, saliva spraying across his eyes and nose. Maybe not so graceful as a kiss,” she says, looking to Azalea. “We can’t all be masters of seduction. But certainly, it was effective. He backhanded me before the poison could do its work, but it was the last hand he ever laid on a woman. I thought I’d never roll him off me.”
Her gaze drifts to a place we can’t see as she recalls the night in question. “When I found my way home, my mother took one look at her torn dress and began to cry. Not because she cared about the garment, or because she realized how close I’d come to being defiled, but because she knew I was saved. She’d been begging them for more time, you see. Some in our line had become convincedthe gift had skipped me, especially when my sister, Laurel, was already showing the signs at fourteen. They weren’t sure it was wise to leave a woman in the world who knew our secrets but didn’t share their burden. I’ll never know how close I came to receiving the last kiss, but judging by my mother’s reaction, it was far closer than I ever realized.
“They found the man’s body that same night. In the news report, they called him an alleged rapist, having been accused by no less than four women. It’s hard enough to convict a man of sexual assault now, but it was even harder then. We can’t say how many women he actually harmed, or how many I spared, but what we can say is that my mother was right. All I needed was time.”
Her eyes twinkle behind the folds of skin that surround them, and her lips lift at the corners. “I’ve taken over a hundred marks since then, my last just this year.”
Her story lands like a winter squall, stinging the skin. The meaning is evident.
I audibly exhale, my bones falling away from each other.
“What are you proposing, Grandma Bella?” the one who Barbie signaled to be Lattie’s daughter asks, a woman of middle age with pale strawberry hair and a white, collared shirt.
“What I am proposing, Tina, is time. A trial period for Piers to show this clan if she can be trusted, if she has what it takes to be one of us, to kill swiftly anddiscreetly,without hesitation or misgiving.” She fixes me with a vulpine stare.
I should feel grateful for her endorsement, if it can be called that. Certainly, a knot somewhere inside me unwinds. But it is quickly replaced by the slow burn of registering what this means, what they want me to do. The man when I was five, Don, the man in the café—these are only the beginning. This will become my whole reason for existence if I give them what they want, the slaughter of who knows how many men. Men with parents and siblings. Men with wives. Men with children. This cycle of hunger, feeding, purging, killing will mark my days from nowon, repeated over and over. It is not the life I imagined for myself when I dared to envision one apart from Henry.
“She can stay with me,” Aunt Myrtle offers before I can speak up for myself. “I can teach her. She’s already showing promise, all she needs is the education, something Lily was never able to give her. But I can. I wasn’t able to have a daughter of my own. Maybe this is why. Maybe this ismygift to the venery.”
“Myrtle Corbin, you have already given much to this clan,” Donna says from beside her mother’s wheelchair. “Your territory provides us with a place for these gatherings, a place for bane witches to escape when needed, to disappear. And you mind our stores, keeping valuable provisions from all our territories in your underground sanctuary for when they are needed most. You play a valued and important role in our family. Never forget it.”
I recognize the word “provisions” for what it truly is—poisons. The jars Myrtle had me hide. She dries and stores deadly plants on those shelves. Back stock, I suppose, for bane witches who need it in a pinch. Who knows how many ways there are to die down there?
Myrtle nods her appreciation for the elder woman’s words.
“A trial period makes sense,” I am surprised to hear Azalea of all people say. She scoots from her chair and waltzes over to Bella, scratching at the chicken’s head before turning to appraise me. “If she stays here, she can learn from one of the best, hone her skills in the privacy of this backwoods establishment, then claim a territory of her own, one we all agree on. The Midwest is short of our distinguished services right now. But how will we know she’s proven herself?” She winks in my direction.
Aunt Bella’s wrinkles deepen, furrows plowed with every shifting expression. “She will take a mark,” she declares. “Succinctly and without observation, bending herself to our edicts. Her performance will be graded on three points—accuracy, brevity, and confidentiality. The worth of her target. The precision of her delivery. And the stealth of her process.” She ticks each off on a crooked finger.
“And if she doesn’t succeed?” Rose asks.
