I take a breath. “This.Being a bane witch. The venery. All of it.”
Beside Aunt Bella, Lattie breaks out into peals of high-pitched laughter, but Donna looks sick to her stomach. Myrtle grimaces in my direction with worried eyes.
“What if I just want a normal life?” I ask, frustrated by the looks of incredulity hemming me in.
“Here we go,” Barbie says, throwing her hands up. “Just like her mother.”
“Anormallife?” Aunt Bella croaks out, ignoring Barbie’s outburst. Her eyes peer up at me, flashing with outrage.
“Well, yeah,” I tell her. “You know, without all the killing and hunting and poisoning and whatever.”
A muscle under her left eye twitches as if it is trying to communicate by Morse code. “What do you imagine that to be, this normal life you will live?”
I wave my hands in the air. “I’ll live here for a while until I find another job. And then I’ll move wherever that is. I’ll wake to coffee in the mornings and drink hot tea at night. I’ll have a small place that I keep tidy, and a dog for company. Maybe, in the distant future, I’ll date again. Maybe I’ll find real love. A partner. Someone who really gets me. Who is easy to be with. Or maybe I’ll live alone, able to make my own decisions about everything from what sweater to wear to what car to buy. But it will bemine,and that’s what matters.”
The old woman scoffs. “Donna, please tell our new recruit what her normal life will actually look like.”
“Of course.” Her daughter stands, the sleek paleness of her hair and sharpness of her cheekbones creating a lean, coyote elegance despite her advanced age. She smiles the way a cat might smile at a wounded bird. She clasps her arms behind her back as she begins pacing around me slowly. “You will, as you say, make your own decisions for a time. Coffee and tea and perhaps even the dog. If you’re lucky, you’ll land that shiny new job before the hunger kicks in. But you’ll lose it the second the cravings overtake you. Unable to concentrate on your work, your performance willsuffer. You’ll begin missing days as the hunger drives you farther and farther to feed. Any friends you made will write you off as undependable, maybe even mentally unstable, when you stop returning calls, cannot explain where you’ve been or why, turn up at the edges of their property, your shoes lost and dress tattered, streaks of berry juice dripping down your chin.
“Resisting the urge to kill, you will condemn yourself to inevitable mental decline, slowly losing your grip on reality, on what is true and what is not. You will act and speak in ways that are unguarded, that leave you vulnerable and make no sense to the people around you, who will distance themselves over time. As the toxins you feed on build up in your system with no release, they will turn on you, devouring your mind. The extent of your unrest is anybody’s guess. But it will be certain. And it will be disastrous.
“If you have a dog, it will cower from you once the cycle begins. It will smell your bloom coming and begin disappearing for lengths of time, pissing on the carpet, hiding under the bed. Perhaps it will finally run away for good. That is if you don’t kill it first. Every date you go on will be a disappointment. Even if they aren’t a mark, you will sense things about these men they never wanted you to know. Thingsyounever wanted to know. If they are attracted to you, you’ll never be sure if it’s genuine or just the allure. You’ll become paranoid, insecure. If you find someone patient or desperate enough to stick around, you will end up killing him by accident when you’re in bloom—a thoughtless kiss, an erotic evening, even just a misplaced sneeze or falling tear. When he’s gone, you’ll learn that you’re pregnant.
“You might think it a blessing until they are born. If you have a son, he won’t be likely to live beyond infancy, not if he’s in your care, and that’s if you don’t kill him in the womb first. You’ll bury him, knowing it was your fault. Not in that way normal parents grieve a child, believing they could have prevented some terrible end. You will know with absolute certainty that your child died by your hand. And it will ruin you. If you have a girl, she’ll live.For many years you’ll think all is well. And then puberty will approach. Her own cycle will begin. She’ll bloom, potentially before her time if your line is any indication. And she’ll kill some innocent in a daze of ignorance, traumatizing her beyond belief.”
I swallow, my throat dry as old tobacco. Her argument is indisputable. I know what she is saying is true because I have lived it.
“There will be witnesses. She’ll become a suspect or at least appear suspicious enough that you will feel compelled to flee with her to protect her life. Maybe you’ll land somewhere safe for a while. But it won’t last. Before you know it, she’ll kill again. And again. Until eventually, you alert the attention of the community around you, where she’ll be tried and executed in front of you, if they don’t drag her out and murder her first.
“By this point, you are a shell. Life will no longer feel worth living. And we will come for you in the night, overpowering your senses, driving you to an early grave with a toxicity so powerful even God wouldn’t have immunity to it.” She pauses before me, her long arms crossed over themselves, her face punishing in the warm lights of the café. “And all of that is only if you don’t manage to get yourself killed, which you undoubtedly will.”
“Thank you, Donna,” the old matriarch says. “That was very enlightening.”
Her daughter returns to her seat, a smug smile crowning her long face.
“So, you see,” Aunt Bella begins, leaning forward as she stares up at me, “what you want is irrelevant.”
My mouth drops open, leaden. A bead of sweat is running along the curve of my neck, sitting atop my collarbone. I think I hear my pulse. Henry chides me in my mind,Piers, show some dignity. Find your tongue.“B-but that’s not fair.”
She falls back against her wheelchair, upsetting the chicken momentarily. “Was it fair when that man I told you about took some young girl’s virginity without her consent? Or when the man you killed beat his wife into submission? Was it fair when yourmother accidentally killed your father because she insisted on living out a romantic fantasy regardless of the consequences? Was it fair when Myrtle gave up her son to keep him alive? Or when Misty gave up two of hers? Was it fair when the first bane witch risked her life to save another’s in childbirth, only to be thanked with a brutal rape by the noble husband, her own beloved babe ripped from her womb in a torrent of blood that left them both for dead?” She stops and shakes her head, amusement playing across her lips. “Humph.Fair.What a useless word.” Her eyes dig into mine; they are hard as gems. “We’re not interested infairin this family. We are interested injustice.”
I suck in air as if I’ve been gut punched. Reeling, I manage to stay on my feet. “How can you call this justice?” I whisper, my voice quavering. “You’re murderers! All of you. This is not justice. It’s death.”
She cocks her head, eyes crinkling at the corners. In her lap, Rowena ruffles her feathers. “Sometimes,” she says wisely, “they are one and the same.”
“How can you say that?” I blurt. “How can any of you say that?” I look around the room. The faces have hardened like salt dough. The smiles and chatter have dropped. They regard me coldly, a worm on a hook. “These aren’t marks you’re killing, they’re men. They have lives. They have families. It’s not for us to decide if they live or die.”
“Then who is it for?” Bella asks. “Go ahead. Tell me. I’ll wait.”
My jaw works soundlessly before I arrive lamely at, “The courts. The judicial system.”
She laughs, and they follow, snickering behind hands and into collars. My naivete thrills them. “How many women do you know who have been helped by the judicial system?”
When I can’t answer, she continues.
“These magical courts you speak of, have they worked for you?”
I stare at her, stricken. “M-me?”
