“I suppose I’ll be expected to paint all of them eventually,” I said with a sigh. I wasn’t looking forward to the centipedes. I had told Halder the truth, I wasn’t squeamish, but I object to things with so many legs that they look like they’re flowing instead of walking. Particularly when they pack a nasty bite. (The centipede had probably bit Sally, since they don’t actually have stingers, but being pedantic was no longer part of my job description.) I cast about for a slightly more palatable topic of conversation. “When I was riding in, Mr. Phelps said something about a place called the Devil’s Tramping Ground.”
“Oh,him,” said Mrs. Kent, in a tone indicating that she thought more highly of the wheel bugs.
“It’s a real place,” said Jackson. “I can even take you out there sometime if you like. Can’t say it’s very interesting though. Just a big bare patch in the middle of the woods.”
“My da said the Devil stomped around in a circle there and burned all the grass away.”
“Phelps did talk a great deal about the Devil,” I said, as neutrally as possible. Neither of the Kents struck me as intensely religious, but you never know.
Jackson scoffed. “Phelps hasn’t talked about much else since he got religion a while back. Nothing wrong with Christian duty, but he’s one of those more interested in hell than heaven, if you know the sort.”
“Oh, I do.” It was nice to have my suspicions confirmed, anyway. I don’t usually dislike people immediately, but I couldn’t say that Phelps had left a favorable impression. “He was actually claiming he’d seen the Devil in the woods here.”
The pause that followed that lasted just slightly too long. “Man’s a fanatic if you ask me,” said Mrs. Kent, getting to her feet. “Sally, if you’re done, it’s time to get scrubbing on the dishes.”
“Yes’m,” said Sally. She stacked the dishes and carried them off to the scullery.
Jackson waited until she was gone, pulled a flask from his pocket, and poured a measure of amber liquid into his empty cup. “You imbibe, Miss Wilson?”
“In very small amounts.” I pushed my cup forward and he poured in just enough to cover the bottom. I took a sip. It burned savagely and I choked back a cough. “Good lord!”
“I make it myself,” Jackson said. He eyed the contents of his cup appraisingly. “This batch is a little rough, I admit.”
“That batch isn’t fit for anything but horse liniment,” said Mrs. Kent over her shoulder.
I tried a second sip. It did not exactly grow on me, but my throat had already endured the worst, so it went down easier.
“So I shouldn’t worry about tripping over the Devil, but I should worry about tripping over your still?”
“Oh, aye, nothing in these woods any scarier than that.” He paused, his smile slowly fading. “At least, not anymore.”
I looked up, startled, but Mrs. Kent was already turning.“Don’t go filling her head with that old nonsense,” she snapped. Jackson held up both hands in surrender and she grumbled at him, then turned back to preparing the tray for Halder’s supper.
I raised an inquiring eyebrow at Jackson. He grimaced and shook his head, then leaned forward and poured me another thimbleful of moonshine. Even after the burn had faded, even after I sought the bed in the little room off the studio, the question stayed with me of what Jackson had been about to say, and why his wife had been so quick to stop him.
Falling asleep that night was difficult. I had been too tired the night before to notice, but now I lay in bed, listening, and the unfamiliarity of it all lay over me like a blanket.
It had been some years since I slept in a room alone. At the school, I had shared quarters with the French instructor, a lively young woman named Esther who was always moving, never alighting for long. There was always cloth rustling, feet tapping, fingers drumming. She even slept restlessly, tossing and turning and wrapping the bedclothes around herself in a hopeless tangle. It was strange not to hear that now, and instead to hear the swelling chorus of frogs and katydids, punctuated by the distant call of a barred owl.
The irony was that I knew those sounds too. Once upon a time I had known them as well as I knew my own name. Hearing them now, so long after Father’s final illness and my time in Wilmington, felt like coming back to a childhood home gone unfamiliar and strange.
Relax. It’s just an owl, not blood thieves.I snorted. Sally’s mother was probably hoping not to have an extra mouth to feed in the evenings, and had spun up a story to suit. Presumably if therewasa mysterious creature draining the blood out of people locally, it would have come up over dinner. Though I wasn’t surprised that Sally hadn’t brought them up in front of the others, sinceMrs. Kent clearly wasn’t the sort to suffer nonsense, judging by the way she’d cut her husband off.
The floorboards creaked. I came instantly alert, wondering if someone had entered the room.Oh god,pleaselet it not be Halder, please let him not be that sort of employer, Ineedthis job—
A weight landed at the foot of the bed, stalked regally to the midpoint, flopped down, and began to purr.
“Smiley, you wretch,” I said. “You scared me.”
Smiley, showing no remorse whatsoever, wriggled around until his back was pressed against my hip and went to sleep. And after a few minutes, feeling oddly reassured, so did I.
CHAPTER 4
I slept until a decadent eight in the morning and rose feeling well-rested. For all my sense of intruding, the studio felt like a home. Not my home, but someone else’s—well-used and well-loved. I dressed and wandered through the outer room, running my fingers over the painting desk, picking up random stones from the windowsill, turning them over, then setting them down again. I wondered if the previous tenant had collected them because they had some sentimental quality, or if she had simply thought that they were pretty. (I was nearly certain that my predecessor had been a woman. What clothing I had glimpsed in the wardrobe bore that out. Somewhere there is undoubtedly a man who prefers green suits printed with pink rosebuds, but in my acquaintance, they are few.)
Eventually my stomach growled and I went down to breakfast.
“Mrs. Kent?”
