The thing in Mrs. Smith’s grass was much bigger than the green snake. And darker. Jill stared at the spot where the grass had moved, searching for a shape. A shadow.
Behind her, J.J. let out a groan of frustration. Jill turned to see him wrestling with a vine as thick as his forearm.
She turned back to the grass in time to catch another movement. An S-shaped wave formed in the grass, traveling away from her. She caught flashes of dark brown or black, and then all was still again.
Jill didn’t resume her work. She stared at the stone face and remembered a Sunday school lesson from when she was Justin’s age. She didn’t recall everything, only that their class had been learning about Adam and Eve. The teacher had shown them a painting of the Garden of Eden, and Jill’s eyes had gone right to the snake coiled around a tree trunk. It had a shovel-shaped head and a forked tongue. The tongue, which was black as tar, caressed the swollen curve of a bloodred fruit.
The horsefly buzz grew louder, and Jill snapped to attention. She didn’t want to be bitten by a fly, a wasp, or anything else. She didn’t want to startle another snake. There could be a copperhead in this wild garden. Maybe even a rattlesnake.
“They hunt at night in the summer, and I’ve never seenone,” her father had told her the day she’d seen the green snake. She’d asked him what other snakes lived on Long Island, and if any were poisonous.
They hunt at night.
His words drifted in her head, merging with the angry thrum of the horsefly. The wasps were getting closer. Mud daubers and yellowjackets swooped lower and lower. A mosquito landed on her arm and bit her before she had the chance to flatten it with her hand. Flicking its body into the dirt, she grimaced at the thin streak of blood on her skin and the huge red welt already rising. It itched so badly that she had to take off her glove and scratch it. She scratched and scratched until it no longer itched but burned.
“What time is it?” she asked her brother. She’d had enough of Mrs. Smith’s garden for one day.
“Almost noon.”
“Why isn’t Mom ringing the bell?”
“Because she loves it that we’re up here, sweating our asses off and dying of thirst.”
Jill was about to put her glove back on when she saw a wink of iridescent green from an object wedged in between two bricks. She leaned over for a better look. Whatever it was had serrated edges, like a bread knife, and a pointy end.
She pinched the object between her fingers and pulled it from the dirt. She didn’t know why she bothered. It was probably just a piece of a mussel shell. She’d cut the bottoms of her feet on the stupid shells more times than she could count, but she’d never seen one glow green before. Nor had she seen one that had broken into a perfect diamond like this one.
Using her shirt to wipe off the rest of the dirt, she held it up to the light. The black shell flashed green and silver. Jill was mesmerized by its beauty.
Glancing to her left, she stared at the woman trapped in the stone. Then she looked from the diamond-shaped scales around the edge of the woman’s face to the shell cupped in her palm.
Suddenly, the clamor of a ringing bell sailed through the air. The sound startled Jill and she reflexively balled her hand into a fist. The serrated edges of the shell pierced her skin.
Yelping in pain, she dropped the thing on the ground.
“What are you doing?” J.J. yelled. “Stop spacing out and let’s go!”
Jill didn’t respond. She just sat there, staring at her palm.
Tiny beads of blood appeared where her Head and Fate lines intersected. Then the beads swelled and merged, forming new lines. Those lines became a shape. A diamond, just like ones on the stone woman’s face.
It’s not a shell.
Jill picked up the black scale. After tucking it in her pocket, she gathered her tools and followed her brother out of the garden.
At home, she washed her hands in the bathroom, horrified and fascinated by the bloody shape in the center of her palm.
The wound looked just like an eye.
17
Mrs. Smith
Magazines were spread across Mrs. Smith’s bathroom floor. Every cover featured the headshot of a beautiful woman. There were movie stars and models. Royal princesses and pageant queens. Mrs. Smith leaned over the lip of a hot tub, assessing their faces with a critical gaze.
The female humans had changed a great deal in a hundred years.
The last time Mrs. Smith had worn a woman’s shape, her dark hair had been swept high onto the back of her head, leaving a few tantalizing ringlets to frame her face. Her body had been a perfect hourglass with high, soft breasts and curvy hips. Her skin had been pale as milk. Her round, luminous eyes had a doll-like quality. Her pouty lips were as red as a fairy-tale apple.
