The nurse leaves and Dot stage-whispers to me, “What Hazel did to Benji will give her herpes of the mouth. Everybody knows he’s got herpes. Hell, he’s given it to half the women here.”
Okay, and the geriatric visual was way more than I needed. Talk about finding a way to kill your libido.
“We’re here because of one of the books you left in the office.”
“Oh yeah? Which one? And it better not be theKama Sutra.” She shrugs, seeming to rethink it. “Even if it is, don’t pay any attention to the dog-eared pages. They’re of no consequence.”
A bark escapes Cristina and she scuttles toward the door. “Be right back. Need some air.”
“Try not to catch herpes in that hallway! The walls are covered in it.”
Cristina’s laughter echoes as she disappears out the door.
Dot turns her watery gaze to me. “So. What book is it?”
Here goes nothing. “This one.”
I pull the spell book from my purse. Dot takes one look at it, her eyes widen, and then her entire expression shuts down.
“I’ve never seen that before in my whole life. And what the hell are you doing walking around with it, anyway? Don’t you know what people in this town think of someone who keeps a book like that? Do you know what I should do?”
She puts one forefinger over the other, making a cross as if I’m a vampire. “Stay away from me. That book isn’t mine, and I don’t know where it came from.”
I swipe a hand over the cover, removing a few motes of dust that cling to it. “I worked one of the spells,” I say quietly.
“And what’s that got to do with me?”
“I thought you might be able to help. Things went bad.”
Dot exhales a low whistle as she slowly lowers her cross fingers. “Close the door.” I do as she requests, and then Dot says, “Sit on the bed. It’s a herpes-free zone.”
Thank goodness. I was worried, because apparently it’s on the walls.
When I’m situated, Dot begins. Her entire demeanor has changed. The crochet hook rests in her lap and her hands are curled atop the afghan.
“I put the book in my office to hide it,” she explains. “I knew that son of a bitch Oscar wouldn’t touch a thing in there. I’d told him time and again if he ever did, I’d cut his nuts off.”
She looks at me as if I should compliment her. I manage to say, “That’s very, um, specific of you.”
Okay.And these two worked together for thirty years? They either despised one another, or they had hate-sex about a gazillion times.
“Yes, well. That’s me. Anyway, the book. I found it years ago, hidden in a house I bought when I first moved here. The magic was beginning to leave then. The unicorns still had some power, but not much, and God knows the piggycorns were cute, but completely useless.” She cocks her chin. “Has that changed?”
“Yes, I believe it has. The piggycorns can generate electricity.”
“Well, good for those little shits. Anyway, it was funny because I could always do small things—like wish for something to happen and it would. So when I found the book—or whenitfoundme, rather—I thought I’d gained something special, even though in the back of my mind, I knew what I was doing was wrong. But I thought, just a peek. And so I did. I took a good long peek, and I found a spell that called to me.”
Her story almost mirrors mine.
Dot continues, “There was a garden in town, a small community one the widows kept. That year there was a drought, and their garden wasn’t doing so hot. I was good friends with one of the ladies, and if she didn’t get the food from the garden she needed to can and store, then she’d have a hard year coming up.”
I could understand that. Canning is a big deal in my community. People rely on the food they store themselves. Georgia might be in the South, but few people grow winter vegetables, and in some places you simply can’t because the soil’s too rocky.
“So I thought, what the hell? This damn land is magical.”
Why does it not surprise me that this was Dot’s thought?
She continues, smoothing the afghan over her legs. “There’s damn unicorns all over the place. What’s the harm in coaxing a few tomatoes to grow? So I started searching in the book for a spell to help. And I found one. But you know what I did?”
