Chapter Six
THE SUNLIGHT PAINTEDlong shadows over the cracked concrete, and a stocky man in a stark white shirt sold fruit and vegetables from a cart at the side of the road. Behind him, a large sign announced that the Verborgene Farm Homestead was private property.
There was an intercom set up on the front of the gate. Jonah parked and got out. He traded a nod with the vendor and walked over to the gate. Gravel crunched under his feet with each step.
He pressed his thumb against the call button. While he waited for an answer, he checked through the bars of the gate. At first sight, it looked the opposite of cursed. The grass was thick and green, apple trees lined the drive up to the elegant old farmhouse, and the boughs were weighed down with fruit.
It looked the very model of a productive country farm. The sort of place that turned up on postcards or on TikTok with influencers picking apples to a cover ofPeaches.
Jonah pressed the button again.
Piles of fallen fruit littered the roots of the fruit trees and rolled into the drive. It was untouched. No yellowed chunks taken out by vermin or black-edged boreholes from bugs.
No insects at all, in fact.
It was such a lovely trap that Jonah thought the ground had probably been hexed before Elijah Haddon ever got here. People tended to shape their curses for immediate gratification: open sores on their enemy today, not a stoma in twenty years. It was hard to imagine what a plain Dutch farmer could have done to drive someone to lay this sort of revenge on him.
“If you have a delivery, just leave it at the gate,” someone said.
It wasn’t Deborah’s voice.
“Can I speak to Ms. Slater?” Jonah asked.
“Ms. Slater isn’t available,” someone said after a brief pause. “If you’d like to leave a message.”
Jonah glanced over his shoulder at the truck, his tools still stacked in the back.
“She asked me to come out and provide a quote,” he said. “To fix the drive.”
There was a pause. It lasted long enough that Jonah tapped the button again.
“I’m sorry,” the voice said. They sounded more sure of themselves, as if they’d checked with someone more senior than them. “You’ll have to come back another time.”
The line gave a short hiccup of static and went dead.
Jonah grimaced at it. Then he stepped back and ran his eyes over the gate. Scratches were scored deep into the stones at the top of the wall. It might be sigils that someone could prime with blood and smoke come dusk. Or a hubcap could have come off a truck.
Hard to say without a better look.
Cameras were set up on either side of the gate, angled to catch any car that pulled in. Jonah stepped out of view and took his phone out of his pocket. He took two pictures and turned to leave.
A whistle stopped him, and he turned to see the man with the cart trying to get his attention. Jonah hesitated for a second, then tucked his phone in his pocket and went over. Sacks of ripe red apples were piled on the cart next to walls of fresh corn still in the husk and bagged onions. Bunches of herbs were tucked into pots around the edge, wormwood and basil, goldenrod and local grasses.
“You want to talk to Deborah?” the man asked as he wiped his hands on his apron. He offered Jonah a pot of sliced fruit. “Ms. Slater? She’s not in there.”
“So they said,” Jonah said as he tilted his head back toward the gates.
The man snorted and plucked an apple out of the cart. He polished it on his shirt and then took a big wet bite out of it. His teeth were perfectly square and as white as his T-shirt.
“And you told them you were here to give a quote for work on the drive,” he said, the mouthful of apple tucked into his cheek. “We both got ears.”
Jonah hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. He waited while the man chewed at his fruit.
“So, you know where she is?” he said finally.
The man wiped apple juice from the corner of his mouth and then rubbed his hand on his jeans. “Maybe,” he said. “What’s in it for me?”
“I’ve got fifteen bucks and a condom,” Jonah said. “If that’s your going rate, I don’t think your info is worth paying for.”
