“What are you doing? She’s supposed to stay in the crate.”
Violet turned in her seat for a better look. She watched as Jennie reached inside her coat and produced a small cloth pouch, then loosened the drawstring that held it closed.
“What I should’ve done the minute we put her back here,” Jenniesaid. “I’ve got an old injury in my back and it was screaming at me, so I let it calm down a little first.”
Malcolm glanced in the mirror again, fingers flexing on the steering wheel. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“She’s sprinkling something into the crate,” Violet said. “Some kind of dust.”
“No mystery,” Jennie replied. “It’s ground garlic, dried sheep’s blood, and powdered bone from the hands of a woman who could heal with her touch.”
Malcolm seemed at a loss. Violet took a breath, trying to put together Jennie’s words, because she couldn’t find a way to make them fit into anything she’d ever heard or experienced. She watched as Jennie sprinkled the powder into the crate, onto the canvas into which the undertaker had sewn Maggie’s corpse.
Jennie pried her fingers into an opening, tugged out a lock of Maggie’s hair, then produced a Zippo lighter and lit that lock of hair on fire. Flame curled upward, pluming with acrid, black smoke. The flame burned out in seconds, but the smoke lingered.
“Quit that shit,” Malcolm said. “You must be out of your damn mind.”
Jennie maneuvered back into her seat, tucking the lighter and the little pouch back inside her coat. “Why don’t you tell me why I just did what I did, little brother?”
Violet glanced at him. Did he know the answer?
“If I had to guess,” Malcolm said, “you think they can follow her, like a dog on a scent, and you think whatever you just did is gonna throw them off the trail.”
“See?” Jennie said, smiling in the dark. “You know more than you think you do. Or at least you understand, even when you say you don’t.”
“It’s a guess.”
“Some of it’s instinct, and some of it’s that you remember things you don’t realize you remember. Sight, or insight. It doesn’t matter how. I just need you to stop fooling yourself that you’re making this trip just because of a promise you made.”
“Yeah? Why do you think I’m doing it?” Malcolm asked.
“You know it has to be done, that’s why. You can feel it.” Jennie dug the lighter out again, followed by a pack of cigarettes, one of which she lit. Its tip glowed orange in the dark, reminding Violet of the raven out beneath the willow tree, waiting for Maggie to die.
Jennie exhaled smoke, but also a fog of breath. The sky might be lightening in the east, but the temperature had turned much colder.
“That powder,” Violet said. “What you just did. That was magic?”
“Not magic,” Jennie said, taking a drag on her cigarette. “Not the way you mean it. I’d like to say it’s witchcraft, but I’m not a witch like my mother was. Anyone who knows what they’re doing can follow the recipe and put that powder together. It’s the best I can do, but with luck, it will do the trick.”
Violet nodded slowly. A day ago, she would have made light of such a statement, despite her mother-in-law’s reputation around Elkhart. Every town had at least one old woman that local children claimed was a witch. Now it all seemed so possible, as if she had been living in the dark her whole life and someone had just turned on a light that illuminated all the things she’d never before known were there.
She glanced at Malcolm. The Volkswagen bumped through a pothole, and he didn’t react at all. Though his eyes were open, he seemed as if he had gone somewhere else.
“Is it true?” Violet asked.
He shot her a plaintive look. “What do you want me to say? That I believe it? Of course I do. How could we have gone through this night and not believe it? As for what I knew before all of this, it’s hard to say. I never let myself think about it very much. The world tells me there’s no such thing as witches, and it always felt safe to tell myself that, even if it never really felt true.”
Malcolm hesitated, glanced at his sister, and then back at Violet. “You still don’t hear it? Billie Holiday?”
Violet stared. “You hear it now? This minute?”
He nodded, eyes back on the road. In the dashboard light, he looked dreadfully pale.
Jennie leaned forward, one knee on the floorboards, poking her head up between them. “This is probably the right time to talk a little more about them.”
Violet knew she meant the monsters.
“Whatever you know,” Malcolm agreed. “Whatever can help us get through this.”
