The Magnolia League - By Katie Crouch Page 0,24

of the powder into a green saucer and lights it on fire with a long match.

“Prosperity Oil?”

Sina nods.

“Who for?”

“That Mary Oglethorpe.” Sina snorts. “Guess she’s broke again.”

“Man. The treasurer, no less.”

“Woman has a problem. Serious.”

“I was just in her garden. House looks pretty run-down. She must be in a bad way.”

“Well, this should help. If not, I’ll cook up a lottery charm.”

“Maybe some Irish moss tea?”

“Oh, smart. If I only knew where it was…” Sina goes back to her cabinet and begins to rifle through the hundreds of bottles and vials.

“Well, I thought I’d tell you—I saw her today.”

Sina doesn’t answer.

“The new holder of the mantle.”

“I get who you mean.”

“She’s funny,” he says. “Smart. Though she has no idea what’s going on. Miss Lee’s still got her in the dark.”

“Big surprise,” Sina mutters. “Damn! Maybe I’m out of moss.”

“Callie!” Sam yells into the courtyard. The little girl rolls off the swinging mattress and comes to the window. “Go’n down to Grandaddy’s house and get some Irish moss.”

Callie nods and runs down the path.

“I think you’ll like her,” Sam continues.

“I don’t like any of them,” Sina says. “Waste of time—half century’s worth. Look at me. I’m cooking up a ritual for an idiot who can’t control her credit card. You think this is what our ancestors had in mind?”

Sam sighs and helps himself to some fresh chamomile flower tea. Sina’s tea is always better than anyone else’s; his sister is wildly talented at ferreting out the best herbs and roots. As usual, Sam skips the sweetener. Like the rest of his family, he has a powerful reaction to sugar because of his father’s doings. The Buzzards draw their power from their conjure bird—known locally as the turkey vulture—and Doc fully expects to come back as one. A few years earlier, it was a trend in the Low Country to kill the birds with traps set with poisoned sugar. The buzzards began dying in droves, so to protect his family and himself, Doc Buzzard put a root on everyone at the Roost. So far it’s shielded them from harm, but now everyone in the clan becomes violently ill at the taste of anything sweet.

“Can I ask you a question?” Sam says.

“Not if it has to do with the Magnolias. I’m done with that topic for the day.”

“Come on.”

“What?”

“How powerful is a buzzard’s rock?”

Just then, through the window, another, older voice drifts in. It’s their cousin, singing a hymn: “Oh Lord, oh do Lord, oh do remember me…”

“Lucretia!” Sina yells. “Ain’t nowhere near Sunday yet! Put my iPod on! Alicia Keys!”

The singing stops and is replaced by Sina’s favorite music. With her long limbs, queenly cheekbones, and light brown—almost golden—eyes, Sina is the most beautiful woman in the Buzzard family, if not in all of Georgia. “Lord Jesus, I am sorry, but can we have one church-free day around here?” Sina—whose name is short for the Yoruba name Adasina—plops down in her carved wooden rocking chair and crosses her slender ankles.

“Well? The buzzard’s rock?” Sam asks again.

“Nothing more powerful,” she says of the stone. “You know what they call it. A Fear Not to Walk Over Evil. ’Course, I’ve never managed to get a good one. Almost paralyzed myself trying once.”

No charm, of course, is easy to create, but the buzzard’s rock is particularly difficult—and cruel—to procure. You must find a female buzzard who has laid eggs, and then wait until she leaves her nest. Once the nest is empty, you climb to the roost—usually about sixty feet up a dead pine tree—and steal the egg. Then comes the grisly part: killing the embryo with a long pin and returning the egg to the nest. When the buzzard comes back, she will sit on her egg for a day or so. But since buzzards can intuit death before any other creature, the bird soon realizes that the embryo is dead. Being attracted to death, she finds a sharp rock to crack the egg and look at the corpse. It is this rock, charged with anger and sorrow, that all root doctors seek—but almost never find.

“That buzzard’s rock you had worked better than any root I’ve ever made,” Sina says.

“Well, Alex has it now,” Sam says. “She’s got the one I gave Louisa.”

Sina stops rocking.

“How’d that li’l chigger get it?” she cries. “She steal it?”

“Alex said it fell off her mother’s neck.”

“What kind of fool would lose something that valuable? It must have been right before she—” Seeing the look on Sam’s face, Sina