them with a spoon. Wrap up a button from her clothes in a bag with your spit and your blood wiped on it. On Wednesday, bury that bag on the north side of her house for two nights. Every night before bed, say the following prayer:
I put stones in your crossway.
I put stones in your yard.
Stones go down on Wednesday.
Now your track is barred.
Dig back up that gris-gris bag, and find where your enemy will walk. Over that place you will lay down a trick. Take a piece of chalk and draw your cross-marks on that path. The exact pattern of your cross-marks will have come to you in a dream: a pattern of X marks or wavy lines, or a circle or series of small circles. Place the button and scatter the foot-track dirt all over the cross-marks to activate them. When your enemy walks over those cross-marks, she will soon wander from your lover and he will come back to you.
To avoid foot-track hexes crossing your path, put black pepper in your shoes.
COME WITH ME, BOY
Your lover sometimes will not stay happy with you but will become discontent and disheartened. To make your lover’s heart stay true, you must have one of his socks or a shirt—some piece of clothing full up of his sweat. It can be old sweat or new sweat, but it must smell of his skin.
Then take a piece of white paper and cut it into a circle. Using a red pencil, write the name of your lover nine times; turn the paper ninety degrees and cross his name with your name written nine times over it. When you do this, imagine your lover at home, sitting next to you, and happy and content.
Fold the paper nine times, and then place this paper underneath your lover’s bed.
After nine days, take back the paper and wrap it in the sweat-soaked clothing of your lover. Burn this. Place the ashes underneath your own bed for one night. Then burn them again and scatter them. After twenty-seven days, there should be some result. If there is no result, repeat the ritual as needed. If your lover still does not return to you, consult the spell “Conjure Up a New Love.”
MONEY BLESSING TO RETURN HUNDREDFOLD
Take a dollar bill and write this blessing on it: Call down money, Moses. Blessings to you and your family.
Go out into the world and hide these dollar bills. No one should see you do this. Leave the bills in newspapers. Leave them near the milk in the supermarket. Leave them in the tax forms at the post office. Do not watch your dollars. Every bill that is found will return wealth to you one hundred times.
DRAWING MONEY UP OUT OF THE WELL
Place three shiny dimes in a saucer of your bathwater. Each dime should have a leap-year date on it. Place the saucer in the moonlight on the night of a full moon. When you first awake the next morning, drink the water from the saucer. Then tie up the dimes in a piece of green cloth, and wear it in your right shoe. That day money will come to you threefold.
BRINGING MONEY IN THROUGH THE DOOR
Bury nine ten-penny nails and nine straight pins under your front door. They will capture money coming in and will trap it inside your house. Work this trick on Friday for best results.
MONEY, STAY WITH ME
For this spell to work, you must trap a piece of a no-good spirit in your wallet. Find the grave of the most miserly, no-good sonofabitch you know, and at midnight on a full-moon night, spoon up a pocketful of dirt from over the person’s heart. This is goofer dirt, and to keep it happy and to keep its power full charged, you need to close it up in a jar and feed it sugared rum and drops of turpentine. Put a chicken neck in the jar with the dirt, too, to make the spirit fat and happy.
After three days, take the dirt out of the jar and rub it on your wallet while reciting Psalm 119:17–24. Then say, “Listen, (name of buried person). You were a miserly, selfish, poor-hearted soul when you were alive. And now that you’re dead, you’re going to do your work for me. This here wallet is your home, and as long as I feed you, you best keep it full, or I’ll pour you out in the yard and not spare you another drop of rum.”
Catch the goofer dirt and put it back in the jar. Every night, make sure you keep your wallet near the jar of goofer dirt. Once a week, on Friday, take out the spoon you used to pick up the goofer dirt. With that spoon, put three spoonfuls of rum and three spoonfuls of sugar into the jar. As long as you feed the goofer dirt and keep it near your wallet, you will hold on to your money.
BANK VAULT OPENER
This is to relax the tight hold of a bank on your money and to direct it to you. Use this conjure when asking for a loan or an extension on mortgage payments. This should only be used once per year, and it will not work on any bank built on the south side of the nearest street. Also, it will not work on a bank with more than three pine trees built up on its land. This conjure can be performed only by those who were born under the sign Cancer or Aquarius.
One Sunday night, when the moon is either full or waxing, put on a piece of orange clothing and walk around the bank counterclockwise seven times while holding an orange candle. Don’t light your candle yet.
Find someone who worked at a bank who has died, and burn the candle on the person’s grave that same night. Ask him in your own words for his guidance and his hard work to assist you in whatever working you need from the bank. Take off the piece of orange clothing and, using the candle flame, light it on fire. Leave the ashes and the candle and go home. When you go to the bank to ask for help, the spirit will smooth the way and make your tasks go easy for you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my editor, Elizabeth Bewley, and my agent, Rob McQuilkin, for creating this possibility. Elizabeth, you are seriously brilliant. I look forward to seeing you accept your directing Oscar someday.
Thanks to Grady Hendrix for collaborating with me on this novel.
Many thanks to Phoebe’s wonderful grandparents—especially Mom and Rhoda. I could never have finished this without your help. We love you all very much.
Thanks to Peter, who hates being thanked.
I would like to recognize the Penn Center in South Carolina as an invaluable resource on the fascinating Gullah culture of the Sea Islands. Much appreciation also to the ladies of Savannah who took me to tea and told me their stories.
Finally, a big thank-you to Camp Nebagamon for Boys in the north woods of Wisconsin—a wonderful place to spend the summer, and an unexpectedly fantastic place to write.
Table of Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
A Preview of Lady Brown’s Book of Conjure and Spells
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Acknowledgments
Also by Katie Crouch
Copyright
Also by Katie Crouch
Men and Dogs
Girls in Trucks
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Katie Crouch.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: May 2011
This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental. Although some names and real entities and places are mentioned, all are used fictitiously.
ISBN: 978-0-316-12691-5