about wanting to make wine this good again,” she said, flipping the piece of glass in her palm, “follow me and I’ll show you.”
There was a new assurance about her, as if she’d been hiding before and only now stepped into her true skin. Her confidence lured him outside as he followed her to the vine rows south of the house.
She shrugged the tablecloth tighter around her shoulders and nudged her chin toward the field. “Look out there and tell me what you see.”
Dew saturated the evening air, settling as glossy droplets on the budding vines. He sighed as he pulled his collar up against the mist. “I see vines starting to leaf out. Acres of work yet to be done. And potential. Always potential for the next harvest.”
Her eyes relaxed, though she kept the rest of her face controlled. “Yes,” she said. “And yet there is so much more. Hold this to your eye and take my hand.”
He checked over his shoulder to see if Madame was watching them. “Is this really necessary?”
“It’s the only way I know how to show you.”
“Show me what?”
“Everything,” she answered and extended her hand.
Reluctantly he locked his fingers with hers. Her cold skin repelled him at first, but she held on tight, as if she would not let this moment out of her grasp. With her other hand she gripped the ancient vine in front of her, then mumbled a few words of nonsense while pretending to go into a trance. He knew then he’d been a fool. He should never have followed her outside. Should never have come to the country to work with these backward, superstitious people in the first place. Maybe Du Monde was right. Maybe he did belong in the city with his books and ledgers and blessed logic. The admission sobered him. He held the woman’s hand, opting to appease her long enough to avoid further confrontation, but then he was going inside to get drunk and give serious consideration to an asking price for the vineyard.
God, she really was beautiful, though. It was almost as if her skin shimmered in the mist.
Her eyes opened. “Don’t watch me. Use the lens to look at the field.”
He hadn’t realized he’d been staring. “What is it I’m supposed to see exactly?” But as he held the glass to his eye, the change became evident.
An iridescent fog hovered over the vineyard, glimmering to rival the northern lights. On the hillside, moisture clung in a crisscross pattern like a giant net suspended above the vines, while blue sparks skittered along the ground. “What is this, some kind of trick?” He lowered the lens to examine it, wondering how she’d made a kaleidoscope out of a melted shard of glass.
“The spectral cloud hanging over the acreage nearest the château is some sort of sun-blocking spell meant to promote mildew. I imagine you lost some grapes last fall to fungus, yes?”
“We had to hand sort the entire acre to salvage what we could.”
“I’m working on a counterspell, but a reverse curse is complicating things. Unfortunately it’s had years to morph without interference. I’m still tracing its origin.”
“Reverse curse?”
“Yes, and the other effects you see . . .” She nudged him to raise the glass to his eye again. “I still have to counter the jinx on the hill and the static in the soil. And then there’s that fellow. There, see him? Sitting on the stump in the middle of the row. We have a gargoyle living among the old vines, the ones Monsieur Gardin planted for Grand-Mère’s birthday. The wine you poured tonight came from those vines. It was the last vintage I brought into the world before I . . . went away.”
He pressed his eye closer to the glass. “How are you doing this?”
“I’m merely showing you what I see every day.”
He tested the vision several times with and without the glass. A beast with leathery wings and pointed ears opened its eyes and shifted on its feet before yawning. “This can’t be happening.”
“So disrespectful, I know. This one appears to be harmless at the moment. But I’m guessing as soon as the grapes are ready to be harvested, it’s his job to piss on the clusters as they go into the baskets so they’ll be sour for the press. That is, if I don’t find a way to banish him first. I’m sorry—he should have been dealt with years ago, but Grand-Mère hasn’t been able to keep up by herself.”