“Speaking of,” Moira said, eyeing the fridge. “I’d love a Coke of you’ve got one.”
Tierra’s eyes widened in horror as she tore the greens from a sugar beet and tossed them in the kettle. “Do you have any idea how many toxins and preservatives are in that stuff? You might as well drink formaldehyde.”
“If they sold it in cans labeled ‘Coke,’ I just might.” Moira reached into her bag and stroked Cheeto’s snout. He’d been out cold since they shared a bag of dill pickle sunflower seeds in Ray Dean’s truck.
Tierra opened the fridge and snagged an earthenware pitcher, which she set in front of Moira along with a glass. “When is the last time you ate something green?”
Moira chewed on her lower lip as she thought. “I made a bunch of fried okra the other night.”
Tierra sighed. “Oh, Moira. You have so much to learn.”
“I don’t mean to be rude or nothin’,” Moira said, knowing she didn’t entirely mean it, “but the only thing I’m real keen on learnin’ at the moment doesn’t have to do with greens. You follow me?”
The blade chopping dark magenta flesh from the beet slowed on its downstroke. “Let’s start with the basics. Which kind of witch are you?”
“Pardon?” Moira had heard the word hurled at her many times, but usually while someone’s husband or boyfriend was pulling on his clothing and ducking other projectiles.
“Witch,” Tierra repeated. “You’re a witch. I’m a witch. Aunt Justine is a witch.”
Moira looked up at the ceiling. She could easily imagine that stuffy old biddy with her ear hovering over a heating vent, hoping to catch snatches of their conversation. “That I’d believe.”
Tierra shook her head and tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear only to have it fall across her forehead again. “She hasn’t always been like that. When I was younger, we would go for walks in the woods, gathering herbs, roots, flowers.”
“She raised you? Y’all lived here all your life?”
“Right here in this house,” Tierra confirmed. “What about you?”
“Uncle Sal brought me up on Stump Bayou in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. He caught me when I’s just a baby.”
“Caught you?” Tierra tumbled the cut beets into the kettle and started stripping herbs from their stems. “You make it sound like he snagged you on a fishing line.”
“Hell no,” Moira snorted. “It was a net.”
Tierra looked up from her thick wooden cutting board. The mixture of pity and disgust written on her face made cold sweat bloom on the back of Moira’s neck. “He found you in the water?”
“Yup.”
“But how on earth did you get there?”
“That’s exactly what I’s hoping you could tell me.”
6
Nick watched the fine mist settle on the windshield of his Corvette Stingray—a considerable step down from the Ferrari 458 Italia he liked tooling around town in for daily errands. The ‘Vette’s copious safety features robbed him of the chance to dominate a truly dangerous machine but saw him to his destination in decent time.
The lights in the house across the street glowed yellow like a jack-o’-lantern’s grin. Cozy, he supposed some people might find it. For him, it was little more than a prison with better bars.
She was in there. Moira.
He could smell her on the damp night air, an intoxicating mix of rain and wild muscadines. Her curving silhouette sashayed across the backs of his eyelids every time he blinked. Over and over, she marched away from him, her ass winding a lazy sideways figure eight.
The symbol of eternity, and rightly so, for he could hold her in his memory this way for as long as he wished.
An ache in his groin reminded him that memory was not the only place where he wanted to keep her. He wanted her skewered on the cockstand he had endured ever since she had turned her back to him and sauntered off in search of other means of transportation.
And find it she had.
He had watched her step up into the stranger’s truck, admired the way she gripped the handle and propelled herself into the cab with one powerful jerk. The length of her leg disappearing under the streetlights.
They had been easy to catch. Once he dismissed the driver arranged for him and took the wheel in his own hands, he was ghosting their taillights in the space of ten minutes.
He hadn’t killed Ray Dean. That was a first.
Hadn’t forced him off the road, gutted him like livestock, and left him in a ditch bath of his own blood and offal. Hadn’t dragged her out