26

After Bennie had finished working on her truck, she took Motheater to the grocery store to stock up. Besides more granola, apples, and the usual trail staples, Bennie also ended up spending more than she had budgeted because Motheater kept touching things. The witch seemed entranced by the sheer variety of green things on display, and honestly, the look on her face when Bennie gave her a bag of grapes and told her to go nuts was, frankly, priceless. It also threatened to split Bennie’s chest in two, but she had resolved not to think about that.

The rest of the night was spent making crepes and talking about what Motheater had remembered from her journey through Zach’s blood. The map had come down, spread across the bed. Around one crepe, stuffed with raspberries and Cool Whip, Motheater pointed at a small patch of Kire and said, “That’s where I killed the moon.”

Bennie choked on her tea. She was sitting next to Motheater, legs crossed, her knee just barely not touching Motheater’s thigh. Bennie had been deliberately not thinking about this for the past thirty minutes.

“That’s where I tied myself to power,” she said, smiling a little. “I was fourteen.”

“I been talking to snakes since I were coming on seven.” Motheater sounded proud. “They know things.”

“Yeah, what else is new.” Bennie took another crepe and smeared chocolate spread on it. “All right, say I want to be a witch. I go chat up a cottonmouth and kill the moon. Easy.”

“Well, you got to get to an agreement,” Motheater said. “You both have to enter into a deal.”

“There’s some details missing, but . . . you start with desire. There’s a thermal, like taking someone to bed.”

Motheater was grinning at her. Bennie realized she had almost gotten used to Motheater’s pointed teeth, the look on her face like a creature waiting for prey. She still had cream on her cheek. Bennie’s face heated up, and she leaned forward to brush the Cool Whip off with her thumb.

Motheater was still smiling, and Bennie didn’t mind the predator she saw in front of her. Oh, God help her, she was infatuated. Fuck, she was so screwed. She shifted a little, noticing again that her leg was against Motheater’s leg, and she was so goddamn done, she didn’t want to pull away, the line of her thigh against the witch’s sending small little shocks up her spine.

“Sure,” Motheater said, some greenish-blue color high on her own cheeks, the closest thing the pale woman could come to a blush. Bennie’s heart was racing, and before she could do something absurd, she took a big bite of her crepe, turning deliberately away from the witch.

“Tell me about this moon murder,” she said, deliberately not looking at Motheater. “It clearly didn’t stick.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the window. “Moon’s still there.”

“Ooh, big word.” Bennie grinned, taking another bite and finishing off her crepe. “Talk metaphorically to me, Motheater.”

Motheater’s face was worth it. Bennie laughed, standing up to make more tea, avoiding the rough tension in between her and Motheater, her absolutely inane desire to rebound with a hundred-and-fifty-year-old witch.

“Tomorrow we’re gonna find Jasper’s grave, right?” She bustled around the kitchen, starting on the dishes. “And then what?”

Bennie couldn’t see Motheater’s face as she was turned toward the sink, but the air suddenly became cold and still. Bennie deliberately didn’t turn around. This was a test, she knew it, but she had to ask. If Motheater needed closure on an old friend to stop Kire’s waking, then so be it.

“Find his grave. Take back my soul. Reclaim my power.” Her voice was soft. “I’m betting that he’ll be the last piece of my magic that needs finding. Then I can make true bargains instead of licking at the edges of my sill and be the Witch of the Ridge again.”

“And then what?” Bennie asked. Who was Jasper Calhoun to Motheater anyway, and why the fuck was Bennie feeling jealous over a dead man?

Bennie didn’t move, shoulders tense. What happened after this? After Motheater took her power back? Would she return to the mountains or stay in Kiron? Would she stay with Bennie? Would she even want to? Bennie’s stomach was clenched in uncomfortable knots. What else could she do? She had to move forward.

“You got a way to find him?” Bennie was already thinking of ways to get information out of the Kiron library’s index about nineteenth-century gravesites. The kettle boiled, and Bennie immediately made another mug of tea.

“Aye.” Motheater looked over the map, tracing the invisible lines between the red dots that marked out the dead. “Like to like. Kin to kind. Our selves are twined together, sibling things.”

Bennie watched Motheater’s hands, her fingers trailing over the topography, the dirt under her nails, the blue tinge near her cuticle white folks got when they were cold.

“Let’s get an early start,” Bennie murmured, placing her mug down. She headed to the bathroom, looking for any excuse to be away from Motheater right now, to not remember that they were sharing a bed. “We’ll text Zach in the morning.”

Motheater didn’t respond, and Bennie escaped into the shower. She didn’t know whether she was being silly or if she was just a coward. Maybe both. She imagined Motheater’s face turned up to hers, those dirty hands around her arms. She imagined adding another bruise to Motheater’s collection, kissing down the scales of her neck tattoos.

Bennie, for the record, didn’t hate the idea of Motheater biting her with jagged teeth.

“I’m so screwed,” Bennie groaned. Under the water hitting her cap and the sound of a new klaxon in the distance, she could only hope that Motheater didn’t hear her.

Bennie found herself grateful that she slept through the whole night without waking up to a swarm of moths fighting in through every crack and crevice. It seemed that Motheater’s ministrations throughout the day were enough to allow their boatman some rest during the dark hours.

What Bennie didn’t love was waking up with Motheater’s slim arms around her waist and the witch’s face buried against her shoulder blades. Nope. Did not love that at all, didn’t wake up breathless and scared, absolutely didn’t hate that slightly petrified and turned on seemed to be her near-constant state since she had brought the Appalachian Neighbor into her home.

Bennie’s mouth was dry, and her hands were not, and when she put her fingers against Motheater’s, she didn’t expect to have her hand gripped fast. She screwed her eyes shut and ignored the fact that Motheater was pressing against her back like a big cat, nuzzling into the divot between Bennie’s shoulder blades.

Bennie was sure that Motheater could feel her heart. Did Motheater know that she had been seduced so thoroughly? Probably not. Bennie squeezed Motheater’s hand.

“Let me up, Moth.”

Motheater groaned and, to Bennie’s intense mortification, shoved her leg in between Bennie’s. It was sleepy, not at all sexy, and Bennie would have liked to know what god was to blame for this overwhelming need to turn over and kiss Motheater until her fool mouth was swollen.

This, Bennie decided, was a very bad idea.

She pulled herself away from Motheater. The witch sighed and flopped forward, cuddling into the empty space where Bennie had been. Motheater sighed. “You’re mighty warm, darlin’.”

Motheater’s voice was so soft that it might have been missed if Bennie wasn’t hyperaware of every single thing happening in her apartment right now. Motheater spoke low and misty, voice husky from sleep, and Bennie knew, in that exact moment, that she was monumentally fucked.

“Bathroom,” Bennie said, because it was the least sexy thing she could think to say and the best way to escape from this situation.

Even after washing her face, Motheater’s words were still haunting her. Bennie pressed her forehead against the mirror. Great. Super great. Bennie steadied herself. She could ignore this, right? Didn’t they have a job to do?

Bennie stood up straight, looked herself right in the eye and swore that she was not, no way, in any universe, going to make a move on the weird pantherine witch in her apartment. But she had that look on her face that meant Bennie was making a promise she was going to break, and she groaned.

“I’m so fucked.”

She slowly eased out of the bathroom and went to gather clothes. Motheater had already changed into jeans and her oversized acid-wash sweatshirt, and Bennie absolutely did not spend time looking over the absolutely devastating shape of her cheekbones, the angle of her neck and shoulders, the way her tattoos shifted as she pushed up her sleeves.

“Watch me work this electric kettle,” Motheater said, smiling brilliantly at Bennie as she pulled the kettle off the stand and filled it with water. Bennie was almost overwhelmed by Motheater carefully checking the water level, arranging it on the stand, and then pressing the button to turn on the kettle. The witch turned and grinned at Bennie, eyebrows up, and Bennie had to remind herself that this was a dangerous creature who could tear a church beam from brace without a second thought, and here she was proud that she had managed a basic function of modern life.

Motheater’s face fell. “Did I do it wrong?” she asked, looking back at the kettle.

“Oh, no, great.” Bennie rushed, immediately turning to grab two mugs and a pair of teabags. “Like a natural.”

“I’m getting the hang of this century,” Motheater crowed, walking over to pick up Bennie’s map, staring at it. “Soon I’ll be caught up enough to operate your automobile.”

“Not happening,” Bennie said, hoping to cut that idea at the root.

“I’m very good with horses,” Motheater said, kneeling on the ground, leaning over the map. “I can tame your beast.”

“It’s . . .” How was Bennie supposed to explain a driver’s license? In fairness, half the folks out here were driving around on expired or borrowed licenses anyway. The police had bigger things to deal with than coal men trying to drive to work. The nearest DMV was a full county over. “Maybe.”

Motheater grinned up at her, and Bennie wanted to die, her traitorous chest constricting. She had no intention of letting Motheater drive her truck, but fibbing seemed an easy price to pay for that smile. God, she was so, so absolutely fucked.

Luckily, before Bennie could wallow in self-pity any longer, her phone buzzed. Bennie was more than grateful as text messages popped up. Finally, a distraction from Mount Doom rumbling in the background.

“Hey, Motheater?”

Motheater was still tracing the red dots on the map. She glanced up at Bennie.

“Zach’s coming over to help find Jasper.” Motheater’s hands spread like roots against the map. Moths had snuck into the room, fluttering like living jewelry around Motheater’s wrist and collarbones.

Motheater nodded, shifting to stretch her arms upward, dislodging the moths on her skin. “I wager I could conjure a way to a grave, or perhaps find one of his descendants, or . . .”

Motheater froze. Her arms dropped, and a look of confusion and horror passed over her. She scrambled up, going to the sink and turning on the water. She found a bowl and placed it under the tap, murmuring. Bennie was startled enough that she dropped her phone.

“Motheater?”

“Oh, God,” Motheater said, staring at the bowl of water. She left the tap running as she walked out of the apartment, balancing the bowl in between her hands. “I need a bone—something dead.”

“Uh, all right?” Bennie turned off the tap, picked up her phone, and then peeked into her fridge. It was abysmal, but there was half a rotisserie chicken still there. It would have to do. She brought it out, following Motheater onto the porch.

Outside, Motheater faced the rising sun, holding out the bowl of water. The blue jay had flown over, deciding to use her wrist as a perch, and was peering intently into the bowl. She made a face at the picked-over chicken as Bennie offered it to her. “That’ll do.”

“I don’t know what you were expecting,” Bennie said, frowning as Motheater balanced the bowl on the railing. She was clearly unimpressed as she looked over the rotisserie chicken.

“People used to keep hares for this sort of thing,” Motheater muttered, reaching over and pulling out a few bones from the carcass.

“What sort of thing?” Bennie was trying her best to keep her feelings of mild horror off her face but doubted that it was working.

“Scrying.” Motheater held the bowl in one hand and the chicken bones in the other, clutching them over the water. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, turning to face all four cardinal points, pausing in each direction. Bennie took a step back as Motheater did magic on the veranda. The witch murmured softly, bowing to the east, and Bennie could feel the charge in the air shift. It was a stillness, a calm. No breeze, no sounds; even the cars in the distance faded to an indiscernible hum. And in her own chest, it echoed. She could feel it, she knew it, like she knew Motheater pressed against her back.

Motheater put the bowl back on the railing and held the bones in both hands. The blue jay was circling above her head, the moths collecting on the supports like an audience.

“Greater love hath no man than this,” Motheater said, breaking the bones over the bowl of water. The gristle and meat became fiery dust; the bones melted like wax. It coated her fingers, her hands, and the viscous, slick liquid slowly dripped down into the water, hissing. Bennie’s breath caught in her throat, fear and jealousy making it hard to breathe. “That a man lay down his life for his friends.”

As the tallow writhed in the air, it fell much slower than gravity would want it. The salt-fat formed shapes in the air, opened their mouths like snakes before collapsing down into the water. Steam rose up, and Motheater’s hand spread over the bowl as all the water disappeared, dissipated by the Word.

Motheater leaned over, frowning as symbols appeared, solidified in the cooling tallow. A soft magic.

Bennie wanted to ask what was happening, wanted to know what Motheater divined when she leaned over the bowl, wanted to See what Motheater Saw. Instead, she clutched a chicken carcass and let Motheater do her work.

As the last of the steam disappeared, Bennie realized that they were just hanging out on the front porch of her building, and anyone could come out at any time and see whatever the fuck this was. She took a step toward Motheater.

“I hate to interrupt, but we are visible as hell right now, and I don’t think that these folks are keen on grown ladies doing science experiments ten feet from their door.”

Motheater nodded, grabbing the bowl and heading back into the efficiency. “Call Zach,” she said, putting the bowl on the counter and scratching notes on the back of one of Bennie’s hastily photocopied reports. “I can find Jasper’s grave.”

Bennie hated to be bossed around like this, but Motheater was the one with the magic wax. She texted Zach and then went to look over Motheater’s shoulder. She had pulled out her map of Kire from the hike and had folded it over to only show a part of the valley near where Old Kiron had been.

“You think he’s buried there?” Bennie asked, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“The lines are blurred,” Motheater explained, gesturing to the bowl. The cooled bone-wax was stuck to the sides in patterns Bennie couldn’t make head nor tails of. “Some are clear. Some read like prophecy.”

Picking up the map, Bennie groaned. “You read anything in those chicken bones about an old manager?”

“What?” Motheater looked up, confused.

Bennie tapped the area of the map that Motheater showed. “That,” she said, resigned, “is Helen DeWitt’s property.”

“You want me to come in with you?”

Bennie was in the diner parking lot, hands gripping the wheel, staring at the door. She glanced over at Zach, who was leaning up from the back seat, one arm over her headrest, the other on the divider between the driver’s seat and the pilot’s. It had been discovered that Motheater got wickedly carsick in the back seat, so Zach, long limbs and all, had squeezed in the second row of Bennie’s truck.

“No,” Bennie said, fumbling with the seat belt. “No, I think . . .” She paused to catch her breath. Motheater was staring at her, and she was doing everything she could not to look back at the witch.

“I think I need to talk to her alone.”

“I can still curse her,” Motheater said absently, looking over toward the abandoned parking lot, probably for another branch of pokeweed. “If’n you wanted.”

“No.” Bennie took the canvas bag with the map in it and put it in her lap, opening the door. “This is for me.”

Motheater stared at her, but didn’t say anything. Zach sat back, shifting to put his legs up on the seat. This was it. The confrontation that she had always wanted to have with Helen DeWitt. Bennie gripped the canvas bag tighter and slipped out of the truck, leaving her cap behind and straightening her jacket.

The afternoon was already warming up, but Bennie kept the Carhartt on. It was a piece of armor, a small sign that she been here, that she was still Kiron, all for being new to the area, that she had patched and sewn and fixed up her damn jacket just as much as anyone else. She straightened her collar and went into the diner.

Helen was sitting in a booth near the back, a mug of coffee in her hands and a dreamy look on her face. It was strange, Bennie thought, to see her in the off-hours. She was a different person.

Bennie walked over and sat down, not bothering with a “how’s your morning.” Helen looked up from her coffee, slow like sap, deliberate, coordinated.

“I was surprised to get your text,” Helen said, sitting up straight.

“I was surprised you answered.”

“Against the advice of counsel, I’ll have you know.”

“You got a lawyer?” Bennie couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.

“I got an advisor,” Helen clarified, taking a sip of her coffee. “You and the Elliots are arranging that suit.”

Bennie swallowed. The rumor that Kelly-Anne’s parents were looking into a wrongful death suit was one of the more vicious to circulate through town. The Elliots wanted nothing to do with Kiron anymore. It was just Bennie hanging on like a fool. Bennie felt an ache. She wanted to fight for her friend, but that wasn’t why she was here.

Instead, she reached into the bag and pulled out the red-dotted murder map she and Kelly-Anne had been working on for eighteen months. Bennie spread it out on the table, moving Helen’s saucer and pushing the ketchup to the very edge of the table. Seeing it here, outside of her efficiency, in public, made all her anger come back. Here were twenty-eight lives ended on Kire. Here were twenty-eight families hurt, harmed, all because White Rock was ignoring the looming creature it dug into.

“What—”

“This is a map of the folks reported dead on Kire, and where they were disappeared or killed,” Bennie cut Helen off. “This only goes back to the nineties, but before that, I didn’t find any deadly equipment malfunctions in any other dig sites.”

“So what?” Helen sipped her drink, frowning.

Bennie knew that Helen was trying to be hard, but there was something in her voice that cracked. Bennie pressed the advantage.

“You and I both know that this ain’t right,” she said, lowering her voice. “This many deaths, with no real big accident, disaster, or explosion attached? This ain’t the way people die in mining operations.”

“Disasters aren’t the only way miners die,” Helen said.

Bennie thought about the explosion in West Virginia, the bad fuse in Kentucky. Miners died en masse: thirty, sixty, two hundred all at once. Miners dying one by one? This many, with no real consequences in the courts? No. This wasn’t how black gold killed its adherents. This was different.

“You and I both know that this ain’t it,” Bennie hissed, leaning over the map. “And I been poring over everything White Rock’s done, and I hate to say it, but everything I’ve found says the company’s been by the book for near on thirty years.”

She reached into the bag and pulled out a folder of reports, incidents, newspaper clippings, photos, library scans made with the pennies she had taken out of the give-one, get-one jar at the store. Here it was. All the work she and her dead best friend had compiled. Everything she had given herself into for the past year and a half—the thing that had cost Bennie her job, her home, her boyfriend. And here she was laying it all out in front of the woman who had fired her.

“Now, Ben . . .”

“You call me Bennie or Benethea, Helen. I ain’t playing right now,” Bennie snapped. “This—” she said, laying her hand on the papers—“is bullshit. And I think it’s something you know about.”

Across the table, they stared at each other. The waitress steered clear, even as Helen finished her mug and Bennie stayed without any kind of service. The silence between them drew out, tense as a cable in a shaft. Helen swallowed nervously, and Bennie leaned in.

“You seen the ghosts. Are they here now?”

If Helen was sitting still before, she didn’t move a single muscle now, her eyes wide, her hands wrapped around her mug. Bennie thanked whatever god Motheater had on her side and shifted closer.

“Little black rabbits, running around?” Bennie asked, not looking away, leaning in. Helen was pale, big blue eyes watering. “You’ve been haunted your whole life, ain’t that right?”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t lie.” Bennie’s voice was much calmer than she felt. “I got a way to let you off the curse.”

Helen shook her head, and Bennie saw a shadow there, beady red eyes, dark hair, fur across the backs of her hands. She was cursed. Motheater was right. Helen had haunted blood. This whole damn town had bled into the mountain, and Motheater refused to let that sacrifice go to waste. The DeWitts were cursed for coming to Kiron, Motheater had said, drawing up plans hours ago, and now they were cursed to remain. The witch had recognized something from her past and got to work.

Bennie knew that Motheater could have been here, that Zach could have done this, but Motheater was too strange and Zach too kind, and Bennie was fine being mean if it got her what she wanted. There was no reason for Helen to help her without some kind of exchange, and Motheater had not let Bennie go unprepared. Bennie reached into the bag and lifted out a candle, teeth pulled from roadkill pressed into the wax, Motheater’s etchings standing out in stark relief against the sides, having been rubbed with bright yellow asafedity flowers found growing up the side of Bennie’s apartment.

“I need access to your property.” Bennie shifted the map and pointed to the area Motheater had outlined in yellow, a large swath of land in a holler that had been in Helen’s family for generations. “This area.”

“Oh, I . . .” Helen glanced from the candle to Bennie’s face, back down the map. “I . . .”

“You take this candle, light it in a cornmeal cross, and you’ll be free.” Bennie pushed the candle closer. “It’s real Neighbor-made. It’s for you.”

When Motheater made the candle, she kept a pained look on her face near on the whole time, taking close to three hours and sending Zach out for supplies on four occasions. Motheater had even scavenged the dead squirrel herself, although Bennie had drawn the line at boiling its flesh off in her apartment, and the witch had grumbled all the way down to the creek.

But here it was. A banishment candle for the ghosts that haunted Helen DeWitt.

Helen hesitated, her hand shaking as she reached for the spell.

“Helen.”

The foreman looked up at Bennie, scared, hopeful, a lifetime of haints hanging like blue bottles off her whole body. “Take the holler,” she whispered. “Cast my ghosts out of Kiron.”

Bennie nodded. This didn’t feel as satisfying as she had hoped. All she felt was sad.

Helen took the candle carefully, her hands turning a furry black as she touched the wax. Her eyes went wide, and she quickly laid it in her purse, a flush rising across her cheeks, red rimming her eyes.

“There’s a handful of service entrances for the valley,” Helen muttered, finally turning back to the table, taking the pencil that Bennie offered. She marked a few places on the street. “There’s a gate, but it’s got nothing but a cross lock on it. Just open the door and go in.”

She dropped the pencil. Bennie felt sympathy rise up, a hurt she didn’t want as she extorted Helen for access to her property. There was something desperate and sad, a shaking in her hands that belied more than she probably wanted them to. Whatever blood ran through Helen, it had taken hold of her whole soul and tied her to Kiron. Her family doomed to root and rot in one small town that barely loved her back.

Bennie reached out and put a hand over Helen’s, squeezing it tightly. She was going to save Kiron. She was going to start with Helen.

“We’re going to get rid of what’s haunting Kire,” Bennie said, and for the first time, she believed she could. She wanted to save Kiron, wanted to save Helen, wanted to save every last ornery bit of Appalachia. Everyone deserved to live. To survive here. “We’re going to protect our kin here.”

Helen’s shoulders sagged. She nodded, squeezing Bennie’s hand back. They paused for a few seconds, holding space for the grief, the tension, the harm between them, between all of them. Helen let out a shuddering breath and pulled her hand back. She dug out a pair of bills and laid them on the table for her coffee.

“See to it.”

Bennie smiled, and Helen quickly left, clutching her purse. Bennie was relieved, almost ecstatic. She carefully packed her folder back up and arranged her map in her bag. After another minute, she stood and left the diner. Outside, she saw, to her horror, Motheater standing in front of Helen, blocking Helen’s route to her car.

“Motheater!” Bennie wanted to tell her that it was fine, that it had worked, that they could go to the valley untested, but Motheater held her hand up, and Bennie shut her mouth. She couldn’t make out anything that they were saying. The blue jay swooped down and landed on Bennie’s shoulder, distracting her.

“Oh, hey.” Bennie smiled, putting up a hand to pet the bird. “I got some more granola for you, man.”

The bird didn’t say anything but nodded its head, chewed on one of Bennie’s microbraids, and then jumped off. When Bennie looked back, Motheater was walking toward her.

“You good?” Bennie asked, almost scared of the answer. Motheater smiled up at her, reached out to take her hand, the same one that she had reached out to Helen, and squeezed.

“We’re all right.” Motheater’s voice was soft and husky again, and Bennie wanted to hold her hand for hours. “It’s been kept.”

Bennie held Motheater’s hand as they went to the truck, trying to remember what it was like to feel this hopeful again.