Page 44 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“I know.”

“I don’t ever want to see you pour it down like that again.”

“Two glasses are my limit. I never have more. Until now.”

“I hope that’s true. From now on, it’ll be true. I’ll see to that. Eat some soup. It’ll help.”

She picks up her spoon but only stares at the soup.

“Is this a sayin’ grace house?” he asks.

“Mostly.”

“Just eat. You say, ‘Thank you, Nash,’ and just eat.”

Vida doesn’t thank him, but she eats.

After he watches her for a minute or so, he attends to his soup, having seen the bowls filled from the same pot. “This is delicious, girl. Got some bite to it.”

“A touch of jalapeño,” she says, which she added to explain why his tongue and throat would burn from just the second spoonful.

He says, “So much flavor.”

“Seven different herbs plus the bacon,” she says, which she employed not merely to enhance the flavor of the lentils, but also to mask the faint taste of the key ingredient in the event that he should be sensitive to it.

“I could take a second bowl of this.”

“There’s plenty.”

“It’s good sopped up with bread.”

“Don’t forget there’s pork tenderloin for after.”

“I have big appetites, darlin’. You’ll learn how big.”

In about three minutes, his table manners less than refined, Nash Deacon has eaten most of his soup. His voracity is desirable in this case, for symptoms of monkshood poisoning can become extreme in as little as two minutes and never take longer than ten to manifest.

She says, “You ever heard of a place called the Smoking River?”

“Not around here.”

“The words ‘two moon, sun spirit’ mean anything to you?”

His spoon clatters into the bowl and he sits up straight, eyes shocked wide, though he’s not reacting to her question. The heat he attributed to the jalapeños has abruptly progressed to a numbness of tongue, throat, and face. When he says, “What is what you did this,” he is not only incoherent but also slurs his words. His vision will have suddenly blurred. The skin over most of his body is tingling.

As Vida gets to her feet, Deacon thrusts up and knocks over his chair and falls to the floor.

She circles the table, plucks the inch-thick breadboard out from under what remains of the loaf, and stands over the sheriff as he gropes under his sport coat as if he’s come to serve papers but has forgotten in which pocket he carries an eviction notice. Sheassumes that he has a pistol in a shoulder rig or a belt scabbard, and it’s the latter. As Deacon fumbles the weapon from the holster, Vida chops hard at his wrist with the edge of the breadboard. He drops the pistol. She throws aside the board and snatches up the gun, determined that this will not be a near thing, as was the encounter with Belden Bead.

Slick with sweat, Deacon’s face is pale clay, molded and carved by rage that is less an expression than a revelation of the deformed mind his plain features can no longer mask. She turns from him as he vomits, and she walks out of the kitchen.

36

THE THIRD GRAVE

In the library, Vida puts Mozart’s piano concerto K. 488 on the turntable and sets the volume slightly higher than usual, using the glorious music to mask the noise of Deacon thrashing and gasping in the kitchen. The sheriff is a tall, muscular man capable of making a lot of noise in his death throes.

Western monkshood, also called “wolfsbane,” has a toxicity equal to that of any lethal plant. The roots and leaves are especially poisonous. That morning, she had gathered it from the upland meadow where, on Tuesday, she had filled bags with her favorite mushroom,Morchella conica. Nature provides weaponry as readily as sustenance.

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