Page 11 of The Witch's Orchard
“Bad things coming,” she says, almost a whisper. She looks back at me as the breeze dies down. “You got here just in time, Miss Gore.”
“Bad things?”
She doesn’t answer, just watches me some more, eyes searching. She frowns.
“I live up the hill a little ways. There’s a trail,” she says.
She points with a gnarled finger to the north, and I see a slender dirt trail, knobbed with exposed tree roots, winding its way farther up the hill. She says, “I’ve got to finish my work this morning. You can come by later on, when you want answers.”
Then she turns with her basket and walks away.
There’s a flap and scrabble behind me and I turn to see a crow landing on the nearest high stone.
“CAAW!” it screams, and the scream bounces around the rocks, echoing madly. I watch the crow for a moment, watch it prune its oil black wings, listen to thescritch-scratchof its feet on the rough texture of the stone. I turn back to look for the old woman and find that she is gone.
I look at the crow again.
“Where’d she go?” I ask.
The crow caws, then flaps its wings and flies away.
I look at my phone. It’s been half an hour, I realize. Time to head back.
I glance into the forest but, again, I don’t see the old woman. I make a mental note to ask Max about her, about the land and who owns it. But I can’t ask about the eeriness of her gaze. How it felt like there were insects under my skin while she looked me up and down. Looked into me.
“The Witch of Quartz Creek,” I breathe. And then I make myself laugh. And it sounds false. I start jogging back toward the cabin, picking up my pace as I do.
By the time I’m keying my way inside, I’ve worked up a good sweat and I’ve got a head full of questions for the townsfolk of Quartz Creek, North Carolina. After another twenty minutes I’m showered and dressed in a black T-shirt, jeans, and a “take me seriously” no-wrinkle charcoal blazer.
I grab my keys from the bedside table, open the drawer. When I’d left the service and got my PI license, I bought a cheap, lightweight .22 revolver at a local gun show.
“What are you trying to do?” Leo said when I told him. He was in a jungle somewhere, a million miles away, and his voice crackled through the line to me. “Gun like that, you shoot someone, you’re just gonna piss ’im off.”
“Best I could afford.”
“Annie, you’re little.”
“Fuck off,” I’d said, though he was right. With a high ponytail and thick-soled boots I barely scrape five-three.
“You get into a mess with anyone big and strong and, like as not, you pull out that twenty-two and they’re gonna do one of two things: blow you away with their bigger gun or laugh in your face andthenblow you away.”
“A private eye almost never shoots their gun, Leo.”
He chuckled and said, “Annie, you know as well as I do: if you’re gonna carry a gun, you’d better be ready to use it.”
I received a custom .357 Korth Mongoose two days later. Two-and-three-quarter-inch barrel, all blacked out, in a custom purpleheart wood box with the words “Annie Get Your Gun” engraved on the inside ofthe lid. A four-thousand-dollar gun, as much a piece of art as a deadly weapon. I never needed to ask where it came from.
Now, I look down at the cool black revolver in its glossy box.
“Annie get your gun,” I read out loud. Though it’s Leo’s voice echoing in my mind.
I pick up the gun, check it, thrust it into the holster that clips into the back of my jeans, and walk out the door.
FOUR
IT’S NOT EVEN Atwo-minute drive from Crow Caw Cabin, back down the gravel lane, to Max’s family farmhouse. I pull Honey around and into Max’s driveway, which winds around the house, and park behind Max’s truck. Honey’s engine is barely warm and she settles with a grunt.
“Let’s get started,” I say to myself.
