Page 50 of Which Witch is Willing?
Moira sent Pestilence the warmest smile she could muster before turning to her uncle. “I thought you’d gone back to the boat.”
“I had, but when I got there and told the boys about what happened with that devil deer, they thought maybe we oughta come back and keep an eye on things.” He scratched his gray-black neck stubble with his calloused fingertips, the resulting sound closely resembling sandpaper on wood.
Alarm jangled down Moira’s nerves. Keep an eye on things was usually a code for looking for an excuse to shoot the shit out of and/or set fire to anything that moved.
She thought about her uncles outside, then Sal’s presence on the roof, and realized for the first time that this meant he would have had to come through the house. “Did y’all meet everyone, then?”
Uncle Sal’s weathered face screwed up in surprise and consternation. “You mean your…kin?”
“My sisters,” she said. “Yes.” She’d sent him letters over the months, having disclosed her discovery of previously unknown siblings, but hadn’t gotten into the particulars about their being identical and prophesied to end the world and all.
“That’s about the strangest thing I seen since that time when Pervis Morton tried to make his pecker bigger hookin’ it up to an industrial strength shop vac.”
Moira could have gone the rest of her life—however long or short that might be—without the recollection of that particular experiment.
“Truth to tell, I think the boys mighta took a shine to your sister.”
“Which one?” Moira asked.
“The one what looks like someone up and pissed in her coffee every morning since the day she was born.”
“Oh, you mean Aerin!”
From the pop of recognition on Sal’s face, Moira got the impression that the boys may or may not include one Salvadore Malveaux.
“Anyhow,” Sal said, “After everyone was introduced, the boys excused themselves for their evening constitutional.”
Evening constitutional. That was an interesting way of saying drinking themselves rubber-legged on moonshine and playing a round of Who Can Piss the Highest?
“How come you didn’t go with them?” Moira asked.
“That young man of yours suggested I might should come up and talk to you,” Sal said, wringing the cap in his hands. “Said you might be feelin’ a little out of sorts.”
Moira let out a gusty sigh as she turned her back to him. “He ain’t wrong about that.”
Sal closed the distance between them, seating himself cross-legged near the railing and patting the space next to him on the cement. “Why don’t you set yourself down and tell me all about it.”
And she did. Finding her sisters. Opening the seals. Meeting the horsemen. Battling Lucy. Tierra’s pregnancy. The prophecy. Her choice.
When she’d finished, Sal sank back against the railing and whistled his astonishment. “Damnation, Moira Jo. You got yourself quite a conundrum.”
“That’s so,” she agreed, wrapping her arms around her legs and setting her chin on her knees.
They sat together in the silence as lightning forked across the sky in the distance.
Sal ran a hand through his unruly black and silver streaked hair. “Can I ask you somethin’?”
“’Course.”
“Which is it that’s got your tail twisted more? The idea of bein’ a momma, or tyin’ yourself to a man?”
Moira sat up straighter. In her time away from bayou, she had forgotten about the canny ways of men bred to survive lethal animals by quickly reading their mood and movements. About how her uncle could cut straight to the bone of her most tangled thoughts and feelings. She felt a pang of sadness for the girl she was when she’d been on the receiving end of this surprise.
“I can’t rightly say.” This was true. She been standing up here, the wind whipping her hair and the thoughts speeding in ever-tightening circles. Just as soon as she’d convinced herself she might just be able to raise a baby, she would remember who she’d be raising that baby with. Which brought her right back to…holy shit! She’d volunteered to get knocked up.
Sal repositioned himself across from her, his bony knees in their faded overalls touching hers. From this vantage, he reached over and took her clammy hands, sandwiching them between his big, warm, leathery ones. The simple and familiar comfort in that gesture plucked her heart like a harp string, releasing a single, mournful note of longing. Moira was transported back to that creaky old fishing shack. Her single bed. Her simple problems. The knowledge that after Sal relieved her of whatever burden she’d been carrying, she could shuffle into the kitchen and make them celebratory biscuits.
She’d find no such solace now and that was the price of seeing what she’d seen.
