Page 71 of The Women of Wild Hill
“Good point,” Phoebe had to admit.
“Ivy used a species of mushroom she found here on Wild Hill. Lilith and Levi adapted the recipe so they could produce it at scale. They must have bottled it here.”
“You know a lot more about the Duncans than I ever did.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Sibyl asked gleefully. “Given that you told me fuck all.”
Phoebe groaned. “Are you really going to start again?”
Sibyl spun around. “Oh, I’m sorry. You thought I was done? Not even close. I grew up in the middle of Texas. I was the only kid with hair like this for hundreds of miles. Maybe you wanted me to be normal, but everyone else thought I was a fucking freak. The least you could have done was let me know I came from a long line of freaks who might have to save the world.”
“I said I was sorry,” Phoebe said. “My childhood was no walk in the park, either, for your information.”
“Oh my god! This isn’t about you, you raging narcissist! I can’t believe Brigid lived with you for sixteen years and didn’t murder you!”
The insult hit its mark. Sibyl watched her mother’s face fall. “You really think I’m self-centered?” Phoebe asked. “People always said I was the sweet one.”
“What?” Sibyl started to laugh until she realized her mother hadn’t been joking. “Nobody’s thesweet oneat forty-six. Don’t get mewrong. You have your sweet moments, but you’re also a badass bitch. And yes, you have your head up your butt sometimes, but your heart is almost always in the right place.”
“So if you had to choose between me or Brigid—”
Sibyl’s eyes went wide. “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?”
Phoebe snickered.
“You almost had me there.” Sibyl laughed with her. “But for the record, I wouldn’t exchange you.”
“So does this mean you’ll forgive me?”
“Maybe. Eventually,” Sibyl conceded. “I have a few other things to say before I let you completely off the hook. But we have other business to deal with right now. There’s something else you need to see.”
She opened the door to the root cellar, releasing a powerful wave of the same stench that had greeted them. Without windows or electricity, the room was pitch black. Sibyl pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. Then she walked down the stairs until the light revealed the source of the odor. The dirt floor of the cellar was black with fungi—a field of black mushrooms no more than three inches tall with thin round caps.
Phoebe joined Sibyl on the last stair. “Are these what I think they are?” She bent and plucked one. “It looks like a little goth parasol.”
“They’re the same mushrooms Lilith used,” Sibyl told her. “This is why the ravens gave you the key. It’s what Bessie and our ancestors wanted us to find.”
“But why?”
“Well, it seems pretty obvious if you ask me. We’re supposed to make poison. A lot of it, by the looks of things.”
“No, not me.” Phoebe dropped the mushroom and wiped her hands on her pants. “That isn’t my gift.” She wasn’t going to get involved. Death had been her lifelong enemy.
Sibyl studied her mother, halfway between annoyed and amused. She’d never seen Phoebe so skittish about anything. “It’s not mine, either, as far as I know,” she replied. “But here we are.”
“You may not know all of your gifts yet, but I know mine,” Phoebe told her. “I don’t kill. My job is to heal.”
Somewhere in the house, a door creaked opened. Their heads swiveled toward the light at the top of the stairs.
“What was that?” Phoebe whispered.
“Dunno. Let’s find out.” Sibyl raced back up the stairs to the kitchen and stopped in the hall. In front of her, a door that was closed when they came in now stood wide open.
Phoebe joined her daughter but stayed one step behind her. “Where does it go?”
“No clue,” Sibyl admitted. “The ancestors didn’t show me.”
Phoebe maneuvered around the open door. Past the opening was another set of stairs—one that led up, not down. She stood on the first stair and waited to see if her feet crashed through rotten floorboards or invisible hands shoved her back down to the basement. When nothing happened, she stepped up to the second stair. Then the third. Before she was fully prepared, she found herself standing in front of a second door, this one embellished with an ornate brass knob. It struck her that a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old brass fixture should have been green with age. Instead, it was the gleaming yellow of recently polished metal.
