Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(45)

“Mmm. I’m still trying to make up my mind about young’uns and I’m nearly twenty-four years old.”

“Okay. I’ll decide if I want a man and babies after I’m twenty-four.”

I smiled. We both sipped.

“Why’nt you’un got no Christmas tree?”

I topped up our cups. “Well, sister mine, I’ve had no time to think about Christmas. Soon, though.”

“You’un tell me when and I’ll help you.”

“Deal.”

The three mouser cats raced down the stairs and leaped on the couch to curl on top of us and around us. The house warmed. And it occurred to me that . . . that maybe Mud could live here. With me. And that maybe I could give her a small part of my land. Like a land dowry. Or something. If Daddy would ever let her move in with me.

“You know you’un got green leaves growing out your’n fingers?”

I held out my hand, fingers splayed. “Yep.”

“Am I gonna grow green leaves?”

“I have no idea, sister mine.”

“I reckon we’ll figger it out as we go, then.”

“I reckon,” I agreed, ideas and possibilities racing around in my brain like bumper cars, all filled with excitement and delight slamming into concern and fear. All the things that could go wrong. All the things that I might have to reveal to my family. The tree I had to corral and harness and direct. Brother Ephraim to kill. Again. And all that very soon.

? ? ?

My time with Mud was short, but I let her help me clip the foliage off my neck and away from my fingernails. She seemed to find it amusing, and giggled every time a leaf went flying. The laughter did us both good, but I was going to be late to work, and so I cut it short, gathering up my gear and herding the cats onto the back porch. Then I drove my sister back to the church compound, let her out, and watched her go inside the Nicholson house.

Not wanting to do it, but knowing I had to, I drove to the tree, parked, and got out, wrapping my coat tightly about me, shoving my hands deep into my pockets. The sun was setting, casting a red glow on the once-upon-a-time oak and dark shadows leaning long behind it.

The tree was no longer young and vibrant and full of life. It had dark, thick bark and abundant, swollen leaves, too thick and pliable to be a live oak or a deciduous tree. The leaves were more like the foliage of a succulent, with scarlet-lined veins that, when broken, dripped a red substance viscous as blood, gooey and oily.

The tree had grown wildly since I had used it to heal me. It now had the girth of an old-growth tree, bigger than five men holding hands could reach around, with branches that coiled and curled. Vines sprouted from the jointure of limbs and trunk, each covered with needle-like thorns. At the base lay the remains of a cement block wall, tumbled and fallen in shattered heaps, the wall the churchmen had constructed with the hope of keeping the tree confined. They had also tried chain saws, fire, herbicides, dynamite, and a bulldozer, which the tree had eaten. It was entombed inside the mass of leaves and vines and branches somewhere, the huge behemoth buried. This one tree looked like the forest of a child’s fairy tale, one capable of burying a kingdom.

Around its base, at the wide dripline, roots had sprouted up new growth. It looked as if the tree was trying to grow an enchanted—or cursed—forest.

“You figured out a way to kill that thing?”

I didn’t turn around at the sound of my brother’s voice. “Hey, Sam. My last suggestion didn’t work, I guess.”

“Couldn’t get close enough to cut it or blow it up. Thought about throwing a stick of TNT on it and hoping for the best, but I was afraid it might throw it back at us.”

I breathed out a laugh, a sound a wereleopard might make. Chuffing. Tilted my head to Sam. He was standing to my left, at the back of the truck. Like me, he was dressed in winter layers, his hands in his pockets. A hand-crocheted toboggan in Mama’s favorite blues was on his head. With each breath, he blew a cloud of vapor.

“What is it, Nell?”

I shook my head, watching him in my peripheral vision. “I need to do some thinking, brother mine. On the vampire tree. On a lot of things. When I got something to say or do, I’ll let you know.”

Sam pressed his fists deeply into his pockets, his heavy jacket pulling down. “When that time comes, am I gonna have to hold off the pitchforks and kerosene to keep some a the church folk from burning you at the stake?”

“Would you protect me, Sam?”

“Yes.”

I nodded at the simple statement. “Why did you set Benjamin on me? Why did you surprise me like that?”

My brother shrugged. “You been gone a long time, but I still miss you, Nellie. I miss your spirit and your smart mouth. I miss the way you don’t let nothing and no one stop you from doing the right thing. Even if you’un suffer for it. Daddy, he’s been fighting the mamas for months about going to the surgeon. You’un stomped him and now he’s got an appointment.” The church-speak faded as he spoke. “The family needs you. The church needs you. We need you to lead us into the twenty-first century. Into the future. It’s that or die.” When I said nothing he added, “Church membership numbers were highest in 1954, at well over twelve hundred. Now church rolls stand at six hundred fourteen, with women leaving the church all the time. The church is dying.”