Page 16 of The Bane Witch
16
Normal
The confusion is written across their faces. The offense. I have done what even Aunt Myrtle didn’t dare to—ungraciously rejected their goodwill. Taken all their generosity and fisted it before dumping it back at their feet. But if I don’t say this, say anything, I will hate myself for it.
They don’t all return to their seats, not for me. A few glide slowly back, lower themselves down as I take the floor, but many remain, sticking to their respective places like pins in a corkboard, glowering in my direction. Azalea and Barbie lean against the wall, arms crossed, waiting. Rose spins on her heel, staring at me as if I’ve just lifted my leg and pissed the rug. But the only one who really matters, I suppose, is Great-Great-Aunt Bella, and she has not budged from her original place. Her daughter Donna, who’d moved behind her to direct her chair, takes a step back.
“I know you’ve made your decision,” I begin, as a couple more find a seat. “And I’m grateful for your confidence in me, truly.” We all know confidence is the last thing they have in me, but I’d rather not stomp on the hive after I’ve already angered the bees.
“Don’t confuse charity with confidence,” Rose interrupts, her lips pinched.
I swallow, ignoring her words. “But…” My eyes dart to Azalea, who is slowly shaking her head. I quickly look away. “What if I don’t want it?”
Donna’s brow creases. “Don’t want what, dear?”
I take a breath. “ This. Being a bane witch. The venery. All of it.”
Beside Aunt Bella, Lattie breaks out into peals of high-pitched laughter, but Donna looks sick to her stomach. Myrtle grimaces in my direction with worried eyes.
“What if I just want a normal life?” I ask, frustrated by the looks of incredulity hemming me in.
“Here we go,” Barbie says, throwing her hands up. “Just like her mother.”
“A normal life?” Aunt Bella croaks out, ignoring Barbie’s outburst. Her eyes peer up at me, flashing with outrage.
“Well, yeah,” I tell her. “You know, without all the killing and hunting and poisoning and whatever.”
A muscle under her left eye twitches as if it is trying to communicate by Morse code. “What do you imagine that to be, this normal life you will live?”
I wave my hands in the air. “I’ll live here for a while until I find another job. And then I’ll move wherever that is. I’ll wake to coffee in the mornings and drink hot tea at night. I’ll have a small place that I keep tidy, and a dog for company. Maybe, in the distant future, I’ll date again. Maybe I’ll find real love. A partner. Someone who really gets me. Who is easy to be with. Or maybe I’ll live alone, able to make my own decisions about everything from what sweater to wear to what car to buy. But it will be mine, and that’s what matters.”
The old woman scoffs. “Donna, please tell our new recruit what her normal life will actually look like.”
“Of course.” Her daughter stands, the sleek paleness of her hair and sharpness of her cheekbones creating a lean, coyote elegance despite her advanced age. She smiles the way a cat might smile at a wounded bird. She clasps her arms behind her back as she begins pacing around me slowly. “You will, as you say, make your own decisions for a time. Coffee and tea and perhaps even the dog. If you’re lucky, you’ll land that shiny new job before the hunger kicks in. But you’ll lose it the second the cravings overtake you. Unable to concentrate on your work, your performance will suffer. You’ll begin missing days as the hunger drives you farther and farther to feed. Any friends you made will write you off as undependable, maybe even mentally unstable, when you stop returning calls, cannot explain where you’ve been or why, turn up at the edges of their property, your shoes lost and dress tattered, streaks of berry juice dripping down your chin.
“Resisting the urge to kill, you will condemn yourself to inevitable mental decline, slowly losing your grip on reality, on what is true and what is not. You will act and speak in ways that are unguarded, that leave you vulnerable and make no sense to the people around you, who will distance themselves over time. As the toxins you feed on build up in your system with no release, they will turn on you, devouring your mind. The extent of your unrest is anybody’s guess. But it will be certain. And it will be disastrous.
“If you have a dog, it will cower from you once the cycle begins. It will smell your bloom coming and begin disappearing for lengths of time, pissing on the carpet, hiding under the bed. Perhaps it will finally run away for good. That is if you don’t kill it first. Every date you go on will be a disappointment. Even if they aren’t a mark, you will sense things about these men they never wanted you to know. Things you never wanted to know. If they are attracted to you, you’ll never be sure if it’s genuine or just the allure. You’ll become paranoid, insecure. If you find someone patient or desperate enough to stick around, you will end up killing him by accident when you’re in bloom—a thoughtless kiss, an erotic evening, even just a misplaced sneeze or falling tear. When he’s gone, you’ll learn that you’re pregnant.
“You might think it a blessing until they are born. If you have a son, he won’t be likely to live beyond infancy, not if he’s in your care, and that’s if you don’t kill him in the womb first. You’ll bury him, knowing it was your fault. Not in that way normal parents grieve a child, believing they could have prevented some terrible end. You will know with absolute certainty that your child died by your hand. And it will ruin you. If you have a girl, she’ll live. For many years you’ll think all is well. And then puberty will approach. Her own cycle will begin. She’ll bloom, potentially before her time if your line is any indication. And she’ll kill some innocent in a daze of ignorance, traumatizing her beyond belief.”
I swallow, my throat dry as old tobacco. Her argument is indisputable. I know what she is saying is true because I have lived it.
“There will be witnesses. She’ll become a suspect or at least appear suspicious enough that you will feel compelled to flee with her to protect her life. Maybe you’ll land somewhere safe for a while. But it won’t last. Before you know it, she’ll kill again. And again. Until eventually, you alert the attention of the community around you, where she’ll be tried and executed in front of you, if they don’t drag her out and murder her first.
“By this point, you are a shell. Life will no longer feel worth living. And we will come for you in the night, overpowering your senses, driving you to an early grave with a toxicity so powerful even God wouldn’t have immunity to it.” She pauses before me, her long arms crossed over themselves, her face punishing in the warm lights of the café. “And all of that is only if you don’t manage to get yourself killed, which you undoubtedly will.”
“Thank you, Donna,” the old matriarch says. “That was very enlightening.”
Her daughter returns to her seat, a smug smile crowning her long face.
“So, you see,” Aunt Bella begins, leaning forward as she stares up at me, “what you want is irrelevant.”
My mouth drops open, leaden. A bead of sweat is running along the curve of my neck, sitting atop my collarbone. I think I hear my pulse. Henry chides me in my mind, Piers, show some dignity. Find your tongue. “B-but that’s not fair.”
She falls back against her wheelchair, upsetting the chicken momentarily. “Was it fair when that man I told you about took some young girl’s virginity without her consent? Or when the man you killed beat his wife into submission? Was it fair when your mother accidentally killed your father because she insisted on living out a romantic fantasy regardless of the consequences? Was it fair when Myrtle gave up her son to keep him alive? Or when Misty gave up two of hers? Was it fair when the first bane witch risked her life to save another’s in childbirth, only to be thanked with a brutal rape by the noble husband, her own beloved babe ripped from her womb in a torrent of blood that left them both for dead?” She stops and shakes her head, amusement playing across her lips. “Humph. Fair. What a useless word.” Her eyes dig into mine; they are hard as gems. “We’re not interested in fair in this family. We are interested in justice. ”
I suck in air as if I’ve been gut punched. Reeling, I manage to stay on my feet. “How can you call this justice?” I whisper, my voice quavering. “You’re murderers! All of you. This is not justice. It’s death.”
She cocks her head, eyes crinkling at the corners. In her lap, Rowena ruffles her feathers. “Sometimes,” she says wisely, “they are one and the same.”
“How can you say that?” I blurt. “How can any of you say that?” I look around the room. The faces have hardened like salt dough. The smiles and chatter have dropped. They regard me coldly, a worm on a hook. “These aren’t marks you’re killing, they’re men. They have lives. They have families. It’s not for us to decide if they live or die.”
“Then who is it for?” Bella asks. “Go ahead. Tell me. I’ll wait.”
My jaw works soundlessly before I arrive lamely at, “The courts. The judicial system.”
She laughs, and they follow, snickering behind hands and into collars. My naivete thrills them. “How many women do you know who have been helped by the judicial system?”
When I can’t answer, she continues.
“These magical courts you speak of, have they worked for you?”
I stare at her, stricken. “M-me?”
She nods. “Come now, you think we don’t know, that Myrtle didn’t tell us? About your man? The one who used you, who controlled and tormented you? Tell me, did the courts protect you from him?”
My eyes fill with tears, face reddening, a blister of shame. “No.”
“No,” she repeats, watching me. “I didn’t think so.” Her eyes travel the room. “Azalea, tell us about your last mark.”
Azalea steps forward, radiant, a coy smile on her face. “Percell,” she purrs, drawing out the l sound. “Such a charmer.” Her sarcasm lights the room up with laughter. “He ran a multibillion-dollar corporation on the West Coast. He was a man of… how shall I put this?” She fingers the fruit charms on her enamel bracelet. “Discriminating tastes,” she finally finishes. “He had a cannibal fetish. One his money and prestige allowed him to move from the realm of fantasy to reality. He only indulged in female meat,” she adds when my face pales. “He had two sons also. I decided they were better off without that sick fuck guiding their lives. Now they’ll grow up rich and sad but otherwise normal. They’ll go to private school and work for hedge funds and maybe do a little coke. But they won’t eat people.”
“Thank you, Azalea.” Bella looks disturbed. “That was… vivid.”
Azalea nods and steps back, leaning against the wall as she grins.
Aunt Bella stares at me. “How would your courts handle that man? Hmmm? Where is his justice outside of this venery?”
“I—They probably wouldn’t,” I admit. “Because his money protects him. But that’s just one person.”
She smiles and raises a bent finger, pointing to Verna, whose pixie cut and boyish build make her stand out in the room.
Without a word, Verna begins. “My last mark was a judge in the district courts. He liked to film kiddie porn on the weekends for his hobby. When I found him, he’d already raped over seventy boys between the ages of six and fifteen, several of whom he paid for exclusive rights to after they were sexually trafficked. He was never going to stop,” she says, giving me a hard stare. “ Never. ”
“But you stopped him, didn’t you, Verna?” Bella asks.
She smiles bashfully. “With a tampon in his thermos.”
Bella’s eyebrows arch. “Creative…”
The young woman dips her chin innocently. “He was driving to his ‘summer home’ near the Canyonlands of Utah. He kept a special room there, a fitting place for him to die. They didn’t find his body for many days. By the time they did, the thermos had been scrubbed with oxygen bleach.”
Bella looks at me. “See? Even your judicial system is corrupted. But we are not. There isn’t a woman in this room who has taken an innocent life. Not a one. If your mother were still alive, she would be the only exception.”
Even I fall under this rule, I realize. Three men, every one deserving in their own way. But the urge to defend my mom, however new, beats hard in my chest. “Because she didn’t want to be a killer.”
“Because she didn’t listen!” Lattie hisses before Bella can respond. “If she had done her duty, your father would be alive, and in his place countless predators put out of commission. But she was selfish, just like you. She wanted a normal life.” She says the last line mockingly. I feel absurd.
My cheeks are wet, sticky with tears and heat; my mouth cannot form another word. It feels gummy inside, disintegrating. I’m so confused and sick and horrified I can hardly stand. I know when I’m bested.
“You stand there and judge us,” Rose says acidly, moving toward me, corrosive and sparking. “Your own kind. But where is your judgment for the men who rape and kill and hit and take? Who barricade themselves behind money and power and a culture that protects them, champions their aggression and narcissism? You are sick with poison, but it’s not ours, it’s theirs. It spreads in you even now, tainting your self-image, the way you look at everything, especially other women. The men we kill are not victims. But you are. And you should know better.”
Her words are like a chemical burn in my ears. I want to flush them out before they scar. Why is it easier for me to point a finger at these women than the men who provoked them? Shouldn’t someone stand in contrast to the misogyny that has defined us for millennia? The vigilante in me has been hog-tied, wrists and ankles numb, circulation cut off. A banded appendage that fell off long ago. A vestigial tail.
Aunt Bella grips the wheels of her chair and rolls toward me. She raises a crooked hand to take one of my own. “We are products of their violence,” she says softly. “As long as they commit crimes against our sex with such impunity, as long as the imbalance exists, so will we.”
Myrtle steps forward. “Piers, I know this must be hard for you to swallow. Lily tried to shelter you from it, and it has only done more damage. But listen when we tell you, there is no other choice. It’s not fair, but it’s fact. You either live as a bane witch, or you die as one. There is no in-between.”
The soft pads of Aunt Bella’s fingers are cool against my own. “We have lost too many to count over the centuries,” she says sadly. “Many casualties in the first, stumbling generations of our kind as we adjusted to the weight of our magic. Women who weren’t careful enough, who miscalculated, who paid the price. Girls even, who simply paid for their mother’s transgressions. And then came the fires and the burnings. So many innocents lost we could never cleanse the world of that bloodshed. But among them, so many of our own, too. Now we are cleaner and clearer and far more careful, but safety is never a guarantee. If we are hard, sweet child, if we seem cruel…” Her hand grips mine with a force and dexterity I wouldn’t have known it still had, crushing my knuckles together. “It is because we have to be to keep you safe, to keep ourselves alive. There cannot be room for error without making room for death.”
I stare down at Aunt Bella, knowing I cannot escape again. Henry was one thing, but how many bridges can I survive? Is there one tall enough to leave the bane witch behind? My mother tried to evade her fate, and she was a resolute failure. The only choice I have is to go down the same doomed path she took or forge my own.
“But I died,” I tell them. “I died so that I could live on my own, as my own.”
“You died to an illusion of weakness,” Bella says to me, “so that you may live your strength.”
Her words are the final swing of the hammer. My chest hitches and a sob erupts, laying my soul bare. I am cornered.
“It’s time,” the old matriarch whispers gently. “Take your place, Piers Corbin. You are a victim no longer.”
T HE CABIN FEELS stifling. Everyone is crammed in for the after-party, wedged into sofas and chairs, clumping around the kitchen and near the windows, sipping the hot toddies Myrtle keeps passing out and munching on finger sandwiches. A bowl of dessert mints sits on the low table in front of me, little pastel pillows that melt in your mouth, making this look for all the world like just another wedding shower or holiday. My hands are pressed between my knees. To my left, Verna is hanging over the arm of the couch, chatting Misty up about Pilates; to my right, Ivy and Tina are discussing canapés. I feel as if I have fallen into an alternate universe. I have to remind myself that only weeks ago, Misty followed a man back to his car and offered to blow him in an empty parking lot, then stood back and watched him die, and that Verna grows deadly wolfsbane in her garage. There will be a moment where these contradictions come together to form a complete picture in my mind, where Pilates and wolfsbane make sense in the same sentence and I won’t wonder if the canapés are laced with shaved columbine root. But it hasn’t happened yet.
When Ivy gets up to go to the bathroom and Tina wanders into the kitchen to help Aunt Myrtle, Azalea plops down next to me. “You look positively green. What’s the matter? Is the pimiento cheese not agreeing with you?”
A plume of perfumed air rises to greet my nose, and I have to admit, she smells divine. “Is that the allure?” I ask, overcome. “That intoxicating smell?”
She giggles. “No, silly. That’s perfume. It’s called Jump Up and Kiss Me by Clive Christian.”
I shake my head to disperse the fragrant cloud and gesture toward her. “How do you afford all this?” It’s rude to ask, but I can’t help myself. “You’re so young.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Don’t you know it’s impolite to talk about money?”
“Yes, of course. Sorry.” I break eye contact, feeling like an ass.
She shoves my arm playfully. “I’m kidding! There are no secrets in the venery. Look, Myrtle probably hasn’t parsed it all out for you yet, but here’s the gist. We have money.”
“We?”
“The family, ” she says under her breath. “Generational wealth, you could say. It’s important that we have a way to take care of ourselves and to do what we’re called to do. So, it’s something they’ve been working on for a very long time.”
“They?”
“Yes, they. They. The venery in perpetuity. The bane witches who’ve gone before us.” She quirks a brow at me like I’m being weird but it’s cute.
“Oh, right.” I nod as if I understand.
“Rose and Donna are the biggest holders,” she says, eyes darting to where they stand. “And of course, Great-Grandma Bella. But assets are distributed between us all. They just kind of stay on top of that part for everyone. Like, if you’re playing Monopoly, they’re the bankers.”
“Oh.” My eyes must widen because she tries to reassure me.
“Don’t worry. Your needs will be met. We all do our part to add to the funds of course. And, you know, I have ways of taking care of myself.” She flutters her lashes demurely.
“And where did this money come from? Or does?” I scrunch up my brow as I wait for her to answer. Henry never liked me in volved in our finances, but I listened well and overheard enough. And I’d run a successful business for years before he showed up.
She turns her head toward me. “Where do you think?” And then she laughs.
“Right.” I swallow hard. From marks. “But how does that work? I mean, I thought we couldn’t, you know, have relationships or be connected to our… our victims.”
“Aren’t you full of questions tonight,” she chides. “Look, it’s complicated. So it’s only ever taken on by a select few bane witches, and only after the whole venery agrees. But on occasion a mark might be coerced into marriage if he has substantial assets to be gained. We think of it as financial karma, an investment in justice to lift a bit of the stain from his soul. But it’s incredibly hard to pull off; it takes enormous care, planning, and self-control. So don’t go getting any ideas. Your mother could have done it, I’m told. That’s what the venery had selected for her, but she refused. So, Rose took her place. Nearly got herself killed. It’s left her a little bitter.”
I nod slowly. “I picked up on that.”
Azalea passes me a hot toddy from Myrtle’s abandoned tray. “Drink. It’ll help.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask, taking a sip.
She assesses me a moment, then shrugs. “I like you.”
I harrumph at that.
“Seriously,” she insists. “You don’t believe me?”
I eyeball her. “ How will we know she’s proven herself? You know, for a moment there, I thought you had my back,” I reply with heavy skepticism.
“I did have your back,” she tells me. When I don’t look convinced, she keeps going. “If I don’t point out the obvious, someone else will. We can’t dance around the issues, Piers. We would never last that way. We have to confront risks head-on, the reality of who we are and what we do and how to keep ourselves safe. Myrtle says you’re the real deal, that you’re not your mother. That you just need instruction. And I believe her. I believe in giving you a chance to prove yourself. You may not realize it, but I went to bat for you in there. I gave them a reason to try. Parameters make them feel safe. You didn’t stand a chance otherwise. I bought you those six weeks, so don’t flub it up. And for what it’s worth, I think what you did was brave.”
“What I did?”
She rests a hand on my knee. Suddenly, in spite of the perky ponytail and the exposed midriff and the lime-green nail polish, Azalea seems decades older than she is. “Standing up to them,” she whispers. “It was stupid, but brave.”
I look down into my toddy. The caramel color is inviting, like being underwater in the Cooper River. “I’m out of practice.”
This time, it’s Azalea’s turn to look confused.
“Standing up for myself,” I admit. “I haven’t done it in a very long time.”
Her eyes glisten with amusement. “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true. According to Aunt Myrtle, that’s all you’ve been doing since you left Charleston.”
My eyes meet hers, and behind the party-girl glint, I see deeper things—sadness and pain. Innocence lost. Things that can’t be spoken but must be carried. Things I understand intimately. “It wasn’t Charleston I left.”
She pats my knee and stands up, looking down at me after she finishes her toddy in one big gulp. “One demon at a time, cousin. One demon at a time.”