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WILLOW MADE HER way back toward town, the edges of reality still blurred. Serrin. He was waiting for her. He yearned for her, just as she yearned for him. And... something else? Something urgent. She needed to find the Box. She needed to do it for Serrin.

She barely noticed the shift from forest to town until the cracked pavement of Main Street slapped against the soles of her sandals.

The storefronts remained quiet and indifferent, dim windows staring blankly.

But there—on the right—a squat little shop with a faded wooden sign: “Cutler’s Antiquities. ”

Willow halted, heedful of the rustling in her veins. Within that nondescript store, she would find clues that would lead her to the Box. She knew it.

Inside, the air smelled of old paper and mothballs. Willow moved between the shelves, fingers trailing over tarnished silver and cracked porcelain. A taxidermy moose head stared at her from its wall mount, its glass eyes hauntingly vacant.

“Can I help you?” someone asked.

Willow turned to see a woman behind the glass counter, arms folded, watching her. She had greasy brown hair twisted into a loose bun and small sharp eyes.

“Hi,” said Willow. “I’m looking for... a box?”

The woman’s brows lifted. “A box.”

“A big one. Big enough to hold a human.”

“This isn’t the mortuary, hon. We don’t sell coffins.”

“I’m not looking for a coffin,” Willow said quickly. “Just... coffin-sized. And shaped.” She thought of the pastor who’d disappeared after Wrenna had closed him into the box. Coffins didn’t disappear people, though. At any rate, he’d gotten what he’d deserved.

“What I’m looking for is a box,” she said more firmly. “Not a coffin.”

The woman sighed. “Wrenna Bratton’s box, then. That’s what you’re after.”

Willow’s pulse quickened. Was that how the people in Hemridge thought of it, as Wrenna’s box? It made a sort of sense if she’d kept it after... after whatever she’d had it do to the pastor. “Yes. Wrenna Bratton’s box.”

The woman squinted at Willow, peering at her from this angle and that. “You look a bit like her, that old witch. You related?”

“What? No!” Willow said. If this woman thought of Wrenna as a witch, then she fell squarely into the anti-Wrenna camp. But this woman was in her early thirties, probably. She couldn’t have known Wrenna, even briefly. Could she have?

Willow’s mother had always told her daughters that Wrenna Bratton—her biological mother—had hanged herself when Mercy had been just a baby.

Miriam Candler had suggested that no, in fact, Wrenna hadn’t hanged herself. Miriam had acknowledged that Wrenna had disappeared from Hemridge, however, leaving her baby girl behind.

But Willow’s mother had just this year turned forty, making her several years older than the store clerk for sure. So whatever had happened to Wrenna, there was no way the woman on the other side of the counter had ever encountered her. Not in person.

“I’ve heard of her, that’s all,” Willow said. She remembered Darlene from the bus. “I’m... doing a study on her. Folklore stuff. Oral histories and, um, found objects. And that’s the object I’m trying to find. Wrenna’s box.”

“Hmm,” the woman said. She tipped her chin toward a door at the back of the shop and said, “Come with me.”

Adrenaline coursed up Willow’s spine. “To see the box?”

“No, not that. It’s my little boy. I want you to meet him.”

Now Willow was utterly baffled. “Why?”

“He’s not doing so good. Maybe you can help.”

Willow frowned. “I don’t think so. I don’t even know what you’re—”

“Listen, hon. I know you said you’re not related to Wrenna, but I’m not so sure. Like I said, you’ve got the look of her. And if you’ve got even a touch of what she had, well...”

“You called her a witch,” Willow said flatly.

“Because she was one. I call a spade a spade.” The woman seemed to realize she was shooting herself in the foot because she adopted a stiff expression and said, “Not that I’m judging.”

Willow scoffed. “No?”

“Now, listen,” the woman said, clocking Willow’s demeanor. “This box you’re looking for, the one that’s shaped like a coffin but isn’t a coffin. I know where you can find it.”

Willow drew in a breath.

“You help me, and I’ll help you,” the woman coaxed.

Willow wanted to refuse. She couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of help this woman thought Willow might offer. Still, she gave a curt nod.

In the back room of the store, a small cot sat against the wall. On it lay a little boy who was maybe four years old. He was skinny, save for his stomach, which was swollen and hard.

His eyes lit up when he saw the shop woman.

“Hey, Mama,” he said weakly.

“Teddy boy,” the woman murmured, kneeling beside him and brushing his hair from his damp forehead. Her eyes went to Willow. “He’s sick and getting sicker. Keeps losing weight. Says his tummy hurts. Isn’t that right, Teddy?”

Teddy’s hand drifted to his belly. “It’s not so bad, Mama. Not right this second.”

“People said Wrenna could touch a person and know the wrongness of them. Know the cure.” The woman beckoned Willow closer. “I want you to touch my Teddy.”

Willow’s insides tightened. She couldn’t do anything for this little boy. He needed a doctor, not a nineteen-year-old wastrel who not only had no plans for the future but had no plan to make a plan.

No. Stop. She was here, wasn’t she?

She’d made a plan. This—right here, right now—was her following through on that plan. If this woman, who was watching her with such naked desperation, wanted her to lay her hands upon her sick son, then that was exactly what she’d do. She’d play along. She was good at pretending.

She knelt beside Teddy. “Hey, I’m Willow.”

“I’m Teddy,” he said shyly.

She smiled. He was a darling little boy, sweaty and pale though he was. “Hi, Teddy.”

She took his hand—and the world lurched in that lurching, sickening way she was growing all too familiar with. Why? What was going on? What strange unfolding of herself had she initiated by choosing to come to Hemridge... and could she stop it?

Did she want to?

Too late to consider such questions now.

Willow, caught in the drift of time, saw Teddy, even weaker. She saw a man cradling his limp, wasted body. She saw a small white casket being lowered into the cold, dark ground.

And everywhere, everywhere, the yeasty scent of bread.

Willow jerked her hand from Teddy’s.

“What did you see?” his mother exclaimed. “Tell me!”

Willow’s mouth was dry. “He’s starving.”

Teddy’s mother blinked. “ Starving? No. He eats. He eats plenty.”

“He’s allergic to bread,” Willow said. She felt woozy, but this was important. She needed to make Teddy’s mother understand. “It’s killing him.”

“That’s not a thing,” she said.

“The wheat that’s in the bread—his body can’t process it. If you stop giving it to him, he’ll get better.”

The woman frowned. “Richard won’t like that.”

“Who’s Richard?”

“My husband. He’s a good man, but... our boy, allergic to bread ? It’s the body of Christ.”

Willow laughed uncomfortably. “Well, sure, I suppose. Symbolically.”

“ Not symbolically,” the woman said sharply. “Bread is communion. You don’t take the body, you don’t get the blood. You don’t get the blood, you don’t get the blessing. No blessing, no healing. That’s what Pastor Jim says, and Pastor Jim, he would know, wouldn’t he?”

Willow swallowed hard, her mind flashing on Wrenna, young and defiant, cornered by a different pastor. Mighty hot today, Wrenna. C’mon, I’ll give you a lift.

“‘He that eateth of my flesh, and drinketh of my blood, hath eternal life,’” Teddy’s mother went on. “What kind of parents would we be if we stole that promise from our baby?”

The front door rattled, and a heavyset man stepped into the small room. His eyes flicked to Willow, then to Teddy.

“Hey, bud,” he murmured, ruffling Teddy’s hair with surprising gentleness. It broke Willow a little, seeing this big man take such care with his too-small son.

“Hi, Daddy,” Teddy said.

“Richard, this is Willow,” said Teddy’s mother. “She... she’s here from the city. Training to be a nurse practitioner.”

Willow blinked. That lie came so easily. But it was a smart one. A protective one.

“She says we need to stop letting Teddy eat bread. Wheat.”

Richard swiveled his head and regarded Willow. His expression betrayed no emotion, not even disdain. Just cool neutrality.

“Why would we do that?”

“He’s allergic.”

“To bread,” he stated, as if the concept was too absurd to entertain.

The woman’s eyes darted to her son, then to her husband, then to Willow. “If he stops eating bread, will he get better?”

“We’re not going to stop giving our boy bread, Samantha,” Richard said.

Willow’s lungs tightened. She should tell these people the truth—that she had seen Teddy’s grave. That she knew how this story ended.

Unless maybe she was wrong?

She was special, after all. Maybe she didn’t have to pretend. Maybe there was a way.

She met Samantha’s eyes and made the woman an unspoken offer. I can help you... but only if you help me. It’s an exchange, remember?

Understanding dawned on Samantha’s face. She hustled Willow back through the cluttered aisles of the shop, nearly knocking over a precariously balanced tower of chipped saucers. At the front of the store, she ducked behind the counter and rummaged through one drawer, then another.

“They were the most God-fearing folks I ever met,” she muttered. “Wouldn’t even let their neighbors hang laundry on Sundays.”

“Who?” Willow asked.

“Lem and Elizabeth Whitmire.”

Willow froze. The Whitmires. The ones who had adopted her mother after Wrenna had disappeared. The ones her mother still refused to speak about, even now. Unclean, they’d called her. Shameful. A child of sin.

Samantha glanced up, clocking Willow’s reaction.

“They gutted Wrenna’s house after she vanished,” Samantha said. “Burned near everything. Called it occult. Dangerous.”