But I heard the doubt in his voice. “You aren’t certain?”

He rubbed at his forehead, then at his eyes. He was not old, not in comparison to Eliza, but he was older than the folks who’d raised me. I might have guessed he was a well-preserved sixty, and those decades showed, but he was not at all fragile. He’d handled himself as well as a younger man when Malachi had posed a threat. I wondered who he’d been and what he’d done before coming into Eliza’s service.

I would have asked him directly, but in the course of the explanation that finally followed, he answered everything well enough.

“You’re right. I’m not certain the book is here—or more accurately, I’m quite terrified that it’s not. If it isn’t, then I’ve come all this way and spent all this time for nothing. And it may have cost . . . a great deal.”

“How so?”

Harry reached for a corner of the bedspread and gave it a yank. Once the covers were off, he began to root around between the mattresses. I took his cue and started opening drawers, sifting through cream-colored girdles and stockings.

“I’m not sure how to begin,” he said.

I insisted on the cliché. “Try the beginning.”

“Which one?” He threw up his hands. “Or whose? You already know of John Gray, it would seem, and that is the very beginning. Sort of. You know how he died?”

I shut one drawer and opened another. “I know he was hanged for witchcraft.”

“Yes, that’s brief, but it’s correct. On September twenty-nine, 1840, four priests from St. Augustine’s church went out under cover of darkness. They carried with them rope, pistols, and the Word of God. John Gray had been waging a war against the clergymen, testing his powers even to the point of killing two of them, though it would have been impossible to prove.”

“Why?”

“Because he was using black magic. He’d first practiced on ordinary people—on people who’d angered or offended members of his community. But as he grew stronger he began to play games with the Church as well, sending his ghosts and his devils to haunt, to torment, and even to commit murder. It could not be tolerated, but it could not be stopped without putting a permanent end to Gray himself; so four brave men took on the danger and went after him. Two went into the camp and dragged him out, and the two others were waiting with a coach to spirit them away. They took him to the town square and hanged him before his followers had a chance to retrieve him.

“But then came another beginning. Gray’s wife cut off his hand before he was buried, intending to raise him from the dead.”

“Juanita,” I said.

“Yes, Juanita. She was a Spanish colonial woman who had fled her family to marry him a few years before. She took his hand and then they buried him, leaving his body to await the promised resurrection. When the priests learned of this, they dug him up and burned the rest of his remains, just to be on the safe side.