“Avery.” It barely came out. Surely I hadn’t said that aloud. It could not be true. It could not. But Malachi knew, more certainly than I did. I could see it in the bulging veins at his temples and the paralyzed jerking of his hands.

“Say it so he can hear it. You say my name, and you tell him you were right.”

“Avery.” There. It was out, and loud enough to be heard. Malachi closed his buggy eyes and tears of frustration welled out from the cracks. “You can’t be. That’s not possible.” Even as I contradicted him, I knew it was pointless.

“And you can’t be my long-lost baby, but that’s so too.”

I faltered, realizing I wasn’t holding the gun. I felt around for it, but didn’t find it. I didn’t even look down at the floor. I couldn’t look anywhere at all except at him, and it didn’t seem important, somehow. I’d walked in with a gun, and now it was gone. Not in my hands. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except to see him some more, and to hear him talk. “You’re wrong,” I argued again, maybe just to hear him speak.

“Now, why would you fuss, when you know it’s a fact? You’re my child—I know it, you know it, the women know it—” and here he gestured at the door, as if he’d known all along they were there. “Even the spirit at the hospital, this boy’s momma, she knew it. She smelled it on you right away.”

“Wha—what?”

“You know that place—that place where you were born. That angry old bitch knew by your smell that you must be mine, but that’s not why she tried to scare you so bad. Malachi, when’s your momma gonna give up and go to rest? All the folks she hates are dead. I’d send her on myself if she’d listen.”

Malachi mumbled a furiously garbled answer, but I didn’t understand or care. The air inside the shack was so heavy I could feel it pressing down against my skin; I could have taken a handful of it and squeezed it into some shape. Or perhaps it was just the smell of the evil herbs churning and boiling as the night approached. The night—yes, the night was approaching. I only had until sundown.

Maybe until sundown.

Hang on, Lulu, I prayed, trying to pull my thoughts together into something coherent enough to be useful.

“What are you talking about? That thing—that thing that talked to me at Pine Breeze? You sent it there?” Just stringing the words together was almost more than I could do. What was he doing to me? Was it magic, or hypnotism, or simply a very difficult truth that pressed so heavy on my sanity? “Did you send that monster after me, to chase me off?”