Devil was the biggest gator anybody’d ever seen, so it made sense he’d have the biggest gator hole in the Glades. Like all gators, as the winter dry season began, he’d scrape out all the vegetation from this low spot in the limestone floor and create a big wallowing hole. Fish would work their way into it, turtles and frogs too, and even some birds would come around to see if they could snag a quick meal. Sometimes those birds and turtles became gator snacks.

In the wet summers gators left their holes and spread out through the Glades, but not this year. The dry spell made gator holes more important than ever.

The edges of Devil’s hole were piled high with muck he’d scraped out. This provided rootin’ soil for things like cattails, swamp lilies, ferns and arrowleaf. Yellow-flowered spatterdock lilies floated on the surface of the blood-tinged water.

Devil lifted his head and let out a hoarse, rumbling bellow, then let it flop back down into the water as if it was too heavy to hold up.

“He’s hurtin’, Luke. Hurtin’ bad.”

Because of me, she thought.

Guilt scalded her. She’d considered Devil indestructible, invincible, almost supernatural. But he wasn’t. He was just a big, misshapen gator who would have been happy spendin’ his days doin’ what gators do: lolling in his hole, eatin’ this and that, waitin’ for the rains.

But no. Semelee couldn’t let him be. She had to roust him out of his comfy hole and lead him out of the Glades into the outer world where he didn’t belong. The result was he got hurt. Hurt bad.

“He can’t die,” she said. “He just can’t.”

She had this terrible feeling that if Devil died, part of the spirit of the Glades would die with him. And it would be all her fault.

“It was that guy,” Luke said. “That city guy you been takin’ a shine to. He done this.”

“No, he didn’t. I already told you that. He didn’t have nothin’ to do with hurtin’ Devil. It was the old lady. She’s the one. She’s some sorta witch. So’s her dog.”

In a way Semelee was secretly glad that the old witch’s spell, or whatever it was, had kept Devil out of her yard. Because she’d seen her man, the special one, place himself between Devil and his father. She’d’ve had to go through him to get to the old man, and that would’ve meant hurtin’ him, maybe even killin’ him, somethin’ she definitely didn’t want to do. But it had showed her that he was made of good stuff. That was important.

“I say we do all three of them—old lady, father, and son—and have done with it.”

“No. I told you: The son ain’t to be touched.”