“But there is something more here than just a girl flying to her lover,” Jolene continued, narrowing her eyes with speculation. She paused, then ordered, suddenly, “Tell me what it is.”

A wave of pure power washed over Anna’s unshielded self—because she had never thought she would need to shield against Jolene. Anna tried, she really tried to stop herself from telling. But the words came out of her mouth anyway. “Josh has magic. I’m helpin’ t’larn him how to scry, so’s we c’n talk ev’ night.” So far, it didn’t appear that Josh had enough magic to make the trick work, but Anna had no intention of giving up without a good fight. Much as she liked using the little “black mirror” that Josh had made for her (with black enamel paint and a hand-sized picture frame and its glass) to see him before she went to bed at night, she would much rather have been able to talk to him as she could with Aunt Jinny and two of the Elemental Masters her aunt knew.

And she clapped both hands over her mouth, but it was too late.

“Oh, really?” Jolene’s lips curved in a little smile. “I knew that Joshua is a stone craftsman, but he is also one with power? How very interesting.”

The hair on the back of Anna’s neck rose. Niver get a-twixt Jolene and somethin’ she wants, Anna heard, ringing in her memory.

“Still! The hours are passing, and you have much to teach him, and it is clear that your mind would not be on what I was going to teach you today.” Jolene made little fluttering motions with her fingers. “Run on, Anna May! But watch what is around you.”

She laughed and took a few steps backward, allowing the vegetation to somehow absorb her. And in a moment, she was gone.

Anna ran.

Josh worked away at his statue with single-minded intensity; he acknowledged her presence with an absent-minded peck on the cheek, but turned back to his statue immediately. It was clear that she had arrived at a critical time in its creation, so she took her usual seat on a stool and tried to calm her nerves, which had been badly rattled by the encounter with Jolene.

“Y’all know Jolene?” she asked, when at last he paused to study what he had done.

He snorted. “Ain’t a man in th’ Ducktown Basin thet don’t. She could hev ary a man she wanted. Not—” he added hastily, “—thet I’m a-sayin’ she’s loose, ’cause she ain’t. Hasn’t nobody, nowhere, iver said he got more’n a ‘howdy’ from her. But y’all’d hev t’be blind not t’ see her what with thet fire-hair and her purdy green dresses, an’ she seems ter make a point o’ knowin’ ev’body’s names at least.”

Well, she was at a loss of how to ask what she wanted to know next. Like how well did he know her, and did she ever come to the farm? And if so, why? She already knew that Josh was a stone carver—was that what interested her?