“Trust me,” Faith said. Her hands were folded in front of her. She was a very serious girl. Love was not her business, but repaying Finney for all he’d done was.

“I trust you to bury me if I die,” Finney quipped. Then he grew silent as he thought of his deep loneliness and all he’d lost. He gulped down the elixir. “God help me,” he said.

Faith ignored him and recited the incantation.

“Let the one who drinks this wine be granted true love divine.”

Nothing happened. “Your experiment has failed,” Finney was quick to say.

“I have to decide on who the right woman will be and she must drink as well. Once she does there is no going back.”

“That’s not exactly comforting.” Finney patted Faith’s head as if she were a child, then got up to see to Arnold. “I only hope it doesn’t work on horses.”

Faith laughed and went into the house. She and Keeper set off for the butcher, where she would get a bundle of bones and meat scraps. She had a few women in mind for Finney. The fruit vendor’s daughter at the market, a neighbor who had recently lost her husband, a woman who sold books. She’d planned to take the Tenth with her, but in her hurry she left it on the garden table. Faith was happy to be with her beloved Keeper, forgetting that once magic has begun it cannot so easily be put away.

The Tree of Heaven was blooming with the last of its red flowers when Maria set to work in the herb garden that day. She had been attempting to grow mampuritu, an herb from Curaçao that was accustomed to warmer climates. It was a very stubborn herb. She had tried lighting a fire near it, to warm its roots, to no avail. Perhaps she should rid the garden of the herb, for it made her think of Samuel Dias, even when she didn’t wish to, and she was glad to be interrupted when Catherine Durant arrived at the gate, her little white dog following close behind. Catherine had been using Maria’s black soap, which so refreshed her that she looked ten years younger than her age. “Is this what happens to all of your customers?” she called to Maria, who was down on her knees, weeding between rows of parsley and sage. “Once we use your soap, we can’t live without it?”

Maria laughed and clapped the soil from her hands. She would always be grateful for the simple pie magic that had brought her daughter home. “For you,” she told Catherine, “the soap is always a gift.”