Leave it to Mom and her raw food phase, which lasted exactly three days, to point out that the closet with racks set inside that we’d come across in the shop looked like a big dehydrator, the kind you’d use to dry fruit leather, but on a bigger scale. We realized it was for drying out the plants before transferring them to the jars.

I went to the closet and pulled out the top rack, setting it on the counter. I reached for the oleander with my bare hand but stopped. I looked back at Isaac, who was, of course, watching my every move, so I grabbed a scoop and transferred the oleander to the drying rack without touching it.

“What, uh, what can I get for you?” I sounded like I was working the drive-through at McDonald’s, but it was better than asking, “What kind of wild shit can I grow in my weird garden for you?”

“I need two ounces of brimstone,” Isaac said.

“Um, what?”

“From the pits of hell.”

I whipped my head around.

“Forgive me,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest. “My humor has been described as dry, but not always appropriate.”

“Brimstone just sounds scary.”

“Technically, it’s sulfur,” he said. “But brimstone sounds more dramatic, and I love all things dramatic.”

I glanced toward the top shelves. Everything was in alphabetical order, but I couldn’t remember seeing anything marked brimstone, and it definitely wasn’t something I could grow in the garden—poison or otherwise.

I slid the ladder over and climbed up. Between a jar of Brazil nuts and a container of bryony was a circular indentation in the back wall of the shelf. I ran my fingers over it and a small door popped open. The smell of rotten eggs wafted out. A covered jar sat inside the hidden space. The label read Brimstone.

“I’ll assume by the look on your face that you found it,” he said.

Climbing down, I tried to hold the jar as far away from me as I could. As soon as I got to the bottom, I set it on the counter.

“Wanna take the whole thing?” I asked, nudging it toward him.

“Two ounces is all I need at the moment,” he said.

I searched the drawers for something to scoop the chunks of yellow sulfur from the jar. I’d never get the smell off my hand if I touched it. Shifting some papers around under the counter, I found a leather-bound book. I lugged it out and opened it on the counter.

Inside were stubs from countless receipts. A pound of mug-wort, a quarter pound of powdered acacia root, twenty-six sticks of palo santo, all accounted for with names and dates—Louise Farris, October 20, 1995; Hudson Laramie, June 12, 1990; Angela Carroll, August 14, 1993.