Chapter 1: Black Beans

        The last time Truly had seen a spirit like the one before her, it had been the worst night of her life. She’d grown accustomed to the blurs of movement in her periphery, the soft echo of footsteps, the feeling of being watched. But in the thirteen years since she’d come to New Orleans, the spirits had learned not to test her. In nearly all that time, not one had dared to step into her path.
    Until now.
    It was the eyes she couldn’t shake—runny and pleading, the color of bladderwort in June, with sclera so deep a brown they were almost black. At least there were two. Spirits didn’t always conform to symmetry or conventional appearance, unbound as they were by biological constraints. Most of them had never lived a human life. Many had never lived at all.
    She was sure she’d seen those eyes before, guiding her through the darkness that night, water up to her chin, the reflective gleam of an alligator’s gaze hovering in the distant moonlight. But it was hard to say for sure. That night sat hazily in her memory like a bad humor, a nightmare she’d never quite woken up from. The strange eyes of the spirit drilled into her now, a message she didn’t want to read brimming behind them. Not all spirits bothered with prophecies and predictions, even when they were privy to them. Those that did had an unfortunate taste for doom. This one, by the look of it, was not sitting on an auspicious omen. It was covered in a mat of sodden fur, as if it had brought the swamp; and it smelled of scorched wood, autumn rain, and something feculent. More likely it was here to portend a calamitous turn in her life path. Or should she say, another calamitous turn. Whatever it wanted could not mean anything good for her. But interacting with it would only make matters worse.
    Truly took a measured breath, averted her gaze, and stepped around it. Maybe it was just lost or confused, she consoled herself. Looking for a handout. Halloween was three days ago, and the city crawled with spirit activity then. And tourists. But acknowledgment was like pouring water on a grease fire. Best not to talk to them. Better not to look them in the eye. Too late for that last one, but she would be more careful on her walk home. That’s how Truly had navigated the Crescent City without being mobbed, and there were plenty of other witches here to draw their attention. Once she got to the Black Pony Bar, she’d have several hours of blissful relief. Spirits were disinclined to venture indoors, however needy.
   It was a shame, though, the way her family legacy was dying on the vine. She’d once thought of Thorngood magic as a rich vein of gold ore in a sea of sandstone, a deep, unshakable connection to something more. But that was before it had ruined her. Her magic had given her access to a vast world beyond their own populated by spirits of every stripe, not just ghosts and the temperamental poltergeists of horror stories. But not unlike this one, that world came with hazards. If she could, Truly would get rid of it entirely, switch her magic off like a faulty lamp rather than carry it around like a grenade that might detonate at any moment. But it was something the women in her family were born with. And Truly—like her mother, Veralyn, and her grandmother Mae and on and on down the line to the very first Thorngood witch—had been born with it in spades.
    Magic, Truly had learned the hard way, simply wasn’t worth the cost. And the cost was that it always tied you to a spirit. Except when it didn’t, and that was even worse.
    It was far safer, she’d determined, to ignore it, to pretend the world around her was made up of nothing more than base elements and biology. Wood and brick and stone punctuated by the occasional branching tree or patch of sun-parched grass, woefully devoid of anything other than their individual parts and a basic instinct for survival. Just things, not people. Flat. Shallow. Empty. Not dense with spirit and energy. Not full of magic and potential.
    Anything else was too painful.
    Truly’s heart constricted with grief, but she wouldn’t let the tears come. There was no use in looking back. Her mother hadn’t, and neither would she.
    She was a Thorngood, after all. And Thorngood women were made of red clay and longleaf pine and a little bit of stardust. They may seem soft at first glance, but they endured. Veralyn had always told her so, had whispered it into her ear before she’d said goodbye, before she’d left a traumatized seventeen-year-old Truly shaking on that muddy bank amid the sudden wreckage of her life, the lake a lonely continent around her. And Truly would prove her right.
    She would complete her shift at work slinging beer and bourbon, and then she would spend another restless night at home alone catching what little sleep she could—the insomnia had been unexpected, an unavoidable side effect of denying her truest nature, but she’d grown accustomed to that, too. Tomorrow, she would get up and do it all over again. Only this time, she’d keep her gaze down.
    She could hear the squelch of the spirit in her wake, slinking along in her shadow, but the doors of the Black Pony were already in view, and Truly disappeared behind them, leaving it quivering on the street.
    Inside, she let out a sigh of relief and waved a hand at Marla, who’d been there since nine A.M.—which might sound early to some, but in New Orleans people were ready for a drink at any hour. Truly hustled behind the bar as Marla vanished for a much needed break. Tying on the black bistro apron that housed a spare bottle opener and rag, Truly’s mind drifted to a pair of human eyes she hadn’t seen in as many years. Beau had eyes like a blue jay’s wing—a dazzling, streaked cobalt that struck right to the quick of her heart. But they were still kids when their love began, and when it ended. Truly had left Beau back in Texas like everyone else. The city provided plenty of romantic distraction, yet no one had come close to undoing her the way Beau once had with just a glance of those cutting blue eyes.
    For the millionth time, she wondered where he was, if he’d left their small hometown of Dubiety after graduation when Truly didn’t return. The temptation to look him up tore at her like it often did. So far, she’d managed to avoid it. But she was about two beats from finally giving in when the phone on the wall started ringing. She genuinely couldn't remember the last time she'd answered the landline. People usually found what they were looking for on the website, and several of their most loyal regulars had her personal number so they could text. The bar owner didn’t condone it, but Truly knew these people, knew their hearts and their sorrows, often knew their friends and loved ones. She liked to make sure they got home okay, and she had delivered everything from groceries to medicine to receptacles of gas on more than one occasion when someone had really needed it.
    It was the way she’d been raised—to look out for others even if they weren’t looking out for you. That was the way of the witch, her mother and aunts had always taught her, the privilege and responsibility of their inheritance. Truly may not be practicing magic anymore, but some habits die hard. She couldn’t remove the Thorngood from herself even if she’d been forced to remove herself from the Thorngoods.
    “Hello?” she huffed into the phone.
    “Truly?”
    For a moment, her voice jammed in her throat, unable to comprehend what she’d heard. It wasn’t her name; it was who spoke it. She knew the voice on the other end, and it was one she hadn’t expected to hear ever again, though she’d missed it dearly.
    The spirit’s watery eyes shot through her mind and Truly shivered. “Aunt Rhetta?”
    Her aunt squeaked, then sighed. “Oh, thank the veil,” she muttered. “It is you.”
    “How did you find me?” Truly asked, but she knew already. She turned around and saw the spirit from the street standing across the bar as it dripped onto the old wood floor, watching her. Her breath caught. They never came inside.
    "I'm not without my means, you know. I've done my best to keep informed over the years where you're concerned. They told me where you'd gone. It took some coaxing, but I got it out of them eventually. And of course Tilda couldn't stop neighing like a horse for the last day and a half. Which helped me narrow things down considerably.” Rhetta rushed to explain.
    Despite herself, a smile sprung to Truly’s lips. She’d missed this, the sprint of words that would roll off Aunt Rhetta’s tongue and her aunt Tilda’s feathery presence and obtuse communication. She’d missed the love and the ire between them, the kind of dynamic only sisters can have. Rhetta’s knack for digging up information and Tilda’s ability to know exactly what someone needed.
    Her smile faded. “You shouldn’t be calling me,” Truly told her, voice dropping a dire octave. “It isn’t safe.”
    “What choice do I have?” her aunt asked as though Truly could answer. “Tilda!” she shouted with a hand pressed over the phone. “Would you please stop that spinning? I can’t think for all the dust you’re kicking up.”
    “Spinning?” Tilda had a way of swaying and sighing through life, but when her nerves got the better of her, the movement turned more frantic.
    "She's stirring herself like a pot of beans," Rhetta complained.
    “Beans?” Truly echoed. Beans could only mean one thing—Tilda was communing with the spirits again. “Aunt Rhetta, listen to me. What kind of beans?”
    “Black beans,” she replied, and Truly nearly crossed herself. Instead, she made a T with her forefingers to ward off misfortune, the way her grandma Mae taught her to. The most sacred place in the world is the point where two things meet and become one, her grandmother had said. That is the liminal, the place where magic lives. We are only as strong or as weak as our connections make us. Never forget that, Truly.
    "Nearly three days on," her aunt continued.
    Tilda had a bean for every occasion, had even perfected “throwing the beans” as a form of divination, which made a certain kind of sense for a Southern witch. But black beans only ever meant one thing—trouble.
    Truly sighed and rested her forehead against the wall. It was distressing to know her family was in need and she couldn’t help. But she’d given her word, her bond. And she’d kept it all this time. She couldn’t break it now. “Aunt Rhetta, whatever’s going on, I’m sure my moth—” Her voice cracked on the word. “Veralyn can handle it, or Grandma Mae. You wouldn’t be calling me if you knew the danger you were putting us all in.”
    “But that’s just it, Truly Rae,” Rhetta whined into the phone. “Veralyn isn’t here. And Grandma Mae’s fallen ill.”
    Truly’s blood frosted over in her veins. She glanced over a shoulder and saw not only the spirit from before but several others crowding in around the patrons.
    “Blast, it’s cold in here,” Claude complained from his table. "Is the air on? Can you turn it off, Truly?"
    She gave him a nod, her mouth drawn into a grim line. Humans were rarely able to see spirits—only witches had the sight—but that didn’t mean they weren’t able to sense them, some more than others. And Claude had been diagnosed with peripheral artery disease last year which made him sensitive to cold. His daughter had told Truly when she went to check on him after he hadn’t been in for a couple of weeks.
    Turning back to the wall, Truly forced the words out of her mouth. “Aunt Rhetta, where’s my mother?”
    “She’s missing,” Rhetta said on a breath, drawing out the s like the hissing of a cottonmouth.
    Truly’s hands began to shake. “What do you mean missing?”
    “She just vanished. Walked out the door and never came back. Left her phone, keys, everything in the house. Simply disappeared without a word.”
    “For how long now?” Truly pressed.
    "Three days," came the answer.
    Halloween, Truly thought. The one night a year when the veil was at its thinnest and the spirit world came so close to touching this one that most anything was possible. “The ritual,” she whispered into the phone.
    “Yes,” Rhetta confirmed. “She went out close to midnight like she always does, to leave the offering and seal the bond, but she never came back.”
    “You let her go alone?”
    “She’s always gone alone since . . . Well, ever since . . . You know.” Rhetta’s voice grew high and thin with worry.
    Truly did know. And, in truth, it wasn’t a fair question. There was no rule that said a witch couldn’t perform the Thorngood ritual alone. Pairs simply made it easier. But in the couple of years before Truly went out that fateful night to help her mother, Grandma Mae had let Veralyn handle it on her own, what with the edema in her legs getting to her like it did. And there was little Rhetta or Tilda could offer beyond emotional support and an extra pair of hands. They were blessed with magic like all the Thorngoods, but only through bonds with the spirit world. It was Veralyn and Truly, like Mae before them, who carried the pure magic of their line. And pure magic was required to perform the rite. Pure magic to conjure an offering not of the spirit world but of the self. One worthy of the Crosswise Witch in exchange for another year of her protection.
    “You see why we need you?” Rhetta said.
    Truly turned toward the spirits. They had continued to file in, packing every nook and cranny. Some entered through the door whenever another patron came or went; most simply drifted through the walls or popped into the room like kettle corn. Their eyes bored into her by the dozens, big and small, and their mouths turned down in fear and concern. Their silence spoke volumes. Word travels fast in the spirit world, and Truly was obviously the last to get the call.
    When the spirit from that morning lifted its mournful gaze to the television at the end of the bar, Truly followed and quickly turned up the volume. There, breaking news rolled live as a Louisiana reporter walked along the edge of Caddo Lake, claiming investigators were drawing striking parallels between this most recent case and the mysterious disappearance of Deacon Clay Sr., the Jolly Justice, which happened thirteen years ago to the day. Her mother’s face filled the screen, the wide, easy smile and sparking hazel eyes Truly loved so much sending a stabbing pain through her heart. Beside it, Deacon Clay Sr.’s face puffed like an adder, full of spit and venom. He had a smile like the split skin on a bloated corpse. It had been thirteen years since she’d looked on either one, and Truly didn’t much like seeing them together again.
    “We need you, Truly Thorngood. Your momma needs you,” her aunt was saying. “It’s time to come home.”
    Truly would do most anything for her mother and had. There wasn’t a person on this green earth she’d have broken her promise for, except the one she made it to—Veralyn. But going back, it was unfathomable. A shiver teased its way up her spine as she recalled the presence of the Crosswise Witch. To break a pact with her was unpardonable in the spirit world. There would be hell to pay. Yet how could she leave her aunts alone in this? She could only hope the consequences—and there would be consequences—would be heaped on her head alone.
    “Okay,” she told her aunt, defeat creeping over her as the spirits hung their heads. “I’ll come home. But you should know . . . this may only make things worse.”
    “Can’t get worse,” she heard Rhetta reply, her voice sagging like a swaybacked nag.
    But Truly knew it could. It could get much, much worse. And probably would.
    She hung up the phone and stared at the television screen, ignoring Claude’s demands for more Jack Daniel’s. She usually poured his drinks light anyway, seeing as he shouldn’t be drinking so much in the first place.
    “Deacon Clay Sr., local celebrity and beloved magistrate, went missing on a day much like this one thirteen years ago, and while investigators put in one of the longest and most thorough searches in Texas history, and many armchair sleuths have speculated and theorized about what befell him, not a single trace has been found. Let’s hope it goes better for Veralyn Thorngood. Jim?” the reporter said, wrapping up.
    Truly rubbed her hands over her face and shut the TV off. If it weren't for the date coinciding with the justice's disappearance, Truly doubted her mother would get coverage at all. But she echoed the reporter’s sentiments a hundredfold. “Please,” she whispered to the spirits crowding the bar, “make it go better for her.”
    Their eyes hung on her, but their mouths stayed firmly shut. Truly had no right to ask for their help. She’d denied them too long to expect anything now. In the spirit world, you were only as good as your word. And while she was technically keeping hers by staying away, there had been no command to avoid magic, to eschew their kind. That was Truly’s own doing, and the spirits didn’t appreciate it much. A witch squandering her gifts was as useless in their world as she was in her own, maybe more. No, they were here for Veralyn’s benefit, not hers. Which she prayed meant there was still hope for her mother. Certainly Truly knew there was none for the “Jolly Justice.”
    Because Deacon Clay Sr.—the one-time justice of the peace from Dubiety, Texas—wasn’t missing. He was dead.
    And Truly knew because she killed him.