“If the withdrawal doesn’t kill him.” Gunn shrugs Ben off and walks to the cabin’s door. “I’m not taking any chances on a washed-out shiner.”
“Mr. Gunn, you don’t understand,” I say. “We need this, Jed can make it work—”
“Save it.” Gunn throws on his fedora and pushes open our screen door.
But as he crunches over the gravel, the cold, hard truth of our future starts pummeling me, raining down like sharp hail. Jed is lost. Jed is killing himself, slowly. Mama is gone. Our home will be gone in weeks. I pledged my life to Ruby and Ben in penance, but I’m going to fail. This man Gunn, our last chance, is walking out our door.
No, comes hot and relentless from deep within my core, a voice not mine, one stronger, more powerful, resilient. No no no no no—
“WAIT!”
Gunn stops.
But he doesn’t turn around.
My body is humming, my nerves shorting out. It doesn’t feel like real life right now. It feels like a dream, a dream skating right on the edge of a nightmare.
“Give me the chance,” I rush. “I can sorcer. And I won’t disappoint you.”
At that, Gunn laughs. He slowly turns as Ben whispers, “Joan, what? Don’t bluff this guy,” behind me on our cabin’s outside stoop. But Ben never found out that I got the magic touch. In fact, no one knows, except Jed and me—since Mama took her knowledge to her grave.
Gunn tucks his hands into his pockets. The sharp light of the moon transforms him into something otherworldly, almost ghoulish. “Prove it.”
I nod, ask him to wait, and before I can second-guess myself, I race out to the yard behind our cabin.
It’s started to rain. A thin twine of mist has begun to coil above the earth, but I collapse down onto the dirt, at the same spot I’d pleaded that night for relief from the treacherous magic inside me. Where I brewed all the magic I had, felt, and wished gone into a bottle of sorcerer’s shine, then took a blade to my arm as I’d seen Mama do when she was demanding extraordinary things from sorcery. I begged the gods of this world, then its demons, then the magic itself, to relieve me of my magic touch and cage it away forever. Not sure what finally took pity on me, but something answered my call.
My fingers paw at the dirt, the soft mushy soil worming its way under my fingernails, up my arms. I dig until my nails scratch against something hard and rough. I quickly scoop the soil out from around the four sides and unearth the wooden box I buried that night, six inches long, one foot wide. Just on touching it, the memories come flooding back—show me, Eve—Mama NO—all the magic in the world can’t undo it—
I shut my eyes to quiet the noise, unclasp the box’s lock, and open it. With shaking hands, I take out the bottle that somehow cages my magic touch—the glass prison that prevents my toxic “gifts” from destroying anything else. I hold it, this cursed bottle. This opportunity. This chance. I close my eyes. My magic touch is to blame for all of it—it doesn’t deserve to be released.
My magic touch is all I’ve got to save my family.
Heart pounding, I grip the glass and force myself to say the word, “Release.”
I unscrew the top of the bottle, which is smeared with my dried blood from all those nights ago, and a flaky red dust settles onto the ground. As soon as I remove the cap, my magic touch floods back into my body in a rush. I feel it consume me, flesh me out like it’s pushing hard against my skin, making me whole. Lightning courses through my veins, sizzling, whispering this is where it always belonged. The sorcerer’s shine left behind in the bottle sighs and crackles, like it’s been awakened from a long sleep.
A history of distrust and fear drove America to the Prohibition of magic, but most folks still don’t know the half of it. This country’s got no idea how many secrets magic keeps, the darkness it can create, the possibilities that lie waiting in the shadows.
I clean off the bottle quickly with the bottom of my housedress and the rain, cap my hand over its top, and sprint back around the cabin. Gunn’s still standing in the gravel, and Ben’s still on the stoop. “What about this?” I collect myself, trying to keep my voice steady as I hand Gunn the bottle. “Is this impressive enough to get me to Washington?”
Gunn slowly turns the jar around, looks at the back, the front, studies the way the moonlight hits the sparkling, deep-red sorcerer’s shine inside. Finally, he says quietly, “When’d you make this?”
“This morning, before the sun came up,” I lie in a rush. Gunn doesn’t need to know about Mama’s blood-magic, and what I somehow managed to carry out on the night she died. No one does.
Gunn sticks his pinkie finger into the shine bottle and brings his finger to his lips. He winces, closes his eyes, rubs his tongue along his teeth. “Perfect aftertaste. I’d bet money that the shine’s quite a ride.”
“I wouldn’t know. Unlike my uncle, I keep the shining to the customers.”