Hettie stared. “The devil? No. Why would I…? How could I possibly…?” She tripped over the words tumbling through her head, none of them landing on her tongue. Did she even believe in the devil? She supposed she believed in God, for all the times He’d ignored her prayers to help Ma and Abby get better. Or maybe she didn’t believe, and the devil was all there was…
“I don’t mean to inspire a crisis of faith, Miss Alabama,” Patrice said softly. “In magical terms, the forces I speak of are likely more complicated than good and evil, God and Satan. For our purposes, though, I do mean ‘the devil’ as you see in the good book—horns, tail, and all.”
Patrice rolled the chair to a desk where an old leather-bound tome lay. The act of even opening the cover looked laborious. “Before they called themse
