Page 29 of Strike It Witch

“No,” I replied. “You’re the one being I can trust not to use it to kill anyone.”

“Truuuust?” He drew out the word.

“If you want someone dead, you have more inventive ways of making that happen than simple poisoning. Besides, the minute you walked in, I knew what this was about.”

Sexton slow-blinked. Not an affectation, just how he moved.

Because he was nearly immortal, time passed in lurches and drags in his corner of the universe. To him, the conversation we were having—and my entire existence—carried a significance similar to a house fly buzzing around a human. Slightly annoying, easily dealt with and forgotten.

I’d called him a demon, but really, his people—to use the term loosely—were lesser gods.

“Why do you believe I want it?” he asked.

“Tea,” I said. “Demon-grown belladonna tea is a delicacy for your kind. It’s how you remain in this realm so long without having to return to the underworld. It is, essentially, a homesickness treatment.”

Sexton went dead silent. The air grew so cold that my jaw tightened to the point of pain and my brain felt crushed between two bricks.

“How do you know this?” His voice was like an ice cube sliding down the back of my shirt.

I shuddered. “It’s part of the history handed down to me through a long line of Lennox witches.” I struggled to speak through chattering teeth, but somehow, I managed not to stutter. “A portion of our historical knowledge is transcribed, some is purely oral, but the largest part of it is through evolutionary engineering. In other words, our line evolved in such a way as to impart our shared magical knowledge to each other through a neonatal psychical transmission bond. Somewhere in the past, one of your kind must’ve shared the knowledge with a witch of my lineage.”

He stared at me for a long moment through eyes that contained dark and unexplored galaxies. I respectfully, yet firmly, returned his stare, though it nauseated me.

Finally, he spoke. “Now we both know something of each other.”

“Yes.”

“I shall keep the secret of your lineage, Lennox witch.”

“And, as with my ancestors before me, I will continue to keep your secret, Bertrand Sexton,” I replied.

The air warmed, bringing relief to my brain and poor teeth.

“Tell me,” he cocked his odd, skeletal head to one side, “did you keep any belladonna seeds for yourself?”

“A few. I want to try to grow this strain in my garden room. It’ll be different, of course. Belladonna grown by a demon in Limbo gives the plant an unusual quality, but there was a time when my mother grew the plant successfully.”

“Yes, I know.” He regarded me with another languid blink of his eyes. “If you will give me first right of refusal for the sale of your version, I shall take that as a favor and reciprocate.”

Two demon favors in my pocket in less than twenty-four hours? Must be my lucky day. Except…

I sighed. “Though I’m honored by your offer, I hate to get your hopes up. There’s no guarantee they’ll take root. My mother passed away three years ago, and her soil hasn’t exactly embraced me. I can only grow new plants in pots with soil I brought from outside the property.”

“Your mother was a powerful earth witch.” He left out theand you are not, but it felt implied.

“She was, yes.”

Again, the slow blink. “If you know about our tea, might I also assume you are aware of my kind’s affinity with the earth?”

“Yes, I am.”

Gravedigger demons could speak to the soil. Because of their association with Death, they did not coax life from the earth, but they could speak to it in ways other beings could not.

“With your permission, I will speak to your soil,” he said.

It was a risk. Inviting a gravedigger demon onto my land could not only magically deconsecrate it but kill it outright. They had that sort of power.

But Sexton wanted something from me, and in turn, from my soil. I didn’t believe he’d do anything to harm it. And it wasn’t like he could make things much worse anyway.

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