Page 55 of Crossroads Magic
“What sort of stories?”
Hirom shrugged. “Boogie tales. Who knows for sure. Thamina caught him telling the kid to break open the box of salt in our groceries and throw it over his shoulder. She called Leo an idiot.”
“Sounds like he is,” I remarked.
“Leo didn’t like that. An old lady showing him up in front of the kid, who he was doing his level best to impress the hell out of, as everyone else in the county has pretty much given up on Leo amounting to anything.”
“What did he do?”
“Just so happens, I saw how this played out. I was heading to the kitchen. I saw Leo’s face turn red. I mean,deepred, like he was badly sunburned.”
“That makes you think someone is about to have a stroke,” I suggested.
Hirom nodded. “Leo puffed himself up while the kid stood with his mouth open, and told Thamina she’d get that back double one day. He said, ‘People around here, they believe in curses, so a blight on you, bitch.’”
I’d just met Leo, yet I believed completely and without question that was exactly what Leo would have said. “So Thamina cursed him?”
“She threw in lots of archaic language to make it sound authentic, but the curse was basically that his penis would turn purple and shrink, and it would itch until the next full moon, which was a month away.”
I pressed my lips together. I felt a touch of awe, and wished I had been there to see it go down. “What did Leo think of that?”
“He squealed.” Hirom nodded, looking very pleased. “Like a stuck pig. Then he reached for his crotch and began to scratch and claw at himself.”
I felt my insides go still.My mother had really cast a spell? For a frozen moment, even my heart held still.Magic isn’t real, I told myself.But…but…what if it was? That would explain…. Get a grip, Anna Crackstone! You read too many fairy tales, that’s all.
Something of my dismay and confusion must have shown on my face, for Hirom added, “Power of suggestion, probably.”
My innards relaxed.
“Leo scratched for the entire next month,” Hirom concluded. “And he stopped helping with the groceries, and this extortion scheme of his started up. The kid…we never saw him again. Leo said he was too scared to come to Haigton Crossing, so we were stuck with Leo.”
“But there has to be other grocery stores!”
“There’s Price Chopper in Gouverneur, which is bigger than Leo’s store. But they don’t deliver out here. Leastwise, they didn’t when Thamina first set up the deliveries.”
“We could come to an arrangement. Or pick them up ourselves. This is outrageous.”
“It’s how we get to eat regularly,” Hirom said.
I took a breath and reminded myself that this wasn’t my problem. I had to let them sort this out themselves. If they wanted to pay a hundred dollars extra every week, it was their choice.
I drained the glass of green stuff, and stood. “I’ve got groceries to put away,” I told Hirom and went back to the kitchen.
?
At lunchtime, there were eight people at the table. The missing three were Harper and Broch, and Juda. The absences did not surprise me.
But at dinner that night, everyone in Haigton Crossing sat about the table.. Broch did not eat as he was fasting, he said, and spent long minutes explaining to Juda about the benefits of intermittent fasting. Juda seemed to know all about fasting, too. Benedict got involved in the medical details, and I was reminded once more that he wasn’t a doctor, even though he had tried to play one.
But he had healed Frida. And Frida sat beside him at the table, listening to everything he said, clearly devoted to him.
Harper sat across from him, also watching him. Every now and then, she would scowl at Broch, her smooth brow marred by the frown.
There were undercurrents moving around the table that I did not quite understand. It had been too many years since I had been a gauche teenager, unable to interpret the subtext and innuendos of adults, and the feeling was uncomfortable.
Ghaliya asked about the Finger rock, which turned the conversation away from Broch. “What’s so magical about it?” she asked.
The word touched a live nerve in my middle that I wasn’t aware was there. “It’s not magical,” I said sharply, which made everyone look at me.
