He was waiting for her to say something, but it’s the nature of witches to outwait God if they can, and the nature of God to forgive poor sinners their pride. Eventually he said, “There’s a poor lost soul under your porch, Maggie Grey.”
“He didn’t seem so lost,” she said. “He walked here under his own power.”
“All souls are lost without me,” said the preacher.
Maggie rolled her eyes.
A whip–poor–will called, placing the notes end to end, whip–er–will! whip–er–will!
It was probably Maggie’s imagination that she could hear the panting of the god under the porch, in time to the nightjar’s calls.
The preacher sat, in perfect patience, with his wrists on his knees. The mosquitos that formed skittering sheets over the pond did not approach him.
“What’s there for a possum in heaven, anyway?” asked Maggie. “You gonna fill up the corners with compost bins and rotten fruit?”
The preacher laughed. He had a gorgeous, church–organ laugh and Maggie’s heart clenched like a fist in her chest at the sound. She told her heart to behave. Witchblood ought to know better than to hold out hope of heaven.
“I could,” said the preacher. “Would you give him to me if I did?”
Maggie shook her head.
His voice dropped, a father explaining the world to a child. “What good does it do him, to be trapped in this world? What good does it do anyone?”
“He seems to like it.”
“He is a prisoner of this place. Give him to me and I will set him free to glory.”
“He’s a possum,” said Maggie tartly. “He ain’t got much use for glory.”
The preacher exhaled. It was most notable because, until then, he hadn’t been breathing. “You cannot doubt my word, my child.”
“I ain’t doubting nothing,” said Maggie. “It’d be just exactly as you said, I bet. But he came to me because that’s not what he wanted, and I ain’t taking that away from him.”
The preacher sighed. It was a more–in–sorrow–than–in–anger sigh, and Maggie narrowed her eyes. Her heart went back to acting the way a witch’s heart ought to act, which was generally to ache at every damn thing and carry on anyway. Her shoulders felt like she’d been hauling stones.
“I could change your mind,” he offered.
“Ain’t your way.”
He sighed again.
“Should’ve sent one of the saints,” said Maggie, taking pity on the Lord, or whatever little piece of Him was sitting on her porch. “Somebody who was alive once, anyway, and remembers what it was like.”
He bowed his head. “I will forgive you,” he said.
“I know you will,” said Maggie kindly. “Now get gone before the other one shows up.”
Her voice sounded as if she shooed the Lord off her porch every day, and when she looked up again, he was gone.
It got dark. The stars came out, one by one, and were reflected in the sundew pool. Fireflies jittered, but only a few. Fireflies like grass and open woods, and the dense mat of the swamp did not please them. Maggie lit a lamp to tie flies by.
The Devil came up through a stand of yellowroot, stepping up out of the ground like a man climbing a staircase. Maggie was pleased to see that he had split hooves. She would have been terribly disappointed if he’d been wearing shoes.
He kicked aside the sticks of yellowroot, tearing shreds off them, showing ochre–colored pith underneath. Maggie raised an eyebrow at this small destruction, but yellowroot is hard to kill.
“Maggie Grey,” said the fellow they called the Old Gentleman.
She nodded to him, and he took it as invitation, dancing up the steps on clacking hooves. Maggie smiled a little as he came up the steps, for the Devil always was a good dancer.
He sat down in the same chair that the preacher had used, and scowled abruptly. “See I got here late.”
“Looks that way,” said Maggie Grey.
He dug his shoulderblades into the back of the chair, first one, then the other, rolling a little, like a cat marking territory in something foul. Maggie stifled a sigh. It had been a good rocking chair, but it probably wasn’t wise to keep a chair around that the Devil had claimed.
“You’ve got something I want, Maggie Grey,” he said.
“If it’s my soul, you’ll be waiting awhile,” said Maggie, holding up a bit of feather. She looped three black threads around it, splitting the feather so it looked like wings. The hook gleamed between her fingers.
“Oh no,” said the Devil, “I know better than to mess with a witch’s soul, Maggie Grey. One of my devils showed up to tempt your great–grandmother, and she bit him in half and threw his horns down the well.”
Maggie sniffed. “Well’s gone dry,” she said, trying not to look pleased. She knew better than to respond to demonic flattery. “It’s the ground hereabouts. Sand and moss and swamps on top of hills. Had to dig another one, and lord knows how long it’ll last.”
“Didn’t come here to discuss well–digging, Maggie Grey.”
“I suppose not.” She bit off a thread.
“There’s an old god dying under your porch, Maggie Grey. The fellow upstairs wants him, and I aim to take him instead.”
She sighed. A firefly wandered into a pitcher plant and stayed, pulsing green through the thin flesh. “What do you lot want with a scrawny old possum god, anyway?”
The Devil propped his chin on his hand. He was handsome, of course. It would have offended his notion of his own craftsmanship to be anything less. “Me? Not much. The fellow upstairs wants him because he’s a stray bit from back before he and I were feuding. An old loose end, if you follow me.“
Maggie snorted. “Loose end? The possum gods and the deer and Old Lady Cottonmouth were here before anybody thought to worship you. Either of you.”
The Devil smiled. “Can’t imagine there’s many worshippers left for an old possum god, either. ’Cept the possums, and they don’t go to church much.”
Maggie bent her head over the wisp of thread and metal. “He doesn’t feel like leaving.”
Her guest sat up a little straighter. “I am not sure,” he said, silky–voiced, “that he is strong enough to stop me.”
Maggie picked up the pliers and bent the hook, just a little, working the feathers onto it. “He dies all the time,” she said calmly. “You never picked him up the other times.”
“Can only die so many times, Maggie Grey. Starts to take it out of you. Starts to make you tired, right down to the center of your bones. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”
She did not respond, because the worst thing you can do is let the Devil know when he’s struck home.
“He’s weak now and dying slow. Easy pickings.”
“Seems like I might object,” she said quietly.
The Devil stood up. He was very tall and he threw a shadow clear over the pool when he stood. The sundews folded their sticky leaves in where the shadow touched them. Under the porch steps, the dying god moaned.
He placed a hand on the back of her chair and leaned over her.
“We can make this easy, Maggie Grey,” he said. “Or we can make it very hard.”
She nodded slowly, gazing over the sundew pool.
“Come on—” the Devil began, and Maggie moved like Old Lady Cottonmouth and slammed the fish–hook over her shoulder and into the hand on the back of her chair.
The Devil let out a yelp like a kicked dog and staggered backwards.
“You come to my house,” snapped Maggie, thrusting the pliers at him, “and you have the nerve to threaten me? A witch in her own home? I’ll shoe your hooves in holy iron and throw you down the well, you hear me?”
“Holy iron won’t be kind to witchblood,” he gasped, doubled over.