Standing under the tree, reddish blossoms shower down on me every time a breeze blows through the branches overhead. The faint brushes of petals against my neck and shoulders feel like the touch of insect wings on my skin. I have to fight the urge to gasp and flick them away. I am relieved when Damaris steps through the bamboo gate and walks over to me. She is wearing a cotton dress the colors of sunset, but her face is somber.
“You saw her,” she says without preamble, “didn’t you?”
It comes out in a rush: the gate, the key, the garden of broken glass, what I saw through the window. She watches me while I talk, her face immobile, until I am done, and I say, “Who is she, Damaris? What is she?”
“You really want to know?” she asks.
“I do,” I say. “Please tell me.”
“She is a witch,” says Damaris. “A very old one. Not all magic is bad, but her kind is. She owned a plantation once, or at least her husband did. They say he used to beat her. One day she rise up, kill him with her own hands. Then she start to kill the slaves, one by one. Just the men, you understand. She make them love her, and then she suck the life from them and leave them to die as husks, like empty seed-pods. She like the young and the pretty ones, but if she cannot take those, she will take any man. She lure them with a magic drink, and once they have a taste, they are hers. She take their souls and feed on them so she can stay young and beautiful. For hundreds of years she has done this. Sometimes she kill them quick, sometimes she wait, play with them for a while. Like she playing with your brother.”
“Evan is not my brother,” I say through my teeth. “And if you know all this, if everyone knows, then why don’t you do something about it?”
“She cannot die,” says Damaris. “Long ago they killed this woman and buried her in a grave with special markings to keep her from walking again. But even that will not hold her in the earth. Her magic is strong and deadly and she lives forever. Harm her and she will have her vengeance on you and your children after you. But you—you are a foreigner. You are leaving, going where she can’t hurt you. So I can tell you how to hurt her. She feeds on the souls she takes. Destroy those, and you will take her power long enough to get your stepbrother back.”
“But where does she keep them?”
“I do not know where they are,” Damaris says. “But you are a clever girl. Maybe you can figure it out.” She eyes me sideways. “I tell you one thing, though. Anne Palmer never give up a man once she have her claws in him. Not for nothing.”
“Then why are you telling me all this?” My voice rises almost to a scream. “If there’s nothing that can be done to save Evan, if it’s too late, then what’s the point?”
A red flower detaches itself from the tree overhead and drifts down to rest on Damaris’s shoulder like a splash of blood. “I say she never give up a man for nothing,” she says. “I never say she wouldn’t do it for something.”
That night Evan isn’t at dinner. Phillip frowns at his son’s empty place, a sharp line appearing between his eyebrows as if sliced there with a knife. “Violet,” he says—he always draws my name out when he speaks it, as if preparing to lecture me: Vi-oh-let. “Violet, where is Evan?”
I look at my plate. There is curry piled on it, and fish wrapped in banana leaves, and jewel-toned sliced fruit. The sight turns my stomach. “At the beach, I think.”
“Well, go get him.” He picks up his fork. “I’ve had enough of him missing family meals.”
I glance toward my mother, who nods imperceptibly, as if afraid to be seen giving me permission. I throw my napkin down and stand up. “I’ll see if I can find him,” I say. No promises.
The sun has gone down, leaving the sand cool and soft under my feet. There is a breeze off the ocean; it blows through my hair, cooling the damp sweat on the back of my neck, between my shoulder blades. I turn to look at Mrs. Palmer’s house. It is dark and lightless under the dimming sky, like a flower whose petals have closed for the night. I think of what Damaris said to me, and then I think of Mrs. Palmer’s terrifying face as she bent over Evan, and my heart twists inside me. I can’t go in there. I can’t help or save him. I don’t know why Damaris even told me anything. She’s seen my mother and Phillip together. It ought to be obvious that I’m not someone who can save anyone, even people I love.
I turn back toward the villa, and that’s when I see it: a scrap of blue caught on one of the rocks by the cave entrance Evan showed me the first day we were here. A blue the same color as Evan’s shirt. I move toward the cave, check to see if anyone’s watching me, then turn sideways to slip inside.