Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t see him. Instead she turned back to her potion.
As he approached, he heard words he didn’t understand in a raspy voice he didn’t recognize. The woman before him was in his mother’s body, but wasn’t his mother.
He realized, as he stepped up onto the altar, he had no idea how to stop her. Did he grab her, hold her, hope she felt the love of her son through whatever spell she was weaving?
But then Marie was beside him, Hattie beside her. Marie met his gaze and gave a jerk of her head to indicate he needed to back off, and she, Hattie and Allison approached his mother. They joined hands behind her, trying to encircle her and the altar, but when they couldn’t reach, Marie said, “Erielle.”
Erielle hurried up onto the altar and joined hands with the other three women.
“You don’t need to say anything, Just stand with us,” Marie told her, as the other women began an incantation.
The power in the church pulsed through Sam, vibrating through his bones as he watched the women encircling his mom and the altar. His mom’s head snapped up, and her body crumbled. Marie broke the circle to catch her.
Sam was up in three strides to sweep his limp mother into his arms.
“Where?” he asked Marie, who was clearly the one in charge.
“Take her into the house, if you can,” she ordered, as Hattie stepped forward to collect the journal, and Allison closed and gathered the jars.
Adrenaline must have helped him, because he got her to the house, Erielle running ahead to open the door, and he placed her carefully in the recliner beside his father.
“You left my dad alone,” he said, unable to keep the bite of accusation from his tone.
“Hattie said he’d be fine, that they might need my help. And they did.”
He knelt beside his mother, taking her hand as the three other women entered the room.
“Allison, go make some tea,” Hattie ordered, standing on Leslie’s other side. “Better make enough for three. Sam’s not looking so great here.”
“Her eyes were black.” He looked up at Erielle, standing over him, her hand on his shoulder. “You saw that, too, right? Her eyes were black.”
She nodded, and sank to her knees beside him, just to be there for him.
Hattie left to go into the kitchen, returned with a bottle from the pantry, passed it under his mother’s nose. Only then did he recognize it as peppermint oil. His mother roused slowly as Hattie turned to pass the bottle under his father’s nose. He came to more sharply, and looked up at Hattie with a frown.
“What are you doing here?”
“Did it work?” Leslie struggled to sit up in her seat, and Sam lowered the lever so she could gain her footing.
“Did what work?” Marie asked.
“The—” She gave her husband a look, then looked around the room, clocking everyone, landing on Hattie. “The mixture?”
“What was it supposed to do?” Hattie asked.
“It was…to take the pain away. To heal.” Her gaze darted from Hattie to Marie, back to Sam, then to her husband.
Sam’s gut tightened. What had his mother meant to do?
Behind him, his dad shifted in the chair toward her. “Les? What’s going on?”
The other women stayed silent, knowing the preacher’s opinion of Leslie’s witchcraft. So she was forced to speak.
“I got the journal. I found the treatment to end your pain, to heal your back,” she confessed. “But I don’t remember what happened. Did you take it? Where is it? How did I get back in here?”
“We brought you in, Mom. You fainted,” Sam told her.
She reached for him, placed her hand on his cheek. “But where’s the mixture? Your father needs to take it.”
