Free Conjure by Lea Nolan

Miss Delia’s cloudy eye. “It’s amazing how much you notice if you take the time to look around.”
    A small smile bends her lips. “That’s true, child, that’s true. Well, go hunt down some elderberry leaves. They’ll be shaped like feathers with jagged edges, like a bread knife. It’s done flowering by now, so you might see the beginnings of some small, dark berries.”
    I’m pretty sure I know exactly what she’s talking about. “Hang on a sec.” I bolt from the kitchen and run to the door to grab my bag.
    Cooper and Jack turn from the grainy TV screen. “Everything okay?” Cooper asks, his brow furrowed. His eyes are so sweet and full of concern that I stare for a second and get lost in their bright blue beauty.
    Jack’s voice breaks through my Cooper-induced fog. “Aren’t you supposed to be in there helping?”
    Ignoring the impulse to smack him, I reach into the bag for a small sketchpad. “Everything’s fine.” I try not to blush and turn to Jack. “You can thank me later after I help fix your stupid hand.”
    I jog back to the kitchen and place the book on the counter. Flipping through the pages, I search for one of the sketches I did on Hunting Island. “Here, this is what you’re talking about, right?” I turn the book around for Miss Delia to see.
    She bends down and peers over the sketch with her good eye. “That’s it.” She grins. “Find one and tote back some leaves.”
    I bolt out of the kitchen, passing Cooper and Jack again, and out the front door into the thick woods that surround her house. A few hundred yards in, past some scattered tupelo, mimosa, and wisteria trees, I find the bush. Miss Delia’s right, the berries are a dead giveaway. I strip a handful of serrated leaves from the branches.
    My scalp tingles. Someone’s watching me.
    I whip around, but no one’s there.
    Silence, deep and penetrating, fills the woods. Even the birds have stopped chirping. I don’t see anyone, but I swear, someone’s eyes are on me.
    My eyes skitter from tree to bush, making sure no one has slipped behind one of them. An eternal minute passes. Still nothing.
    I sigh, sure I’m losing my mind. First I freaked out about a deer last night, and now, for all I know, I’m doing it again over a chipmunk. Feeling dumb, I turn back to the elderberry and strip another branch of its leaves.
    A foul odor wafts through the air. Chemical and squalid, it’s like rotten eggs and burnt plastic mixed with decay.
    I’ve smelled this before—at the ruins after Jack opened the box and got burned.
    My spine stiffens. Maybe it’s not a chipmunk, after all. Gulping hard, I try not to inhale while shifting my gaze from side to side, peering for its source.
    A loud crack, like the snap of a dead tree limb, booms behind me. That was definitely not a chipmunk. Adrenaline surges. Without bothering to look back, I spin on my heels and race through the woods, careening around shrubs and trees and leaping over roots, shooting toward Miss Delia’s.
    My chest heaves as I charge up her porch steps. Nothing followed me back. I’m safe.
    Then, as I’m congratulating myself for evading the unseen evil, it suddenly dawns on me that a much more likely explanation exists: I was in the forest, where lots of wildlife lives and dies, and that smell probably emanated off the rotting corpse of some unfortunate beast. And the thing that sounded like a dead tree limb was probably just that—a branch that broke off a tree and crashed to the ground.
    I’ve got to stop doing this to myself. I’m going to have a stroke.
    Shaking off my wacky paranoia, I calm my breath and head back in. Miss Delia’s bark chips have boiled down to a soft, mushy lump, and the kitchen smells way more earthy than it did before. She’s got the rest of the ingredients lined up, ready for me to crush in the mortar before she tosses them into the gently boiling water. While the buds and leaves cook down, she asks me to grab a crock of lard from the