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It was his turn to hesitate. “I like you a lot,” he said. “I’m really grateful for everything you’re doing.”

“But you don’t love me?”

He heard an edge in her voice. “I probably will,” he said. “Give me some time.”

She did not sound placated. “Don’t wait too long, Danny.” She got up and walked across the hall to the smaller bathroom. The door closed behind her. Danny thought he could hear her crying. But when she finally came back out, her face was dry and she was smiling.

“We’re going out to eat,” she said. “To celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” he said. “I’m not exactly in a good space for going out.”

“Celebrating our love,” Louisa said. “And don’t you worry about a thing.” With that, she put clean socks and running shoes on his feet. Dressed in boxer shorts, he allowed her carefully to maneuver his arms through the sleeves of his long trench coat.

“Anybody checks, they’ll think I’m a pervert on the way to a schoolyard,” he said.

“Trust me.” She led him down to the car and drove him to a very dark restaurant where they could sit in relative seclusion to the side of the dining room. With her help, he ordered soups and puddings and coffee. The dishes lined up like little soldiers, each with a thick straw extending up toward his mouth.

He didn’t expect to like the experience. Getting out cheered him, he discovered.

The glow started to dissipate once they returned home. The caller ID indicated that Ifetayo had called. “Don’t phone her back,” Louisa said.

“This is my house,” Danny said. My rules, he almost said. When he gingerly dialed Iffie’s number, he got a “this number is not presently in service,” intercept. “I should drive over,” he said. “It might be important.”

“No,” Louisa said. “You can’t do that.”

“Will you drive me over?”

“No.”

He heard the anger in her voice, and backed off. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“No,” she said. “Never.”

They talked little more before he decided to go to sleep.

Ifetayo did not come to him in his dreams.

Danny awoke hearing—and feeling—the bones of his toes snapping. The little toes twitched, convulsed, broke like twigs being trampled underfoot. Then the next in line, as the pain grew, right up to and including the big toes. Both of them.

Crack!

He screamed at the dream.

It was not a dream.

The small bones in the arch of his right foot began to vibrate, then to bend under internal pressure. He remembered tugging the wishbone at childhood Thanksgivings and Christmases. The pain was intense. But it was multiplied by the ripping, crunching sounds, noises of destruction that arrowed right to his gut. He doubled up on the bed and tried to reach his feet, to massage them the way he used to soothe charley horses. It did no good—he couldn’t make his arms work.

All those tiny bones destroyed themselves as he cried out.

Then Louisa was there with warm towels to wipe his sweaty face and to lay wet wraps across the savage pain in his feet. “There now,” she said. “It will be okay. We’ll manage the pain.”

“Why?” he said, mind blurry with the tortured electricity from his feet and shoulders. “Why why why why …” He stopped when he was out of breath. It didn’t take long.

“She won’t hurt you again,” Louisa said.

The meaning came through to him finally. “Who? Ifetayo?”

“Of course.” Louisa continued mopping his forehead. “Now try to rest. Just breathe through the pain. You won’t be able to walk for a while. But don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. I love you.”

A thought came to him. “Weezie, that thing Iffie left on the porch yesterday. The one you put in a safe place? I think you better destroy it.”

“I already did, lover,” she said reassuringly.

“Good.” He shook his head. Words swam in his head and it was hard to articulate them in his throat. “I never believed in black magic.”

“You don’t have to,” Louisa said. “It works anyway.”

He began to sink away from consciousness, trying to elude the pain from which he’d begun to think there truly was no escaping. Louisa said something he couldn’t quite make out. “What?”

“The river Styx is deep and wide,” she said.