To my assistant, my right hand, and my friend, Jose Cabrera, thank you for getting me through each day. To Carlos Bernard, thank you for giving a voice to Gideon and Tillman, and the entire cast of characters who populate these books.

To the entire team at Touchstone, thank you for your patience and professionalism. David Falk has been a master strategist in helping these books find an audience, and Stacy Creamer has been my greatest champion. Her enthusiasm is infectious and inspiring, eclipsed only by her intelligence and good taste.

Finally, I am grateful to the many authors whose work has not only provided me with hours of enjoyment, but has also inspired me to join their ranks. Among these, I owe special thanks to m">ntainWalter Sorrells and Cameron Stracher. Without their generosity and talent, this book would still be an unfinished file on my laptop.

PROLOGUE

POCATELLO, IDAHO

Amalie Kimbo had learned long ago to keep her mouth shut.

At first, she couldn’t restrain herself from telling the other children about the helpful spirits and treacherous demons whose presence only she could sense. But her mother had warned her that unless she wanted to be taken for a witch and sent away, she should swallow her thoughts. So when she arrived in the place called Idaho, she shared none of her dark premonitions with the other women. They were here to work, to earn more money in a few months than they could earn in a lifetime. But the moment Amalie stepped onto the frozen ground, she realized that coming here had been a terrible mistake.

She was born in the western Congo, in the city of Kama, and for the last five of her twenty-one years she had worked for Monsieur Nzute in the cassava factory, processing the potatolike roots into meal. The job itself was not so bad, although Mr. Nzute drank too much and would often beat her and the other girls. Or worse. Christiane Shango was Amalie’s best friend, and the youngest and prettiest girl in the factory. Mr. Nzute gave her more trouble than the others. One night Christiane had crawled into Amalie’s bed, her body trembling uncontrollably beneath her torn dress, a smear of blood crusted on the soft inner part of her thigh. Christiane would not say what had happened—not that first time or any of the times afterward—but Amalie did not need to be told. She understood.

So when the American who called himself Monsieur Collier offered Christiane work in his cassava factory in the United States, she had begged Amalie to come with her. A slight man who spoke with a soft voice, Monsieur Collier had said he would feed and house them, and pay them each $3,000 US for three months of work. Which meant Amalie and Christiane could return home with enough money to buy a house and start their own business, perhaps a small shop that sold cloth or pots and pans. Then Christiane would be able to pass Monsieur Nzute in the street and show him with her eyes just what she thought of him.

The work in Idaho turned out to be almost exactly the same as it had been in Kama. Amalie operated a machine that stripped the dark skin from the white, grainy flesh of the cassava. Cassavas were root vegetables that were ground into a meal that was used to make bread or cakes, although they could also be cooked and eaten like potatoes. The meal could also be processed into tapioca, the small beads that were mixed with milk and made into pudding.

Amalie’s job required speed and a special skill. The skinner worked by feeding the cassava roots through two large rasps that tore the skin from the meat. Sometimes the cassavas jammed the machine and you had to reach in without letting your arm get sucked into the rasp plates. That was a mistake you only made once. The rasps would either tear off your arm, or flay the skin and muscle down to the bone.

So far Amalie had been careful. And lucky. She even began to wonder if maybe her premonition had been wrong, an echo of a harder time in a harder place. But then one morning in the middle of their third month in Idaho, Christiane collapsed—her lips bubbling with foam, her eyes rolling back in her head—and Amalith D‡e knew right away that the evil spirits had finally revealed themselves.

Amalie’s arms were still slick with cassava juice as she cradled Christiane’s head. Guilt rose up within her like a tide; she should have warned Christiane.

Estelle Olagun shook her head and said, “Konzo.”

The other women crowded around them, nodding and clucking their tongues. Konzo was the disease that came during the droughts, when people had little to drink, and little to eat besides cassavas. Some people said there was something in the cassavas that poisoned you, but Amalie knew that Konzo, like all diseases, was only one of the many ways demons worked their evil on people.

“Monsieur Collier will have medicine,” Estelle said. “I will call him.”

“No,” Amalie said. “I will help her. Help me carry Christiane back to her bunk.”

“Help her how? Do you have medicines like Monsieur Collier?”

“I can help her fight the evil spirits.”

“Evil spirits, evil spirits, you with your evil spirits,” Estelle said, scowling. “You’ll go to hell, talking like that.” Estelle had joined a holy roller church a few years ago and was always talking about people going to hell.

“I know what I know,” Amalie said. “Let me try before you call him.”

Ignoring Amalie, Estelle picked up the phone. Because she was the oldest among them, Estelle had assumed a kind of maternal authority over the other women, and Amalie could find no ally in her appeal.

After a few minutes Monsieur Collier appeared, stamping his feet and brushing snow from his coat. “Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé?” he said in his oddly accented French. The women stepped aside like a parting curtain, revealing the prone Christiane, her small breasts rising and falling with each shallow breath.

Collier pressed his palm against the young girl’s forehead, which was beaded with perspiration. “Konzo,” he said sympathetically.

“But you can help her, yes?” Estelle was kneading her hands like unbaked loaves.

Monsieur Collier looked at Estelle. He seemed to be making up his mind about something before he finally nodded. “She’ll be fine. But I’ll need to take her to the hospital.”

“No!” The word leapt from Amalie’s mouth before she could stop it.

“What is wrong with you, girl?” Estelle snapped her fingers at one of the other women. “Help me get her up.”

Amalie followed helplessly as two of the other women lifted Christiane and carried her out into the cold. Around them the trees creaked and groaned, their branches weighted with snow. Somewhere in the forest a limb splintered loudly, and fell to the ground.

Monsieur Collier opened the door to his pickup truck. Monsieur Nzute would never have opened a door for a woman—certainly not for one of his workers. But Amalie knew that Monsieur Collier’s gesture of concern was empty. Behind his polite mask lurked thforÑ€†e Mbwiri, a demon who possesses people and causes them to thrash around and spew foam. Sometimes the Mbwiri even forced its host to eat human flesh and perform shameful sexual acts.

Amalie felt the warmth of the truck as the women slid Christiane inside. Monsieur Collier buckled the safety belt around Christiane, taking just a little too long in straightening her clothes as they bunched around the belt. The sight of his revolting pale skin against Christiane’s lovely dark flesh made her shiver. Please, God, tell me what to do, she prayed. But God sent no answer.

“Go back to work,” Monsieur Collier said over his shoulder, his thin lips exposing a set of small, crooked teeth.

The other women started back to the factory as he drove off, but Amalie stood in the cold, watching the truck disappear, certain that she would never again see her friend Christiane. Only the leafless trees understood the truth of what was happening, their tiny green needles hissing in the wind like a thousand snakes.