The Line (26 page)

“I don’t understand,” I finally said. “I sense that this should work. I should have been able to break the spell by mixing the blood of the one who set the spell with the blood of the one who requested it.”

Jilo calmly removed her hand from mine, and made a soft fist. When she opened it again, the wound was gone. “And that why Jilo let you try, ’cause she knew you never gonna believe her unless you try yo’self.”

“Believe what?” I asked, still feeling the pulse of pain in my own hand.

“Weeks before you showed up at Jilo’s crossroad, they was another who came to her in Colonial. That redheaded boy of yours.”

“Peter?” I asked.

“Yes. He came to Jilo. He said he was losing his pretty miss, and he was willing to do anything it took to keep that from happening. The spell was done before you ever set foot on Normandy Street, before you ever even had the idea of coming to Jilo.”

I stood there, feeling like the knife had gone straight through my heart instead of into crease of my palm. Jilo moved closer and placed her hand over my heart and closed her eyes, her lips moving wordlessly, as if in some silent prayer. As I looked on, the colors flooded away from me and into her hand. She closed her fingers around them, and when she opened her hand the spell was gone just as surely as the cut on her hand had vanished. “There, it revoked,” she said and moved heavily back toward her haint blue throne.

I should have thanked Jilo, but when my mouth opened, the words, “He betrayed me” spilled out. He had made love to me, knowing that Jilo’s spell was what brought me to his bed. I had been able to accept Jilo’s intervention when I’d thought the spell was my choice. Knowing that he had arranged for it made me feel violated.

“Open yo’ eyes, child! It ain’t just your man who betrayed you. Everyone, and I do mean every last one, of the folk you love, the ones you think love you, they all done betrayed you in one way or t’other. Truth is Jilo just might be the only one in this world you can trust.”

“I can’t believe that,” I said.

“Believe it, don’t believe it. It ain’t no never mind to Jilo. But sooner or later, you gonna come to believe it, and when you do, you gonna be wishing you had power of your own, if only to protect yo’self. You be smart. When yo’ sister get back to Savannah, when she all nice and settled in, you talk to her, and then you leave the rest up to Jilo.”

I said nothing. I simply clasped my hand around my necklace as if it were a magical life preserver. The power began to surge through with renewed force, gaining strength as my hunger for it grew, and although my anger remained, the pain I felt over what Peter had done instantly dulled. He was, after all, only a human.

TWENTY-FIVE

As I crossed the dark bridge that connected Jilo’s world to Candler, the living shadows began to press in around me, their touch like cold silk, seductive and terrifying in equal measure. I sensed that they were unrelated to the child killing demon my grandfather had trapped within the hospital’s earthly boundaries, but these entities were undoubtedly just as nasty. I could tell that the scent of blood was what made them hungry. I kept moving, certain that if I stopped for even a moment, I would lose myself to them. They stopped abruptly as a ray of true sunshine pierced the gloom from above. I forced myself to carry on at an unhurried pace, fearing that if I gave sudden flight, it—they—might risk the sun’s rays and give chase.

Finally, I found the myself standing in the narrow shaft of light that illuminated the tunnel’s entrance. I climbed the steps and found myself standing near the old hospital once again. With a wave of my hand, I moved the heavy sheet of metal back into place, sealing off the tunnel. Witch markings, invisible to the human eye, were etched across the cover. Perhaps these too were made by my grandfather, but some sixth sense told me that they had existed long before he’d walked the earth.

Time had moved differently in Jilo’s world. The light that had led me out of the darkness was the last ray that could have managed to find its way down there. Another half an hour more, and I might have been lost. A chill ran down my spine, but I shook it off. I turned to find Connor directly behind me.

“You hurt yourself?” he asked, his eyes appraising the blood on my shirt. I almost tore into him for stalking me, but there was real concern in his voice, a genuine caring that my human ears had never been able to pick up on. I looked at him for the first time through a witch’s eyes. Instead of the bloviating and disapproving dictator I had always known him to be, I just saw a man. A man who’d been quite handsome in his youth—I’d seen the pictures—and had cut a dashing figure sixty or so pounds ago. A man who looked tired and defeated. A man who had never quite been able to achieve what he wanted most.

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing from here,” he said and reached out to take the injured hand. I pulled it violently away from him, but I was a touch too slow. He caught hold of my hand and turned it palm up so that he could assess the wound. “Well, I’m not Ellen,” he said, sighing, “but I think I can handle this.”

He traced the length of the wound with more gentleness than I’d though him capable of, and I watched as the cut healed beneath his touch. I was impressed. I was excruciatingly familiar with the tracking tricks he did with his pendulum, and he was pretty good with moving small items with telekinesis, but I’d never seen him do anything like this before. The effort seemed to have tired him. He was sweating and looked a little gray. “There, now. Care to tell me what you’ve been up to?”

“No, not really,” I said, but with none of the rancor that my heart usually held for him. “Thank you for healing my hand.”

“You probably could have done it yourself today,” he said. “The golem told me that you’re all juiced up on Oliver’s magic.” He paused and looked at me, weighing his words.

“You’ve obviously got something to say, so out with it.”

He grimaced. “I do. I have something very important to say. Actually a lot of important things to say, but I’m trying to figure out how to say them without pissing you off.” He started to speak again, but hesitated. His shoulders drooped forward, and he shook his head. “You always see me as the enemy, Mercy, but I’m not your enemy. So hear me out for a few minutes, okay?”

Part of me would have preferred spending more time with the living shadows in the tunnel than listening to my uncle’s lectures, but I nodded anyway.

“Good,” he said, adding “thank you” in an uncharacteristic show of good manners. “Regular hospitals aren’t equipped to handle witch births. You two were born at home, and you came early. Only Iris and Ellen were home when your mama started labor. I wasn’t there when you girls were born,” he said. “I was out of town. But Iris told me that Maisie came out shining with life and power. We all thought your mama was only carrying one child. You weren’t even expected. Emily picked the name Maisie out for your sister as soon as she was sure the baby was a girl.” Connor stopped speaking for a moment and chuckled to himself. “She said there were too many damned witches named Sarah and Dianna in the world. You were a surprise to us all. When you came out, you were scrawny and blue—you’d practically starved to death in your mother’s womb.

“Your mama, she was dying,” he said, and a large tear dropped down his cheek. He brushed it away without seeming to notice that he had shed it. “Ellen was a gifted witch back before Ginny docked her powers, but even she had her limits. Nature only lets her get away with so much. A choice had to be made, and your mama made it. She refused Ellen’s help, using the last of her strength to beg Ellen to save her baby. To save you.”

Tears formed in my own eyes, tears too large and numerous to ignore. Connor waved his hand like a stage magician and produced a handkerchief. He held it out to me, and I took it.

“Ellen held you tightly in her arms and breathed her own breath into your little lungs. It took a while, but she got your body to warm up. By the time you had some color in your cheeks, your mama had already passed on. Ellen named you Mercy then and there, ’cause she thought a poor child like you was going to need some mercy. I, on the other hand, took a different tack. Once we determined for sure that you were powerless, I took it upon myself to personally knock you down every time the opportunity presented itself. I bullied you. I said bad things about you. I rubbed your nose in your failures every chance I got. And I did it all because I love you. I wanted you to be tough enough to face the rest of the witches who were saying much worse about you behind your back. I wanted you to be tough enough to face—”

“To face Ginny,” I interrupted him. He nodded his head yes, and to my surprise tried to pull me into a hug. I resisted, and even used a bit of the witch power I’d borrowed from Oliver to escape his grasp. I wasn’t ready to forgive a lifetime of hurt, at least not yet. I saw the pain of my rejection flicker through his eyes.

“She had it out for you from the beginning,” he said. “She blamed you for your mama’s death. And then, when she realized you had no powers, she started calling you ‘The Disappointment’ behind your back.” The words cut through my heart. “So I started calling you the same thing to your face to make you stronger. But you gotta know, Mercy, you were never a disappointment to me. Not to any of us, other than Ginny.”

He circled around me to block me from leaving. It was only then that I realized I had been moving away, trying to evade the pain his candor was causing me. “Listen,” he said. “I kind of know what it’s like. Ginny looked down on me too. She thought that Iris had made a mistake in marrying me, and that I didn’t carry enough power to be a good match. The old bag cut me off at the knees and embarrassed me about my limits every chance she got. I know that she joked about me with the extended family. But you,” he said, and the expression on his face told me that he had never fully understood what he was about to relate, “she hated you, Mercy. I’m sorry to say it, but we all knew it was true.”

“I always knew it too,” I said. “But why did she bother putting up protective charms for me if she hated me so much?”

“Pride,” Connor said. “The old bitch wasn’t going to let you be the weak link in her armor. If someone had harmed you, it would have been an affront to her dignity.” He reached out for me again, placing his hand on my shoulder. I let him, and then he surprised me by tilting my chin up so that I was looking him in the eyes. “There are things I want to share with you. Some that I’ve only recently figured out, and some that I’ve known all along and should have told you about years ago. But I can’t just tell you. I have to show you. I need you to come with me,” he said, his eyes pleading.

“Where?” I asked, knowing the answer before he even replied.

“To Ginny’s,” he said, confirming my suspicion. “If you’ll go with me, I’ll be able to explain everything.”

“I’ll go,” I said, hoping that the show would be worth the price of admission. I had intended never to set foot in Ginny’s house again.

“Thank you,” he said again, relief flooding his face. “But first, let’s get you cleaned up a bit.” He pointed at my ruined shirtfront. He started to work his magic, but I held up a hand to stop him. I ran my right hand down the front of my shirt, and the dried blood that would have been impossible to remove by any other means instantly erased itself. That being done, we crossed over Drayton and walked into Forsyth Park, taking the center path past the Confederate Monument with its four rebel angels. Darkness was taking hold, and I watched as the last of the wholesome families evacuated Forsyth, their departure acknowledging that at nighttime the park belonged to the drug dealers and thugs that never seemed to get mentioned in the visitors’ bureau’s brochures.

As we drew near Park Avenue, the park’s lower boundary, my attention was captured by the monument memorializing those who had fought in the Spanish American War. I stopped dead in my tracks when I looked at the southern-oriented soldier’s face. I’d seen it a million times or more, but today, with the way the dying light was caressing it, I recognized an unmistakable resemblance to Jackson. My feelings for him washed over me like a tidal wave, aggravating my anger at Peter and my guilt for whatever role I had played in crushing Maisie’s dreams of a happy marriage. The temptation to run away with Jackson was strong, but I knew that if I gave in we’d both someday regret it.

“You okay?” Connor asked. I said nothing; I simply nodded and crossed the street. We turned left onto Barnard Street and then carried on to Duffy. Sooner than I would have liked, Ginny’s house stood before us. The house had stood vacant since the murder, and that’s more than likely how it would remain, a museum to the life and death of one Virginia Francis Taylor. I knew Connor and Iris had spent a lot of time there lately, sorting through Ginny’s belongings, which were few, and cataloging her magics, which were much more numerous. I started to ask him whether or not he had found anything interesting, but he raised his hand to stop me. “Inside,” he said and held the door open for me.

The first thing I noticed was that Connor must have removed the battery from Ginny’s clock—its annoying strumming had stopped. I let my witch senses kick in, trying to pry any secrets they could from my surroundings.