The Line (33 page)

THIRTY-TWO

The drawing of the lots had taken place thirteen days after Ginny’s death, and the investment ceremony would take place today, thirteen days later. Oliver’s prediction had been spot on—other than the few minutes I’d shared with Maisie upon her arrival, the families had kept her pretty much sequestered. What she’d told me had surprised me. I couldn’t believe that some of our family members truly believed that the line had truly chosen me as anchor. I chuckled to myself as I finished packing an overnight bag for my stay at the Mansion, not my ratty old backpack, but one of Ellen’s fancy, honest-to-God overnight bags. She had blanched when I’d told her I was planning on taking my backpack and had practically flung the thing at me. And even though we only lived about ten blocks from the hotel, Oliver had arranged for a town car to pick me up.

There was a rap at my door. “Your coach awaits, Cinderella,” Oliver’s voice called out to me.

“Tell the driver I’ll be right down.” My own reflection caught me by surprise as I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. The woman I saw in the mirror looked happy. In spite of everything that had happened over the past several days, I honestly felt like it would all turn out okay. Once the investment was over, I’d spend time with Maisie. We’d catch up and finish working things out. And then I’d get Iris away from here for a while. My first installment from the trust had hit my checking account on my birthday, and I was astounded by the size of it. There was plenty enough to take us to Paris, or maybe Florence. It would do us both good.

Uncle Oliver had decided to relocate his business to Savannah. He was staying home for good this time. That would be good for all of us, especially Ellen. Oliver might be a tad self-centered, but he would look out for her until she was back on an even keel. Peter, well, we’d work things out. Whether or not we got back together, we’d raise our boy right. Colin Taylor Tierney would be a blessing to this family—he’d be the new start that we all so badly needed. I smiled at my reflection and went down to meet the car. I gave Oliver a quick peck on the cheek on my way out, then winked at the driver as he took the bag from my hand and opened the door for me.

“It’s only a few blocks,” I said. “It feels downright decadent.”

“Nothing wrong with a little decadence now and again. Enjoy it, ma’am.” After closing the door behind me and stowing my bag in the trunk, he got into the driver’s seat and pulled out onto the street, showing much more care than the casual driver. “Scenic route?” he called back to me, glancing at me in his rearview mirror.

“Please,” I said. He turned the car in the opposite direction of the Mansion and zigzagged around so that he could circle the six closest squares.

As we neared Pulaski Square, he looked at me in the mirror again. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, handing me a small but beautifully wrapped package over the seat. “Your sister asked me to give this to you.”

“Thank you,” I said and took it from him. The box was covered in velvety midnight blue paper and tied with a single silver bow. I undid the bow and tugged open the box. On top was a note from Maisie. I unfolded it and read. “Even if you can’t be here with me, I’ll be able to feel your presence if you wear this.”

“Everything all right back there?” the driver asked.

“Yes. Everything is perfect,” I smiled up at him then took the necklace out from the box, kissing the beautiful stone that I recognized as azurite. Rounded and polished, it looked like a small globe of the world. As I slipped the chain around my neck, I closed my eyes and held the stone tightly in my hand, thinking of Maisie and sending her all my love.

When I opened my eyes, the driver was still looking at me in the rearview mirror, but his brown eyes had changed to a sapphire blue. The face beneath the driver’s cap had morphed into a completely different one. I’d know those eyes anywhere. That face. “Jackson?” I said, gasping.

“She told you I’d be back,” he said, throwing me a grin over his shoulder. His eyes were gleeful, crazed, and full of hate. I reached over to try the door, but it was locked.

“I don’t understand,” I said. He turned the car onto Barnard and sped across Liberty Street with the gas pressed to the floor. I screamed as he pulled into oncoming traffic.

He laughed as the vehicles passed right through our car—and us—without so much as a tickle. “Well, I’ll be glad to explain a few things to you. Starting with how we’re just a little out of sync with the world you’re used to right now. Those charms your buddy the golem set up for you ain’t gonna work here. And you can try and run away from me if you’d like, but you’ll never get home without me. See, I kind of like it here. We can see and hear what’s going on in the other world, but nothing and no one there can touch us. Unless that someone happens to be wearing the mate of that necklace you just put around your pretty little neck. Care to guess who that might be?”

“Maisie,” I said, once again astounded by my own stupidity, my willingness to be deceived.

“That’s right, my girl,” he said, continuing to drive. The familiar landmarks we were passing surprised me—we were heading back in the direction we’d come from. “Your sister set you up.”

“But why?” I asked.

“That’s a bit of a long story, but I guess we got the time for it. Unless you’d rather I smear blood on your head and toss you to the shadows like you and Jilo did to me?” He looked back over his shoulder at me again.

“All I ever did was love you, Jackson. That’s what we did to Wren, not you…we had to stop him, ” I said.

“You just don’t get it, do you, girl?” he asked. “I
am
Wren.”

“You’re Wren?” I asked, completely thrown.

“That’s right,” he chirped in Wren’s falsetto, before his voice broke back into Jackson’s range. “And thanks to your sister, I was finally able to break out of that way too small shell. Maisie helped me grow.” He winked at me. “Of course that’s what any good woman should help her man do, but in this case, I mean it literally.”

As I sat back in wonder, we pulled up in front of my house. It looked fairly quiet from the front, but I knew a world of activity was going on inside. He stopped the car and got out. “Shall we go back in and say hello to the family?” he asked. Flinging my door open, he yanked me out roughly, doing his best to hurt me. I didn’t resist; I let myself coast on his energy, going with the flow instead of fighting.

We walked straight through the door without stopping to open it. I found myself wishing that I’d never told my family that Jilo had linked her realm to the linen closet. If the portal had still existed, I might have been able to use it to escape. The thought of escaping to Jilo’s realm instead of from it struck me as funny, and in spite of my fear, or maybe because of it, I began to laugh.

Jackson shook me like I was a rag doll. “You think this is funny, do you? Well, you’ll stop laughing when you see what we have planned for you.”

My laughter dried up under his hateful gaze. Iris and Oliver passed in front of us, so close that I could have reached out and touched them. I started to call out to them, but the strength of Jackson’s grip made me think twice. It was his turn to laugh. “Go ahead,” he said, shoving me aside. “Scream! Nobody’s going to hear you.”

He jumped right in front of Oliver’s face. “Hey, faggot! Can your niece get a little help here?” Oliver passed directly through him, and Jackson doubled over with laughter. “I guess we’ll have to take that as a no.” He pushed me into the library through the foyer wall, and I landed at the foot of the love seat. “Interesting, isn’t it? You can walk right through walls, but the floor is still holding you up. That, Mercy, is because you are working magic. You’re so sure that the floor is going to support you that it does. Your magic is what’s holding you up.” He reached down and tugged me up. “Have a seat if you want. I’m sure your magic will let you, and you’ll look a little less ridiculous than you do right now.”

I bent my knees until I could feel the material of the love seat underneath me. It felt tangible and real, and it held my weight. “You’re wrong,” I said, despite all evidence to the contrary. “I have no power. I can’t do magic.”

“Oh, spare me the sad tale,” he bellowed. “And let me tell you a little story of my own.” He dragged a chair in front me and straddled it, putting us nearly nose to nose. The eyes looking out of his face weren’t human, the blue in them cold flames.

“Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a very wicked witch named Ginny and a whore named Emily. Now the whore slept with a whole bunch of men. But only one of them was special to her. Problem was, this man already belonged to her sister. Now I know this might sound familiar to you, but you just hang in there with me.” He winked at me. “The whore knew that her sister’s husband wanted children, and for some reason her sister had only managed to give him one. Of course you and I both know that the wicked witch had put an end to the babies, because she was afraid that the children born from of the combination of these particular bloodlines could overpower her, reuniting the thirteen families and turning her back into the nothing she knew herself to be. When the wicked witch learned that the whore had gotten herself knocked up, she bided her time. She pretended to believe that the father of the bastard children was the husband of the whore’s other sister, but she knew the truth all along.

“She knew that the boy born from the legitimate union was powerful but that he posed no real threat. The one who’d been foreseen was a girl. All sugar and spice and sweet and pink as you please. Well, when the witch realized that the whore was going to give birth to two girls, she started to pay a lot of attention. She sensed that the first one wasn’t going to be much of a problem. She had power, all right, but not nearly enough to rock the boat. The second one, though, well, she was something special, even for a Taylor witch. Ginny knew that this was the one whose coming had been foretold, and she was not about to let her live to see the light of day.

She did all she could to end the pregnancies, but that second little one, she was just too strong. She kept both herself and her sister alive and unharmed. And Ginny could feel the little one’s power increasing with each passing day. So she hijacked the power. She had to do it in steps; first she started feeding it from the strong sister to the weaker one and then, once she’d managed to get the energy flowing away from its owner, she sent it away. She grounded it in another dimension, close enough that she could access it herself, but far enough away that it could pass right through a Taylor witch without him or her ever noticing. As a matter of fact, it’s all around us right now. This was where Ginny sent your power. She did her best to starve you to death, and it might have worked if your Aunt Ellen hadn’t given you the boost you needed to survive delivery.”

Ginny had stolen my power and tried to kill me. No wonder my mother didn’t survive our birth. I had a whole new pack of reasons to grieve, but the knowledge that I wasn’t responsible for my mama’s death was like a wave of absolution, freeing me of the guilt that I had carried for as long as I could remember. Oddly, this was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Suddenly the proportions of the room shifted, and Maisie was standing directly in front of me. Jackson was several yards away, hanging at an angle that should have been impossible but wasn’t.

“She kept me under her thumb,” Maisie continued Jackson’s narrative seamlessly. “Not because I was some kind of prodigy, but because she saw me as a time bomb. Picture my surprise last year when I stumbled across her old journals. She kept such careful notes about me. She should have shown more care in keeping them hidden. Breaking the charms on them was child’s play. She couldn’t undo the siphon of power she’d set up between us. She couldn’t just take what she had been pumping into me and shift it somewhere else. She had inadvertently turned me into an anchor for your power. If the power started flowing back to you, the whole dam would have eventually burst, and she was prepared to stop at nothing to keep that from happening. You would be astounded to know just how much she hated you. She wrote about trying to find a way to bend time. To go back and prevent your ever having been conceived.”

“She was crazy. She had to be, but Maisie, how can you be doing this to me? You have got to stop this. You’ve got to let me go.”

“No, actually, I don’t. You see, this is how I’m going to finally get my revenge against Ginny. And you.”

“Against me? But for what?”

“For stealing my life! Ginny trained your power into me. She turned me into a freak.”

“At least she loved you,” I said, not even knowing anymore if that was true. Could Ginny have really have loved Maisie and used her as she had?

“As a reflection of her own twisted self, maybe, but not for any other reason. She didn’t let me out of her sight, and there you were, roaming free, making friends, meeting boys, finding love.” She grimaced at me. “I got to watch as you won the heart of the only man I could ever love.”

I started to protest that Jackson wasn’t even actually real, just a twisted, grown-up version of Wren when the dots suddenly connected. “Peter,” I said.

“Yes, Peter!” Maisie replied, anger spilling over in her voice. “Haven’t you noticed, Mercy? Most regular men won’t even come near us. And even witches are afraid of me because of this thing Ginny turned me into. I could never figure out why, but Peter is completely unfazed by the magic. It flows right over him, and he doesn’t even care. He could have loved me…and he would have if you weren’t around. I tried to take him from you, and the damnedest thing is that he never even noticed I was trying. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.”

“So you took Wren and started transforming him into Jackson.”

“Yes,” Maisie admitted, shaking her head. “I did, but it took a lot more energy than I possessed. It took
your
kind of power. A part of you recognized your own energy in him, and you interpreted those feelings as love.”

“Now that’s ironic, isn’t it?” Jackson asked. The distance between us had dissolved, and he was standing right by my side. He leaned in and kissed my cheek, then forced his lips on mine. Repulsed, I pulled back.