The Source (Witching Savannah, Book 2) (20 page)

Adam entered the room, shaking his head, his own fists clenched. “Just what in the hell are you two doing in here?”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Adam grabbed Oliver by the collar and gave him the bum’s rush out of the morgue. As they approached the door, Adam turned back to glare at me. His face was a mask of anger—horizontal wrinkles lined his forehead, his eyes glared at me, and his jaw jutted forward. I could see the pulse at his temple. He lifted one eyebrow, and that was enough to communicate that if I didn’t follow, I would be the next person to be dragged from the room. I shot one last look at Tucker, feeling ashamed of leaving him uncovered and sprawled awkwardly, one arm flung back over his head. I turned to set him right. “Mercy.” Adam’s voice turned my name into a one-word command. I turned back and followed.

Adam left us waiting in a small gray room in the mortuary for at least an hour. I suspected it was taking him a good while to calm himself. “He spotted my car.” Oliver had gleaned as much from Adam’s thoughts. “Stupid of me not to park farther away.” Oliver seemed cool as the proverbial cucumber, so I tried to follow his lead.

I had no idea how many laws we’d just broken, but I saw no camera or taping equipment in the room we were waiting in so I knew it wasn’t an actual interview room, just a private place to talk. Satisfied that Adam wouldn’t hear us, I turned to Oliver. “I saw a wolf.”

“So did I, Red, but I don’t know what to make of it. Keep it under your riding hood for now, okay?”

I let it go, but another worry rose to mind. “Do you think they’ve found Birdy?” I fought against the memory of her anguished face, against reliving her sense of terror and betrayal.

“No,” Oliver said casually. “And they won’t. Sandman and I went back last night and cleaned things up, but the less you know, the better.”

I felt too nervous to sit still, so I stood and started looking at the wanted posters pinned to a bulletin board on the wall. Each photograph was of a wanted murderer. I reckoned that made sense at a coroner’s office. One guy had a face that was covered with tattoos. His crazed eyes reminded me of a photo I’d once seen of Charles Manson. It only took one look into those eyes to know they belonged to a man who had committed many violent acts, one who took his pleasure in the fear and despair of others. A shiver ran down my spine, and I returned to my seat next to Oliver.

“Those people,” I said, nodding at the photos, “are horrid.”

He looked up from his phone, which he’d been using to answer emails. “Those people are dead. It’s a collection of mug shots of known killers whose autopsies have been performed here.”

Lovely
, I thought to myself, and at the same instant Adam stormed into the room and slammed a manila folder down before us.

“Open it,” he commanded.

Oliver did, but then snatched the folder from my view. “She doesn’t need to see this,” he said, shoving the folder back at Adam.

“She’s seen worse.” He opened the folder and slid its contents before me.

“Oh my God,” I said in the instant before the bile rose to my throat. They were morgue photos of Peadar, or the “real” Peter, as I’d come to think of him, versus the changeling I’d agreed to marry. Regardless of what Adam thought, this felt much, much worse than seeing Tucker’s body. I had been the one to do the damage to Peadar. I couldn’t help myself. I began to cry.

“Adam, stop it,” Oliver said, snatching the photo out from under my face.

“Then tell me what’s going on,” he said. Oliver’s eyes told me to keep quiet. “Come on, y’all. Talk to me. Tell me the truth for once.” Adam looked from me to Oliver, and then settled on me. “No lies, no half-truths. For once, don’t prevaricate. Don’t dissimulate. Lay it out for me.”

“I’m not sure what you are looking for from us,” Oliver said, causing Adam’s gaze to dart back to him.

Adam blinked, then looked away. He lowered his eyes to his folded hands and clenched his jaw. “All right. Let’s play it your way. I have two mutilated bodies in this morgue.” That told me that they hadn’t discovered Birdy yet. Whatever Oliver had done had kept her out of sight, at least for now. “One of which I just walked in to find you messing with. Although the coroner cannot say with absolute certainty that they were killed using the same weapon, it’s pretty damned obvious they were killed with the same type of weapon. That being said, he doesn’t have a good half damn of an idea what that weapon could be.” His hands clamped into fists and he banged them both down on the table between us. In spite of myself, I jumped. Oliver didn’t flinch.

Adam stood and walked to the corner of the room. Keeping his back to us, he lifted his hands into the air, the fingers twisting out like branches. He sighed in frustration before turning to face us. “I may be many things, but I am not a fool. I know magic when I see it, and in this town, the Taylors are magic central.” Oliver leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. I noticed that the air conditioning had raised goose bumps on his arms, and the blond hairs covering his forearms were standing at attention. “Oliver, you can’t keep shutting me out, not if we are going to have hope for any kind of future together.”

Oliver went from calm to livid in an instant. He stood up, leaning into the table and pointing at Adam. “Do not try to use emotional blackmail on me. If I keep something from you, it’s because it’s beyond what I can possibly tell you.”

“Oh, it’s over my pay grade, is it?” Adam asked, storming over.

“Precisely,” Oliver said and looked at me. “Come on, Gingersnap, we’re done here. We are leaving.”

Both of them stood over me, seething, ready to rip apart everything they had just started to piece back together. “Sit down, Uncle Oliver,” I said. He looked at me, not quite comprehending. This time I took a firmer tone. “I said ‘sit.’ You too,” I addressed Adam. They hovered, each waiting for the other to make the first move. “Well, if you two aren’t perfect for each other. A matching pair of jackasses. Now, I said ‘sit.
’ 
”

Energy burst from me, a little stronger than I had intended, but I had grown tired of this nonsense. My feet were swelling. My pants chafed my stomach. And damn it, I wanted ice cream. With barely a wink, I lifted around four hundred or so pounds of man up into the air and slammed both of their hardheaded selves back into their respective chairs. “There,” I said to Adam. “Now that there is magic.” His eyes opened wide as he looked at me. He sat up straight and ran his hand across his mouth, trying to wipe away the look of shock, trying to regain composure and a sense of control.

“You can’t,” I said.

“I can’t what?”

“Control the situation,” I said. “You keep trying to poke your nose behind the curtain that Oliver works so hard to keep in place for you, just so you can keep thinking that you are in charge, that you aren’t in over your head. Well, you are.”

“Mercy,” Oliver tried to stop me. “You cannot un-tell something that you’ve told.”

“Oh, I know that. I do.” I nodded my head at him, and then turned to Adam. “And that’s why I am giving Detective Cook the chance to decide. Looks to me like the slightest show of power has left him trembling.” Adam started to protest. “Shut it. I’m not through. You think you know things about the Taylors, about witches, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t know a damned thing. How can I be so sure? ’Cause I am a witch, and I don’t even know a damned thing. I know what you are feeling, that queasiness in your stomach, that cold sweat between your shoulders. No, it isn’t the air conditioning. It’s what you feel when you see a spirit, when you cross an elemental’s path, or when you feel a witch’s magic. It feels like what to you? Jarring? Unnatural? Terrifying?” I glared at him. “Answer me.”

He drew a breath. “I find it unsettling.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “So if you are ‘unsettled’ after a little taste, are you sure you want to heap a full serving onto your plate?”

“Yes, if it means I can get to the bottom of these murders. Prevent another from happening.”

I laughed, but it was not my usual laugh. The cackle I heard shocked my own ears. “Adam, you could know every single detail of our lives, and it still would not help you to prevent any crime that a witch has her heart set on committing.”

“So,” he said, his color returning to him, “you are telling me that the rest of us . . . the real humans—”

“Witches are real humans,” Oliver said as flatly as if he were playing a taped response.

“You know what I mean: regular folk. Non-witches. You are telling me that we regular folk are pretty much in control of nothing, if one of you decides to meddle.”

“Yes,” I said, a calm filling my voice, “that’s exactly what I am saying. How does hearing that make you feel? Powerless? Hopeless? Do you want to dig any deeper, or should we stop here?”

He ran his hands over his head. His elbows went to the table, and then he held his head between his hands. He remained still and silent for a few moments. “I have to know,” he said. “I need to know.”

“Why?” Oliver cried out. He slapped his palms down on the table and leaned in toward Adam.

“Because, everything else aside, I want to build a life with you. We can’t do that if you always have to keep me in the dark.”

“We can,” Oliver protested, but then he smiled. “I don’t ever want to see you looking at me like you looked at Mercy when she slammed your sorry ass in that chair. Leave it, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “I can’t.”

Oliver nodded and bit his lower lip. “All right then.” He looked at me. “I don’t think y’all really need me for this, do you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said. Oliver stood and patted my shoulder before exiting. I watched Adam’s face, the way his eyes followed Oliver as he left. There was a confused mixture of tenderness and annoyance in them. That’s when I knew for sure that he felt real love for my uncle, and bringing Adam into the know was the right thing to do.

When the door clicked closed, I held my hand up before Adam’s face, making my best effort to copy a sideshow magician’s fancy feat of prestidigitation. Before his sharpening eyes, I produced one of Ellen’s charmed rose quartzes. Better safe than sorry in case anyone decided to listen in with magic.

“What’s that?” he asked. He squared his shoulders, and relaxed in his chair, trying to appear casual, unimpressed.

“This is a little something to make sure what we say here stays here. You have to understand, Adam. Even though I am sharing with you, you can’t share any of what I tell you with anyone else. Outside this room, you can’t even discuss it with Oliver, not unless he tells you the coast is clear. Got it?” It felt odd but exhilarating for
me
to be the magic expert. I’d do my best not to talk down to him the way other witches had always talked down to me before my powers manifested.

“Got it,” he said and nodded his head. “Where do we start?”

I stopped and considered this. There was still so much I was only now learning myself, so much I didn’t understand. “Well, I think the best place to start is with Ginny. You see, Connor didn’t kill Ginny.” His eyes narrowed; he had been oh so certain of Connor’s guilt from day one. With only a few words, I had completely wiped away his smug sense of self-validation. “It was a demon, a boo hag, if you will, who did the killing. You knew this demon as Jackson.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Some might have considered it a misuse of county equipment, but I didn’t object when Adam offered to have a uniformed officer drop me off downtown, and the officer did not object to fulfilling a childhood fantasy when I asked him to put on the sirens and lights. Cars pulled over and pedestrians stopped to wait for us as we flew down Waters to Wheaton to Randolph, finally arriving on Broughton. The officer stopped beneath the SCAD Theater marquee and turned off the siren and lights. He put the patrol car in park and got out and came around to open my door.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“Sure thing, Miss Taylor,” he replied before shutting the door.

“Can I treat you to something?” I asked, nodding toward the ice cream shop.

“No, thanks, ma’am,” he said, patting his stomach and returning to the car. He pulled out into traffic.

The siren had caused a number of people to gather outside Leopold’s, and I jostled my way through them. A group of children in the shop’s party room still had their faces pressed against the window, trying to spot the cause of all the excitement. Behind them, the party’s hired entertainment, a man wearing the odd combination of a pirate outfit and a white clown’s face looked a little less than happy to get second billing.

“Everything okay, Mercy?” asked Josh, a student at SCAD and part-time scoop jockey, as I came through the door.

The worry melted from his face when I replied, “Emergency ice cream craving.”

“
Craving
, huh?” he asked as he rolled up a sleeve and exposed a tattoo, one undoubtedly of his own design. I repressed a shudder—his innocent tattoo brought to mind the markings on Ryder’s arm. I acknowledged his underlying question with a smile and nod. “Well, congratulations,” he said, seeming truly happy for me. “Might I recommend our newly created mother-to-be tasting menu?”

The squeals and laughter from the birthday party made me smile. I’d had more than a few of my own celebrations in the side room, and hoped to have many more here with my son. “Oh, yes, that sounds perfect. Newly created?”

“Yep. About seven seconds ago. Grab a seat.” He nodded at a table near the window. “Not doing your tour anymore?” he called out as I took my seat.

“No, I think I’ve told enough lies about this poor old town,” I said and smiled at him.

He had arranged a dozen or so small paper cups on a tray and was digging away in the cooler. “Mind if I take up the mantle, then? It would be a shame for a good idea like that to go to waste.”

“Not at all,” I said, feeling only a twinge of sentimentality. I’d been doing the Liar’s Tour since I was twelve. Giving it up to someone else would mean closing a door on a big chunk of my past. Deep down though, I knew that the door had already closed. “Come by the house sometime, and I will give you the leftover souvenirs.” I had about five hundred Liar’s Club to-go cups, or “walkers,” as we called them around here, stashed in my closet. A few T-shirts too.

“Sweet. Thanks. Here, on the house,” he said as he walked over and placed the tray in front of me with a flourish, then returned to the counter to help another patron. As I ate my ice cream, I was flooded with memories of the days I’d spent leading groups around the squares and coming up with the most audacious lies I could think of. A couple laughed as they walked down Broughton, and the sound pulled me back to the present. I gazed out the window, my eyes settling on the library across the street, an unremarkable building that had once been a department store. Special to Savannah in that there was nothing visually interesting about it. Architectural white noise, wallpaper.

As I scanned the building’s lines, I became aware of a figure leaning up against the gray kiosk that stood before it. He wore a dirty red baseball cap, the bill of which he had pulled down to hide his eyes. His clothes were worn, his jacket torn on the shoulder. By outward appearance, he could have been one of Savannah’s homeless. Even though he didn’t look directly at me, I felt his interest in me, his intention that I should notice him. He lifted his cap and ran his hand through his hair. My heart pounded when I recognized him. It was my mother’s driver, Parsons.

I pushed away from the table and darted out the door. Parsons had already made it halfway down the block, and he raised his hand and waved, signaling me to follow him. I felt like I was walking in a dream. Uneasy memories of his masklike face and out-of-sync voice warned me to turn around. But still I felt compelled, whether by magic or curiosity, to follow this odd man, disguised as a homeless man to avoid notice. Parsons turned at Habersham and laid an envelope on one of the benches in Warren Square. Without pausing or giving me another glance, he pulled his cap tightly over his eyes and headed over to a rusted Impala parked at the far end of the square. The car shot out black puffs of exhaust as it fired into life. I watched Parsons pull away, and ran to the bench to grab the envelope he had left behind.

My name was scrawled on it in unfamiliar cursive. I ripped the envelope open, and a piece of card stock fell to the ground. I picked it up without looking at it, then pulled out a folded sheet of paper from the envelope and read:

My dear daughter,

If you are reading this, then our time together has been cut short, and my most trusted servant, Parsons, has been obliged to risk his own life to deliver this to you.

I returned to Savannah in the hope that I would find a way to make things right. To make peace with my family. To help you save your sister from the hell to which the line has sentenced her. To reclaim our lives together. To watch your child grow in the way I was denied the joy of watching you and Maisie as you matured into the strong, beautiful women that you are.

I failed to protect your sister, but I have not failed to protect you. The witch families have used your fear to extort most of your rightful powers from you. They have also constrained your direct access to the energy of the line, but I have created another source of power for you, one over which they have no control. I grant you now the only inheritance I can, the full use of the power I have collected through Tillandsia. Use the enclosed invitation to gain entrance to Tillandsia and claim your birthright. Protect yourself. Protect your child. Trust no one.

With more love than words can express,

Your mother

I refolded the letter and returned it to the envelope. I felt the card in my hand, letting my finger run over the engraving. “Tillandsia,” I read aloud. The word and a two-color drawing of the black-and-red door were all that had been printed on the front. On the reverse, handwritten in an unfamiliar but elegant script was “Mercy Taylor and Guest,” and beneath our names, the message, “Tonight, sunset. Black tie required.”