The Void (Witching Savannah Book 3) (17 page)

TWENTY-THREE

I gasped as the cold blade of grief that had lodged itself in my heart twisted once more. I had come to the point where I had found strength enough to let him go, but there remained so many things I wanted to say to him. Words I wanted him to hear. Words of regret I’d hoped to hear from him. Promises that someday he would return to me, to our son. This utter lack of hesitation, his joy in abandoning us, was more than I could bear.

Like a boy fleeing school at the beginning of summer, Peter raced through the portal connecting this world to that of the Fae. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t look back. Not a single farewell, not even a wave. As my eyes followed him into his new horizon, a hole formed in the material of my existence. He was as good as dead to me now. No, worse. There were plenty of pretty stories promising reunions in the world beyond death. I’d never heard any such tale about those separated as I had just been from Peter.

I gasped, struggling for air, unable to catch my breath as the realization that he was truly gone, that I would never see him again, sank in. So many times over the years, I’d had the chance to reach out to him. To take his hand. To tell him I loved him. So many times I’d had the opportunity, and I hadn’t taken advantage of it. I despised myself now for those overlooked, unappreciated chances. The woman, the Fae, his mother, somehow she knew the spell had been broken and that the moment had come to reclaim her son. She stood off to the side watching as my heart was wrenched from my chest. She was so calm, so poised, I very nearly thought her heartless, until I looked deep into her silver eyes. Even though those eyes were not human, I could tell what I saw there was perhaps as close as the Fae came to sympathy. She might be the source of my anguish, but I felt she took no pleasure in it.

I felt a stabbing sensation in my chest, and my shoulders hunched up as my back bent. Hot sobs came from such a primordial place in my soul they could have been confused with laughter. I didn’t feel sure I could survive this pain. I didn’t know if I really wanted to. A part of me wanted to let the pain take me, to carry me away from the land of the living. Another part of me wanted nothing more than to rush through the entry that still hovered only a few feet away, mere inches off the ground, and drag Peter back through it, force him to come back to me. I knew deep down that even if it were possible, I could never be that selfish. I could never be that cruel.

I felt a black rage bubbling up within me. My anger craved a target. “How could you?” I turned to his mother. “How could you monsters send your children to us, let us love them, then take them away?”

“Monsters?” She looked at me with her luminous silver eyes. “If we Fae are monsters, then you witches have made us such.” Even though her words had been said as a reproach, there was no anger behind them. Her voice caressed me. “No, I would never have caused you this pain, a pain very much like the one I myself felt when I gave my son up to this world.”

“Then why do you do it?” Ellen asked. “I lost my boy. If I had had the choice, I would have given my very soul to save his life, to keep him here with me. I cannot imagine simply handing him over to strangers.”

The Fae’s eyes opened wider. “Is it possible you witches have forgotten your own history?” Our silence served as our answer. Her lovely face fell on me. “Then you must think me a monster.”

“Tell us,” Iris said, abandoning her point on the star and coming to put her arms around me. “What causes your kind to behave as you do? Why do you trade your own babies for human children? What purpose does having your changelings in our world serve?” I noticed Oliver had gone to Maisie, that he was sheltering her. God. She had loved Peter too. Was her heart breaking like mine?

The Fae broached our circle. I was quickly coming to the conclusion that witch magic was nothing more than minor prestidigitation compared to the magic of the Fae. “Your husband,” she said, reaching out to me with her long slim fingers, “my son. He’s not just any Fae. He is royalty. He is a prince.” She held her head high, her delicate neck lovely in the moonlight. Around that neck she wore a pendant that might have been mistaken for an enormous ruby if rubies could glow in the dark. A scent reminiscent of sweet olive flower surrounded her. “I do not tell you this out of conceit, I tell you this so you will understand the desperate position in which you witches and your ‘line’ ”—the word sounded sharp coming from her mouth—“have placed the Fae.”

“The line?” Somehow, before she even explained herself, a wave of guilt washed over me, an emotion oddly out of place in the current circumstances, but the knowledge that we as witches were somehow responsible for where I now stood struck me as both an unpleasant and undeniable truth.

“Yes, that is how the web of magic you witches wove is known among your kind, is it not? The device by which you claimed this world, this dimension as your own, it was known as ‘the line’ at the time of its creation.”

Iris squeezed me a tad more tightly. “We do still call it that, but how could it be of any consequence to the Fae?”

“When you draw a line, when you make a demarcation between one zone and another, you are creating a barrier, cutting the one thing off from the other. To protect yourselves from the dimension through which the great demons entered your reality, you witches gave yourselves a much wider berth than you needed. Once our dimension shared much of the same physical space as your own. Your line cut our world off, separating us from our shared source. Its creation was more than devastating. Greater than decimating. In the blink of an eye, a world of actualities was wiped out. Only a small remnant of the Fae survived. We tried to rebuild. We tried to start anew, but many of our children had been poisoned by your act of treachery. They were born deformed, their cognitive abilities damaged beyond any hope of healing.” Her face lost some of its luster. “The worst is the reverberations of your magic set our reality adrift. Our wise ones determined we could slow this drift by placing our own equivalent of your line’s anchors in your reality. It will live on as an eternal point of shame for us, but we were so angry, so desperate, for generations we stole human children from their cradles and put our own damaged children in their place.”

“But my Peter, he’s beautiful.”

She smiled at me with obvious pride. “Our efforts worked. The exchange of children has almost stopped our drift, not completely, but still, we now have time to strive to find a permanent solution.” She approached me in a nearly liquid movement. She touched my cheek, and I felt my body relax. “After many generations, we began to heal. The developmental problems that faced many of the first generation after your magic nearly destroyed us have for the most part disappeared. Our children are again physically beautiful and intellectually blessed. Their magic,” she said as her eyes widened and shone with what I felt had to be joy, “it is wondrous, even by the standards of the Fae.”

She removed her hand, and I felt instantly sadder, somehow diminished by the loss of her touch. “Why did you send Peter, if he was a prince?”

“Because, lovely one, a leader should never ask her people to pay a price she isn’t willing to pay herself.” A tear, luminous and as silver as the eye from which it fell, traced down her cheek. “We Fae are not monsters. We are living, breathing souls fighting for our lives. I am not heartless. I am a mother. Even though I rejoice at the return of my son, my heart breaks at your loss of him. I sense you loved him, perhaps even more deeply than you realize yourself.”

“How could he leave me so easily?” With those words I swung again from heartbreak to anger. “How could he leave our baby?”

She looked down on me sadly, then turned to step nearer the portal that I’d only just realized had been shrinking, dissolving. “Don’t hate him for leaving you.” She paused. “I cannot find the words to explain to you in the time we have left, but when we place our children in this world, it is more than a change of physical locations for them. It is an absolute rewriting of their potential at a level deeper than what you have come to call ‘quantum.’ This
twisting
, it is done at the point of nothingness.”

“The great void,” I said, more to myself than anyone else who might have heard me.

Her look of approval told me she had appreciated my description. “Yes, the great void where nothing exists but from which all potential springs.” In the passing moment, I sensed she was weighing her words, wondering how much more I might take without breaking. “He didn’t forget you, my beauty. If it were a simple matter of forgetting, you would have never left his heart. He has been returned to his natural course. A course where you are a stranger, a stranger he never has and never will meet.” She cast an uneasy glance at the fading portal.

“But our baby . . .”

At my words, she seemed to forget her anxiety about the closing window on her world. She was suddenly before me, her lovely face a mask of pain. She reached out with both hands and placed them over my stomach. For the first time in days, I felt little Colin jolt to life. I could feel his joy at meeting his natural grandmother flood through me, but her face told me this was in no way going to be good news. “You must be strong,” she said, her voice taking on a musical quality, as if she were trying to sedate me through sound. “If I could give my own life to change this for you, I gladly would.”

I pulled back, dragging Iris with me. “You’re scaring me.”

“I am so sorry, but there will be no child.”

“What are you saying?” I lunged at her in desperation. I grabbed hold of her arm. A gentle pulse of electricity caused my fingers to tingle. My hand relaxed, and she slipped from my grasp. “You held on to my son with your hope. I suspect your hope will enhance your magic so that you continue to sense the child, for a period at least, but the child will cease to exist. It will cease to have been.” She placed her hand over her heart, and moved gracefully backward toward the portal that had dimmed so as to be nearly imperceptible. “I am sorry, dear one. I am. Please know this.” She paused beside the portal and looked once more into my eyes. “May you find a love who will never leave you, who will never forget you. This is my wish for you.” With that she stepped into the fading window. She and the light were gone.

In the next moment I had fallen to the ground, digging my fingers into the dirt of Jilo’s crossroads. I could hear my own screams as I reached out to any magic that might still lie buried there.

TWENTY-FOUR

I could not remember how I came to be home. I had been bathed and put to bed, Iris’s bed, but how that happened remained a blank. Reality began taking sharp bites from the comfort I felt upon waking. Everything, my husband’s abandonment, his parents’ murder, my mother’s death, Gudrun’s escape, and the Fae’s warning that my baby would soon be no more, competed to bring the emotions attached to them to the forefront. Bereavement and rage, horror and despondency bent around each other like a kaleidoscope of every shade of anguish.

For a moment I let myself slip into the fantasy that it had all been a bad dream. Any second Peter would come through the door and fall on the bed next to me, leaning on his elbows and crawling up along the mattress to place a Killian’s-flavored kiss on my lips. I closed my eyes and pushed the fantasy away. I knew only madness lay in that direction. With my magic, with my pain, I might just manage to create a fantasy world for myself, where I could deceive myself with a false happiness, but lose any chance of saving my child.

An unpleasant scent pierced my awareness. Ammonia? Panic jolted through me. I felt for my distended stomach, so grateful to feel it was still round and hard to the touch that I began to cry. It was more than that Colin was all I had left of Peter, more than that he was a link to the person I had been. I hadn’t even laid eyes on Colin yet, but he was my son. I felt him. I knew him. I loved him. He was real to me. He was real. I would be damned if I’d simply let him dissolve into the ether. I pushed the sheet down, surprised to realize I was completely naked beneath it. I startled at the sight of runes, the ancient magic symbols of the northern peoples, that had been drawn on me from just beneath my breasts all the way down my thighs. I realized the ammonia smell came from the India ink used to make the marks.

The character
Uruz
, the symbol of health, strength, tenacity, was repeated in a large circle on my stomach. My finger traced over one of the markings. I felt Ellen’s magic in this rune and knew she had drawn it with her own hand, filling it with both her love and her power.
Laguz
, representing life energy, formed a second circle that lay within the borders of that formed by
Uruz
. This character and others I did not recognize—Chinese? Hebrew?—had been drawn by Iris. I knew Iris had connected her powerful intellect with a level of magic I doubted she had ever before attempted. It struck me as odd that I didn’t feel Uncle Oliver connected to any of the magic, but maybe since giving birth was a female act, the spelling was left to the women?

I was so entranced by the discovery of the symbols, I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until I heard a book hit the floor. I turned to see Iris curled up in a wingback chair from our library. She was sound asleep, soughing, her legs pulled up under her. The noise from the falling book didn’t wake her. I recognized the book as one of my grandfather’s journals. He had been a specialist in creating spells using runes and other magical symbols, and if his knowledge could help save Colin, I was sure it would go a long way for all of us toward finding forgiveness for him.

The shutters had been pulled tight; the only light in the room came from the floor lamp Iris had slid over to the side of her borrowed chair. I was unsure what time it was or how long I’d been sleeping. A feeling of déjà vu came to me. I soon realized I’d felt this same disorientation when I awoke in the hospital after Ginny’s murder. It felt impossible that the previous awakening could have occurred only six months before. The memory of discovering Ginny’s body was still sharp and clear. I could still hear the ticking of Ginny’s dime-store clock competing with the buzzing of flies. Had it been that moment when everything in my life had changed from dull to full-speed? Or had it been the night before, when I got it in my head to turn my romantic problems over to a certain surly conjure-woman?

I thanked God I’d taken my tour into Colonial Park Cemetery in time to see the old woman of the crossroads working her way through the monuments like a needle through cloth toward the exit, holding on to her bright-red cooler and using her lime-green lawn chair as a makeshift walker. Her progress was slowed by an unfortunate woman who’d sought the death penalty against her husband, then wanted the magic undone once she realized she’d convicted him under false evidence. Did Jilo undo the curse in time, or had the poor innocent man been punished over a stupid misunderstanding? I wished I’d asked Jilo. I should have cared enough about what is right and what is wrong to at least find out. Or had I simply been too afraid to learn the truth? I wanted to believe Jilo had undone any harm before it became permanent.

Jilo didn’t always take the concept of right versus wrong into account when practicing her magic, but still I came to love her and she me. My family could access exponentially more magic than Jilo ever dreamed of having, but I knew if she were here, she’d find a way to protect Colin. I wondered if I’d worry about her methods if she were still with me, or if I’d back her in whatever steps she thought might prove effective.

Still, as much as my friendship with Jilo had changed me, I knew the adulteration I’d experienced had been triggered before that encounter in Colonial. I tried to cast myself back into the girl I had been the day Maisie first brought Jackson home and introduced him to the family. I had grown so used to living on the outside of magic, on the fringe of my family, that I had become a solitary soul. Not exactly lonely, but not a part of anything either. Perhaps I’d enjoyed leading tourists around, telling them tiny white lies, because for a brief moment I was more than the center of attention; I was connected to them. Then, before things had the chance to turn messy, I was able to wave good-bye and send them off to City Market or the Pirates’ House.

Still, I’d been happy. Happy, adventuresome, curious, committed to Peter through a promise that had never needed to be spoken, but one I’d very nearly broken. When I laid eyes on the beautiful lie that was Jackson, I saw my own magic in him. A magic that had been stolen from me. I loved the magic, and because I loved it, I, for a brief and foolish moment, had believed I loved Jackson. My callousness toward Peter drove him to take desperate measures to win me over, the result of which was the beautiful being I now nurtured in my womb.

I placed my hands on my stomach and sent all the love in the world to the little boy growing inside me. “You’re gonna be all right, baby. We both will. Mama promises.” I whispered the words knowing full well I couldn’t really make that guarantee, but my love was so strong I felt sure it had to count for something. I felt an incomparable joy when I felt my feelings being returned. Colin believed me. More than that, he believed
in
me. He knew I was not simply going to give up on him and let him fade away, regardless of what his fairy grandmother had told me. I opened myself with all my heart and soul to my child. I made a promise then and there, that no matter what, I’d do what it took to protect him, to make sure he had the chance of having a life in this world, even if his life turned out to be every bit as messy and confusing as his mama’s.

As my soul resolved to protect him at any cost, I felt a tug. An unfamiliar and powerful magic called to me. I recognized the magic’s source by the fact it felt so entirely different from my own. This power was wholly alien in every sense of the word. Gudrun was nearby, and she called to me.

Still, it felt like an invitation, not a summons. A promise of assistance, of security, of enough power to take care of myself and those I loved. Enough power to save my son.

“No, this is all your fault. Josef may have set the fire, but you wove the spell that killed Claire and Colin,” I said aloud as if Gudrun were there with me. Iris shifted, but did not wake. “My son lost his father trying to ease his father’s pain, a pain you caused. And now . . .” My words failed me as I couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow myself to give voice to the idea that I might now lose my son.

Gudrun’s answer came to me through impressions rather than words. A declaration of innocence. A promise of retribution against the guilty. A tickling reminder of how those who should be my allies had betrayed—and continued to betray—me was woven into the fabric of the calling. An offer of camaraderie. Hadn’t we both suffered at the hands of the line’s other anchors? Wasn’t it true that we two were somehow special? Those who should have rightly formed a sure foundation beneath our feet had bound themselves together in their attempt to weigh us down. Yes, we had much in common.

I knew it would be foolish to answer the summons. Gudrun’s magic came from a place of darkness, a place I’d never want to visit. My good sense screamed out at me to wake my aunt, tell her what I was experiencing, but my good sense had no idea of how to protect Colin. If Gudrun had even the flimsiest of ideas how I could save my son, I had to take the risk. I had to hear her out. I waved my hands down the length of my body, and my nakedness was traded for street clothes.

I closed my eyes and focused on the tug. I had no idea to which unholy realm it might lead me, but I would walk barefoot over the coals of hell, the real one, if there were indeed such a place, to give my boy a chance of being born. I heard the familiar sound of a tourist trolley loudspeaker and opened my eyes to find myself in Oglethorpe Park, standing beneath the tree Peter and I had long known as the “climbing tree,” the very spot where we had wed only months before.

On that day Peter had asked me, “I’ll meet you beneath the climbing tree?”

“Always and for the rest of my life.” That had been my response. I touched the bark of the climbing tree’s trunk and asked it to remember that day for me, even if everyone else let it slip away.

Like a magnet collecting iron shavings, I felt my attention being pulled away from the tree, away from the memory. There, on a nearby bench, Gudrun sat with her back toward me. She held up a hand and signaled me to join her with a wave.

I took a breath and circled around to the front of the bench. “Thank you for joining me.” She spoke with a clipped German accent that reminded me of Erik Weber, the man who had been both my uncle and my father.

There before me were the exquisite yet unforgiving features that twice had looked back at me through my mirror. Gudrun had now stepped through the looking glass into the heart of my world. She occupied the bench as if it were the throne from which she ruled. She sat there surveying me, waiting for me to respond, but I stood speechless before her. Her magic was visible to my naked eye, shimmering around her like an August heat rising off blacktop. She tilted back her head, her eternal black pageboy cut falling at an angle along her delicate jawline.

“I have no interest in harming you,” she said. “However, I would have done anything to escape my prison. I would have sacrificed you, your child, your family,
anything
to free myself, but I am not your enemy.” I examined the gray eyes that shone out from porcelain skin. They radiated a calm certainty that only a person who suffered from no self-doubt could obtain. “I merely took advantage of your true adversaries’ hatred. I used it like a lever to pry loose the hold your fellow anchors had on me.”

I finally found my voice, even though I was still overwhelmed by the strangeness of the aura around her. “Call yourself what you want. You’ve destroyed my life. You murdered my in-laws. You’ve taken away my husband. And by taking away my husband, you’ve endangered my son’s life.”

She held up her hand. “Enough of your litany. I am not responsible for your tribulations.”

“It was your spell—”

“Yes, it was my spell, but my
assistant
”—the way she said the word suggested she found it a poor translation of the word she would have used if I could speak her mother tongue—“your brother, took liberty with my instructions. Josef wanted to strike out against you personally. I had no such desire.” She offered a slight shrug as if to underline the fact she was confirming the obvious. “I had intended it as a form of penance on his part, forcing him to distribute his lover’s remnants at the points of the sephirot. The sealing of the spell required the presence of burning bodies. I had intended that he offer the tribute to Asmodeus at a crematorium. Instead he took his revenge against you by setting your in-laws’ establishment afire.” She folded her hands on her lap. “Again, I will not lie to you. If my freedom required burning this entire city down around your ears, I would have done it without flinching, but Josef’s actions were unnecessary. They were motivated by his own anger, and I regret not holding the reins tighter.”

My bitterness blunted any sense of caution. “Well, I guess that makes it all right then,” I said, each word laced with sarcasm. “Why are you here? I don’t think you’ve come to ask for my forgiveness.”

She burst out laughing, a pointed sound that brought images of beer halls and heavy weaponry. “Forgiveness? I have long ago lost the need for that saccharine validation.” Her face smoothed back into a cool mask, with only a small twist on her lips still betraying amusement. “No, I do not seek your forgiveness, nor have I come to sue for peace.” She leaned in toward me conspiratorially. “I could squash you and your frail magic with only a thought.” She paused. “You don’t believe me?”