The Line

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.

Connor seemed to understand what I was doing. “There’s nothing down here,” he said. “Ginny kept the important stuff upstairs.” He left me at the foot of the stairs and slowly made his way to the upper story.

I was filled with a giddy uncertainty. Ginny had never allowed me on the second floor. Never. I put my foot on the first step, applying gentle pressure as if I expected it to be booby-trapped. It took my weight without any objections, and the next step beckoned me. Each step I took felt like an act of retribution against the old woman who had done her best to alienate me from my family because I didn’t share their gifts.

A door stood open at the end of the hall. Sensing that it had been Ginny’s room, I crossed the threshold, running my hands over her dressing table, bed, and nightstand, trying to pick up any remaining vibrations. All I felt was Ginny’s absence. Emboldened, I flipped on the light, only to see pictures of Maisie at various stages in her development staring back at me. One of them had originally been a photo of the two of us, but Ginny had cut the picture in half and used thick matting to hide the part of my presence that couldn’t be easily excised. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t hurt, that it didn’t matter. Ginny was gone. Truth was, it hurt like hell.

Connor’s voice called to me from another room, so I extinguished the light and went down the hall. He was standing in the doorway of a pink and girly room that was obviously Maisie’s home away from home. He stepped aside to let me enter.

One full wall was taken up by a built-in bookcase, filled from one end to the other with modern journals and ancient texts. I opened one of the newest looking ones to find notes Maisie had made during a lesson she had received at Ginny’s feet. The idea of Ginny happily training my sister while forcing me to wait downstairs staring at a blank wall angered me. I threw the notebook to the floor and pulled another one out at random. The handwriting in this one was more mature, the spells more complex. Diagrams I couldn’t even begin to understand were traced along the margins, composed of geometric shapes that seemed to defy Euclid’s wildest imaginings and strange symbols that I had never seen before, some of them seemingly astrological. I almost returned it to its shelf, but instead tossed it to the floor in another gust of temper.

Connor sat on the foot of Maisie’s bed, and with a casual gesture of his hand, the chair from her dresser pulled up next to me. “I think you’ll want to sit for the next part,” he said, his voice breaking nervously. I complied without protest. “These books, the knowledge in them, I never wanted to hide any of it from you. Not really. But as long as Ginny had her hands on the reins, none of us dared to defy her, not even Maisie. Now that Ginny’s gone, I’m glad that the families support your education. I never wanted to keep you in the dark. Do you believe me? Do you believe everything I’ve been telling you?” His desire for me to say yes buzzed around him as brightly as a pawnshop’s neon sign.

“Yes, I guess I do at that,” I said, wondering why it mattered to him so much.

He smiled at me again, and seemed to be struggling with how to express what he wanted to say. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Mercy. A lot of mistakes with you for sure, but a lot of mistakes in general.” He hesitated for a moment, then just dove in. “I married your Aunt Iris for my parents’ sake. I never loved her,” he said, scanning my face for a reaction. I didn’t give him one, but I felt betrayed, not only on Iris’s behalf, but on my own as well. That he could have implicated us all in his lie made my blood boil. I stayed silent, and after a few moments he continued. “My parents were proud that a Taylor woman would have me. They were proud that I was marrying above my station. Iris was beautiful and wealthy and a much more powerful witch than I’d ever be. And she loved me. I thought it would be enough.”

He got up from the bed and began pacing the small room, filling it up with his bulk. “Your Aunt Ellen had just become a teenager when Iris and I married. Your mother was still only a redheaded pipsqueak, skinny as a string bean and as willful as a…” He hesitated and faced me. “Well, as an I don’t know what.”

He returned to the foot of the bed. “You know that Iris and I lived away from Savannah the better part of a decade. We visited often enough, but I never really connected with your grandparents or Iris’s siblings. It was only after Iris’s last miscarriage that your grandparents insisted we come back to Savannah. Iris had almost died in our last attempt to have a baby, and, well, your grandparents decided they wanted their girl home. They held the power, and Iris held the purse strings, so home we came.”

I watched his hand as it alternately worried and smoothed the pink bedspread. “By then your mama was all grown up, and the truth of the matter was that she was more educated about the world than I was in a lot of ways. She knew that I was unfulfilled. She had joined a kind of club here in Savannah,” he said.

My stomach started churning as I anticipated his next words. I wanted to stop him from speaking, but all I could do was listen.

“You see, it was Emily who first started up with Tillandsia, and she brought me into it, with Iris’s acceptance, if that matters to you. After that last miscarriage, Iris wasn’t much interested in marital relations anymore. But I was a normal man, in the prime of life. I had a normal man’s needs, and Iris accepted that.” He patted his stomach. “I know you can’t see it now, but a couple of decades ago, there were plenty of women who wanted to be with me.”

“I don’t care,” I spat out. I was embarrassed beyond belief. The very last thing I wanted to think of was Connor as a sexual being, and I definitely didn’t want to think about him getting his thrills as my mother watched on.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should stick to what’s important.”

“And what is important?” I asked, my patience wearing thin.

“What is important is that I loved your mother. I loved Emily. Completely and with all my soul.”

“I see,” I said. “And do you think she loved you?”

“She gave her life to have my children,” he said and the earth stopped moving in the heavens.

My whole body went ice cold, but I began to sweat in the same instant. His words had knocked the wind out of me. “She what?” I asked when I found my breath.

“You girls. You and Maisie. You’re my daughters,” he said.

“Oh, no. That is not possible.” I held out my hand as a warning that he should not try to approach me. “It is not true,” I said, just so I could hear the words and try to believe them.

“Look at me, Mercy. Right now, you have a witch’s power. If you look at me, you can tell whether I’m lying to you.”

I studied him intently, every slight wrinkle on his face, every black mark on his soul, and as much as I loathed the idea, I knew beyond a shadow of any doubt that he was not lying. He was my father, our father. The idea struck me as hilarious, and laughing like a maniac, I stood with such force that I knocked over the chair where I’d been sitting.

“Your aunts made me promise to wait until you turned twenty-one to tell you, so you would be adult enough to handle the truth. I know I’m rushing things by a few hours, but I couldn’t wait another minute,” he said. “I needed you to know that I wasn’t lying. Without Oliver’s power to confirm the truth, a part of you would always doubt me. Hell, I could walk up to you with a DNA test and a signed birth certificate and you still wouldn’t want to believe me.”

“Does Maisie know?” I asked. I felt like screaming and crying. Now it was abundantly clear why Iris would be worried that I’d turn out like my mother, with a taste for other women’s men.

“No,” he responded. “At least I don’t think so, but with all of the power she can access, who knows what she’s learned? I was hoping to tell you both together. At the same time. I never anticipated Ginny’s murder.”

“I don’t think any of us did,” I said, moving toward the door.

Connor’s arm shot out and grabbed mine. “I think you’re wrong there. I think one of us did.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” I said. Releasing my arm, he reached into his pocket and unfolded an oversized sheet of paper. The paper was enchanted, and the creases smoothed themselves out instantly. “I found this among Ginny’s affairs.”

I took the paper from him and scanned it. Without my borrowed magic, the page would have appeared blank, but when I focused on it with a witch’s gaze, words appeared—words so ancient that I would by no honest rights have the ability to understand them. But somehow I did. “It’s a dissolution spell,” I said, turning the paper into the light. At the moment I had no patience for deciphering the scrawls, so I folded the spell and put it into my pocket so that I could examine it more closely later.

“She was going to do it,” Connor said. “Ginny was going to do away with Wren once and for all, and we both know Ellen would never allow that to happen.”

“Ellen would never have killed Ginny!”

“You so sure about that?” he asked. “I’m not. We both know that she’s been holding on by a thread for a decade now. If it weren’t for the whiskey and Wren, she would have quit trying long ago.”

I wondered if he could possibly be right. The pieces all added up, but I wouldn’t let them fit together. Having Connor for a father was bad enough…I wouldn’t believe that my sweet aunt was capable of murder. “No. You’re wrong. I won’t believe it.”

“Don’t believe it if you don’t want to,” he said. “Frankly, I think Ellen did us all a big favor. I sure ain’t going to turn her in to the families. As long as she managed to cover her tracks okay, I’m fine with what she did.”

Connor had revealed more to me tonight than I’d be able to process in a hundred years. “All right,” I said. “You’ve told me what you wanted to. I’m ready to leave now.”

“You can’t go yet,” he said. “I brought you here for a reason. There’s one more thing I have to share with you, but I need to do it here.” He turned and walked over to the bookcase, pulling down one of the newer journals. He held it out to me, and I could see Maisie’s name scrawled across the front. The childishness of her signature clued me in to the fact that it was older than it looked. “I’ve tried to take it from the house, but I can’t. It won’t let me. I had to bring you here to show it to you.” He handed it over.

My hands struggled against the binding, but I couldn’t open it, try as I might. It had been magically locked. I brushed my hand across the cover, and even though it wouldn’t open, some information leaked through the seal. I could tell that the journal contained information far more valuable than all of the Witchcraft 101 manuals on the bookshelf combined. It was sealed because it contained the secrets of the line. Even in my ignorance I was aware that Ginny should never ever have shared these secrets with Maisie; they were only to be passed from one anchor to another.

“You know what’s in there, don’t you? You can sense it,” Connor asked, delight spreading across his face. “I knew the second I touched it.”

“It’s about the line. This journal is full of its secrets—things only an anchor should know.”

“The families would have bound Ginny if they’d known she was telling Maisie these things.”

“Look at the writing on the cover! Maisie was far too young to know what she was getting into.”

“Sure, that’s how we see it, and the families would most likely have agreed. But Ginny, though, that’s a different matter. They would’ve shown the old gal no mercy. She would have been bound and deposited far, far away from any place she could access the line.”

“Okay,” I said. “But she’s dead, and Maisie is going to be the anchor. What’s the point of showing me this?”

He righted the chair that I’d knocked over then sat in it himself. “The point is that this is our chance to learn how to tap into the mainline, yours and mine. You’ve tasted Oliver’s power. Are you telling me you wouldn’t like your own? And not just a touch of it either, but a connection to the source itself? ’Cause I sure do, Mercy. I’m tired of living in your family’s shadow, with just enough of my own magic for parlor tricks. I want more.”

“Then take it. Why share it with me?”

“For two reasons,” he said. “First, you are my beautiful daughter. I want you to have all the power you’ve ever wanted. I’ve watched you since you were little. You’ve always done your best not to be jealous of Maisie, but I know that deep down, a small part of you can’t help but covet her abilities.”

“And the second reason?” I asked, sensing that it would be the true reason he was taking me along on his joyride.

“The book. I can’t take it from the house, and…” he hesitated. “I can’t open it.”

I laughed out loud and fanned myself with the journal. “And you think I can?”

“No,” he said cautiously, sounding like he was worried that he’d moved too quickly and put me off. “Not normally, that is. But I am hoping that maybe, what with you being Maisie’s twin—”

“Fraternal,” I interjected, to remind him of that fact.

“Okay, but you’re still her twin. And you’re full of Oliver’s magic right now. Maybe the combination of those two things will be enough for you to convince the book to open for you. And you have to remember, Maisie wasn’t the one who was chosen as the anchor by the lots—you were.”

“You said it was a mistake.”

“I thought so at the time, but now I’m not so sure. Just try to open it while we still have the chance.” His hands were clenched so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. His eyes pinned me in place like a butterfly to cardboard. I could tell how badly he wanted this to work.

“And when it’s open?”

“We’ll copy all of its secrets. And when Oliver’s power leaves you in the morning, you’ll have a bottomless well of your own to draw from.”

“No, Connor. It is tempting. It is so tempting, but it’s too dangerous. I don’t care what Ginny’s reasons were for sharing this with Maisie. We aren’t anchors, and we should not be tampering with the line. God only knows what damage we might unintentionally do.”

“Then you’re willing to let the power go? Or do you think Jilo will honor the little pact you made with her today? Yeah, I know who hides out in that tunnel you snuck out of. The two of you made some kind of blood pact, but I can tell you from personal experience that Jilo does not live up to the promises she makes.”

“I made no pact with Jilo,” I said, trying to sound calm.

“Then take this chance with me! Help yourself! Help your father! Just try. Your mother believed in you. She wanted you to live up to your full potential. Don’t let her death have been in vain. Just try. I beg of you.”

The room fell silent for a moment, and Connor stunned me by falling to his knees in tears. I couldn’t say if I was moved by his display or simply embarrassed. But I had to try, if only to get him up off the floor. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was dangerous. Deep down, though, I never believed it would work. “Know me,” I commanded, and a jolt traveled from my fingers into the journal’s cover. It sprung open, and I stood there with my mouth gaping in amazement. I swiveled to look at Connor, who had rebounded to his feet and turned back to the book. But before I could even read the first sentence, Connor simultaneously ripped the book from my hands and the necklace from my neck. The power failed me the second the hemp cord snapped.

A serpent’s smile curved on his lips; he held my amulet up before my eyes and magically dissolved it into dust. “You always were the simple one,” he said, and with a wave of his now free hand, he sent me flying backward into the wall. My head hit the plaster, and for a while there was only darkness.