SEVEN
“Ellen is out with Tucker,” I said, suddenly feeling as if I were tattling on her. I stood in the doorway of our library, remembering a moment from childhood when I had complained to Iris about my sister.
“Yes, I know,” Iris said, looking up from the mahogany writing table where my grandfather’s old journals and files were spread out before her. She no longer wore her long blonde hair in a chignon as she had while her husband, Connor, was alive. Now it hung loose, falling just below her shoulders. She wore very little makeup, which she didn’t need, and had on black yoga pants and a pink hoodie—my pink hoodie, I realized. “I had hoped that she would make a clean break with him,” she said, “but there’s not much I can do about it. God knows I don’t have much room to criticize her taste in men.” Iris had been putting her best foot forward, but she still mourned her husband, or at least the Connor she had thought she knew. There hadn’t been enough time for either of us to process the fact that he’d plotted to kill me. I wasn’t sure there was enough time in creation for me to process it. Iris mourned a double death: Connor’s physical demise and the loss of the false image of him she’d held. Still, unlike Ellen, who clung to her married name, “Weber,” Iris had wasted no time dropping “Flynn” and returning to her maiden name.
I went to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
She sighed. “I’m digging through your granddad’s notes, trying to see what he can tell us about the situation at Old Candler.” My first experience with having the power of a true witch, when I had been allowed to borrow Uncle Oliver’s magic, had led me to the old hospital. That was when I had become aware of the spirits that were trapped there by my grandfather’s spell. I guess Granddad counted them as collateral damage in his war to protect the children of Savannah.
After the old hospital closed, children began disappearing in the night. My grandfather tracked the source of these disappearances down to Old Candler, and after weaving a protective barrier around the building, sort of a miniaturized model of the line itself, he’d walked away, not realizing that he had built a pressure cooker with no safety valve. Jilo had alerted me to the need to open a tiny hole in the spell, as too much pressure had built up inside the place. She had intended to tap into it, channeling the energy that escaped to replace her then-waning power.
Jilo had agreed to abandon this plan after I gave her enough of my own power to keep her going for another decade or so. If the old hospital had remained as empty and unused as it had been for decades, my family and I would have had plenty of time to work out the logistics of how to free the human spirits trapped there without letting loose whatever dark forces had been responsible for taking the children. The building’s sudden and expedited transformation into a law school was forcing our hand and making us act more quickly than we would have liked.
“Found anything?”
“As a matter of fact I have, but I keep misplacing things just as quickly as I find them. I swear, either these papers have a mind of their own, or I am going soft in the head.” Iris glanced down at a stack of files; her head tilted to the side and she pursed her lips. She appeared surprised by what she saw there, but then casually moved the files off to the side and began riffling thoughtfully through the other papers neatly displayed on the desk’s surface. A foreign word—Lebensborn—had been written on the top file of the stack she’d pushed aside. I didn’t speak a word of German, but I recognized it. Lebensborn was the Nazi breeding program that had aimed to increase the birthrate of their favorite flavor of Aryan. When they hadn’t been able to breed blue-eyed babies quickly enough to feed the Nazi machine, they’d started kidnapping them from neighboring countries.
I reached for the file. “Why would Granddad have a file on Lebensborn?”
“He had a taste for what he considered the oddities of history. You might enjoy looking through his papers when you have time.” She took the file from my hand and put it back where it had been on the stack. “Just please keep them in order if you do.”
“Did he ever mention Mama in his writings?” I watched her closely for a reaction, but rather than betraying any kind of shock, her face relaxed upon hearing my question.
“Of course he did. He mentions all of us, but his journals aren’t like personal diaries. They’re filled with history, ponderings, and his theories about magical processes. All the same, his personal life crept into his writings from time to time. Is there something in particular you were wondering about?”
“No. Just curious.”
She looked at me, and her lips pinched together, causing lines to form around them. If she knew my mother was alive, her face did not betray her. I saw only a well-worn sorrow there. “Here,” she said, handing me a journal bound in marbleized paper. “This is where he wrote about what he found at Old Candler.”
My eyes scanned down the page, taking in bits and pieces of the meticulous script that covered it. “Jilo was wrong in one sense,” Iris said. “She assumed that a collection of minor demons, perhaps even common boo hags, were behind the unpleasantness.” Iris seemed to remember my own unpleasant encounter with a “common” boo hag as soon as the words slipped off her tongue, but it was too late to swallow them. She took the tack of moving on quickly. “But it wasn’t. It was one single entity. A demon called Barron.”
“So this Barron is what Granddad trapped at Candler?”
“It’s all here,” Iris said, taking the journal from me and flipping a few pages, “in your grandfather’s journal. He did a lot of research into this beast before he confronted it. The demon we’re dealing with has quite a pedigree. He was brought to the New World by a slave trader—well, actually, in a slave trader. That’s one superstition with a grain of truth to it. Demons can’t cross running water on their own.”
“Good to know,” I said, meaning it sincerely. “But how did he—it—manage to get into our world in the first place? Isn’t the line supposed to protect us from creatures like him?”
“He was summoned. The line is like a net in more ways than one,” Iris continued. “It protects us from the most intense evil. But if a practitioner of magic—and note that I am not saying a witch—is powerful and determined enough, he can pry open a hole big enough to bring a smaller, less powerful force over the border. Barron was smuggled into our world by Gilles de Rais, an associate of Joan of Arc.”
I can describe what I knew about de Rais in a string of words: aristocrat, war hero, squanderer of one of the greatest financial fortunes of his era, pedophile, and serial killer. I shuddered at the thought of the scores of children he had slaughtered to feed his twisted desires; it was no shock that he’d seek to align himself with a demon. “If Barron was small enough to slip past the line, he should be easy to handle, though, no?”
“Please remember, when we speak of this demon as being small, it doesn’t mean that he’ll be easily managed or dispatched. It means that while he’s a murderer and defiler, he isn’t necessarily capable of ending the world as we know it. Barron’s power has grown during his time in our world. Our goal is to return him to where he originated, but we will not find it easy to send him anywhere he doesn’t want to go. I’m beginning to see why Dad settled for containment versus expulsion. His research led him to the conclusion that it would require the sacrifice of an innocent to even get Barron to appear for the banishing spell.” My hand slid protectively over my stomach. “Precisely,” Iris said.
She returned the journal to the table and went to sit in one of the high wingback chairs. “Enough about this demon for now. How are you doing?” Her body language was textbook perfect. She leaned back comfortably, placed her arms on the chair so that her upper body remained open and her shoulders relaxed. She tilted her head slightly to the right and focused on me. Whether her posture was contrived or sincere, she was showing that she was there for me, present, listening, nonjudgmental.
“I’m fine. I’m good.”
Iris nodded to acknowledge my reflexive response. “It’s only that I sense there’s something you might want to share with me. Unburden yourself, perhaps?” My mind jumped first to my mother, and it took all of my self-control not to parrot Iris’s words right back at her. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that betraying my mother’s confidence to my aunt would bring me harm, but it bothered me more than a little that I couldn’t completely shake the fear—no matter how small—that my aunts might turn my mother over to the families. Whatever Iris’s reason for doing so, be it mendacity on Ginny’s part or duress, she had sided against my mother before. I bit my lip. Hard. Then my memory rewound further to the incident with Peadar. Did Iris know about any of it? Or maybe she was just fishing, like she used to do when Maisie and I were young? She’d sense something wasn’t quite right, and let on that she knew what the issue was, tricking us into spilling the beans.
I smiled and shook my head. “No, I’m good.” I could have, maybe should have, told her about Peadar, but I was afraid of where the discussion might lead. I had begun accumulating all these little bits and pieces of my life that I didn’t feel safe sharing, and I hated that.
Iris stiffened a little and then stood, returning to her work table. “All right. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. Until then I’m going to get back to work,” she said, waving me from the room, dismissing me from the awkwardness of the situation.
The shade of the library had chilled me, so I decided to head back out into the warm sunshine. I sat for a moment in the garden, but felt the need to get a bit farther away. For the first time since Connor’s face had covered the front page of the newspaper, I felt comfortable enough to return to River Street. Most of the people there would be tourists anyway, I reasoned. They wouldn’t know me from Eve. I found a bench by the river and watched a freight ship maneuver the dredged side of the waterway until it negotiated its way under the bridge. I accepted a graciously offered sample from one of the candy stores, then headed back up the bank, letting my feet carry me where they would. I found myself wandering without any real destination, just following a tug I felt. I cut through Warren Square and followed down East Julian, the tug growing a tad stronger with each step.
“It’s a classic five-four-and-a-door,” Oliver’s voice called out to me. He sat on the steps of a beautiful yet modest example of Savannah architecture, dressed only in running shorts and shoes. Oliver seemed to defy the passage of time. His youthful appearance caused most people to suspect that he’d hired Dorian Gray’s portrait artist. He had the flat-muscled stomach, slim hips, and broad shoulders of a much younger man. He was my uncle, but he could easily pass for my brother. I used to think that he used his magic to create a glamour for himself, making people perceive him without the scuff marks of time. Now my witch sense told me that his power had somehow preserved him, aging him at a much slower rate than the rest of us. “I made an offer on it this morning,” he said, running his hand over his new buzz cut. He’d just gotten back a few days earlier from closing up his home in San Francisco, and had his hair cropped close in order to ease his adjustment to Savannah’s harsher clime. “I’m pretty sure the sellers will accept,” he said, smirking. He read the disapproval on my face. “Oh, come on. I made a fair offer. Didn’t use a single smidge of magic.” He held up two fingers, making the Boy Scout oath. “Do you like it?”
“Of course I do. I’ve always loved this place, but why would you want to buy it?”
“Because I’m a grown man, and I need my own space. A space where my big sisters are not constantly sticking their noses. I can’t even set something down in my own room without having it up and disappear on me. And you can forget entertaining, if you know what I mean.” He stood and turned to take the house in. “This place is perfect. I can run my business on street level and live upstairs.” He turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “All business on the bottom, and party on the top.”
“Oliver,” I said, blushing.
He burst out laughing, thrilled to have embarrassed me. “So, tell me,” he said, switching gears without warning. “How goes the magic?”
“I don’t know. I kind of feel like I am standing in the middle of a hurricane.”
“And the Sandman?” It was his nickname for Emmet.
“He’s a huge pain. He criticizes and complains constantly, but he never gives me anything I can use.”
Oliver just nodded. Then he shifted gears again. “Anything else you’d like to talk about?”
“No,” I responded too quickly.
Oliver had always been much more direct than Iris. “Nothing at all?” he prompted. When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Nothing like punching a hole through some itinerant’s chest?”
The blood drained from my face. “How did you know?”
“How did I know?” he asked and reached out to tousle my hair. “Gingersnap, we all felt the burst of power. Wild, uncontrolled, amazingly strong. It had your pretty little fingerprints all over it. As far as knowing about the ‘mysterious’ death of the old man, the story was all over the news.” He tapped his forehead. “I used my astounding powers of deduction to tie the two together. Iris was hoping you’d open up to her, but I understand she couldn’t get a squeak out of you.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him . . . I was trying to help.” I heard the petulance in my own voice.
“Oh really, so you haven’t turned into a serial killer stalking old men?” He grinned at me. “Come on, let’s walk.” He took my hand and began leading me down East Julian toward Warren Square.
“Where are we heading?”
“Home for us to change and pick up your aunts, and then off to Elizabeth for my official welcome home dinner.”
“You know how thrilled I am to have you home for good,” I said as he tugged me along. “I just don’t know if I feel like going out tonight. I’ve got nothing to wear. I’m too fat for my nice clothes. Besides, people are still looking at us funny because of what happened to Connor and Ginny. I’m not up for being on public display.” And if those objections weren’t reason enough, there was also the fact that I’d be more comfortable eating glass than I would, sitting across from him and my aunts without being able to demand the truth about my mother. I couldn’t give voice to that, though.
“Well, I hear ya, but you are coming with us tonight for a couple reasons. First of all, you are paying. Second of all, I am back in town.” Oliver’s return to Savannah had been heralded in the society section of the newspaper, the focus being placed on the success of his public relations firm rather than on any superstitions surrounding the Taylor family as a whole. “That means the Taylors are back.”
The reporters at the paper had been trying to do us a favor by shifting the focus off the recent scandals that had rocked our clan. Maybe it wasn’t fair that we’d pinned Ginny’s attack on Connor, but—as I’d learned firsthand—my uncle had been more than capable of killing. Besides, even in Savannah, we would be hard-pressed to find a grand jury who would believe she had been killed by a boo hag masquerading as a man.
“People can’t talk about you behind your back if you are constantly in their faces.” Oliver punctuated this thought by calling out to one of the city council people who was passing us on the other side of the street. “We are back, Gingersnap. Now, regarding your clothing issue, Ellen has you covered. She has been out all day scouring maternity shops to build you a brand new wardrobe.”
“Not all day,” I said. “I saw her with Tucker this morning. I think she’s seeing him again.”
Oliver nodded. “Yeah, she is, but that situation is out of your control, Gingersnap. You might as well surrender to that fact and the fact that you are doing dinner with us, ’cause you are not going to win in either case.”
“I saw Detective Cook yesterday,” I said, surprised by my own mean streak. I wanted to derail Oliver, make him a little less in control, but it amazed me that my first resort was punching below the belt.
“Yeah, me too,” Oliver said, not perturbed in the slightest. “He came by to see us. Adam figured he might as well pay us a visit sooner than later, since the stranger who died mysteriously is from the family you are marrying into.” Silently, we cut through the south end of the square and continued west on Congress, swinging south on Habersham.
“I didn’t know they were related,” I blurted out when the silence got too heavy for me.
“Mmm” was Oliver’s only response.
“I didn’t . . . not at the time. He showed up from nowhere, and he needed help.”
“And you tried to help him, but you aren’t in control of your power yet, so you overdid it.”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“But rather than taking your time to learn how to control your power, you’re blowing off Emmet, whose sole purpose at this point is to train you, so that you can hang out with Mother Jilo.” I pulled my hand out of his, ready for a fight.
“There’s that redheaded temper again,” he said with a smile. “What? You’re surprised that I have been keeping tabs on you?”
“No, I am not surprised. I am downright pissed.”
His laughter made me even angrier. “I know what you’re up to. You and that old scarecrow.”
I just glared at him.
He turned and started walking away. “You aren’t going to find Maisie. Not on your own, and not with Jilo’s help either.”
“Well I can’t just forget her,” I snapped. “I can’t turn my back and walk away like all of you have done.”
“I haven’t walked away,” Oliver turned back, his face flushed red, his fists clenched by his sides. “I have been doing everything in my power to find her.”
I crumpled. Maybe my hormones had gotten the best of me. Maybe I just felt relieved to know that Maisie hadn’t been completely deserted. Oliver reached out and pulled me into his arms as I started sobbing.
“I could never walk away from Maisie. Any more than I could walk away from you. Neither can your aunts.”
“But Iris said—”
“You forget what Iris said,” he interrupted me. “And you forget what Ellen said too. There’s a difference between what we say around the house, where we suspect the families are listening, and what we say when we are pretty sure they aren’t.” He paused. “We will find her. We will,” he said, tilting up my chin so that my eyes met his.
I was thrilled by this proof that my aunts were willing to put Maisie’s welfare before their allegiance to the families. There had to be a reason why they’d separated my mother from us. One that even my mother herself didn’t understand.
“But you do need to prepare yourself,” Oliver said, perhaps mistaking my relieved reaction for overconfidence, “because we really do not know what shape she’ll be in when we do.”
“But how will we find her?”
“We’ll start with the one thing that should have been obvious to that old root doctor, Jilo. Dirt.”
“Dirt?” I knew that Jilo often used soil in her mojo bags, using the energy to draw like to like. Soil from a bank for money, soil from a graveyard for death.
“That’s right. The dirt from where Maisie was standing when she disappeared. Why do you think I dug it up? Why do you think I put a sundial out there?” I shook my head. “Have you ever really looked at it?”
“No, not really,” I replied. Honestly, I’d avoided the spot altogether.
“Take a good look when we get home. You’ll notice something interesting.”
“Tell me,” I begged him.
He smirked and raised his eyebrows. “The shadow never moves. It isn’t a sundial. It’s a time lock that’s keeping that little patch of earth nice and fresh and as close to how it was the moment Maisie disappeared as possible. Now tell me, do you feel a little more like celebrating?”
I went up on my toes and kissed his forehead. Maybe, just maybe, everything would end up all right after all.