The Line

TEN

As I rushed to my bedroom, I heard voices coming up from the ground floor. I must have been gone for hours, but apparently the post-funeral potluck was still in full swing. I locked the door behind me; it wouldn’t stand a chance at keeping Jilo out, but it might at least encourage my cousins to respect my privacy. My glowing digital alarm clock caught my eye, and I gasped out loud. Only an hour had passed since I’d first laid eyes on Adam’s grandfather at the cemetery. I wondered if magic had bent time or if my perception had been twisted by fear.

I shed the clothes I had worn to the funeral, promising myself I would burn them, and sat on the edge of my bed, more tired than I had ever felt in my life. I wondered if Jilo had “borrowed” some of my own life force to put on her little magic show for me. The urge to lie down for a few minutes hit me, and I was too tired to hit back. I scooted up onto the bed and closed my eyes.

Seconds later I opened them. To my surprise, the clock next to me revealed that two hours had passed. My skin was tingling slightly, and I felt disoriented and a little nauseated. The objects in my field of vision seemed to exist in more than one spot at a time, as if several versions of the same thing were slightly overlapping each other. Jilo had definitely stretched time a bit; my exhaustion and disorientation were signs that it was snapping itself back into shape around me. From what my family had always said, this kind of manipulation was above Jilo’s pay grade, but she had managed to get the juice from somewhere. Maybe she’d done it so that my absence from the house would go unnoticed, but more likely she’d just wanted to show me what she could do. Sometimes I really hated magic, especially since I was always on the receiving end.

I could still hear a large group of people conversing on the ground floor. Most of the nonrelated mourners would undoubtedly have made their excuses by now and headed home, but the cousins weren’t going anywhere until Ginny’s replacement, the new anchor, was selected tonight. I felt desperate for an escape, and seeing as Jilo could reach directly into my house, I figured I’d be as safe on the streets of Savannah as I was in my own room. The thought of visiting Peter flitted through my mind, but he wouldn’t be done with work for a few hours, and I didn’t want to get him in trouble with his boss.

I wanted more than anything to turn this into as normal a day as possible. It was a bit after two, plenty of time for me to get out for a while and still be back for the drawing of the lots that would determine who took over for Ginny. I’d use my window escape route to avoid the family gathering.

I rolled off the bed and went to my mirror. My hair had turned into a tangled mess as I slept, so I did my best to work through the worst bits, tugging it back into a ponytail. I’d have to make more of an effort for tonight’s ceremony, but for now, I pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of comfortable cutoffs.

The heat roiled into the room the moment I opened the window. I took a deep breath and plunged into it headfirst, feeling like I was climbing into an oven. I grabbed hold of the trellis with my right hand and swung my right leg out. Once I had my feet safely in position, I leaned back and used my left hand to slide the window mostly closed, leaving just enough of an opening for my fingers so that I could go back in the same way I had come out. The bougainvillea scraped against my exposed skin, but all of the practice from my teenage years served me well. I made it to the ground without a single scratch. I heard a few people talking out front, so I scanned the yard to make sure none of the guests were lingering between me and the garage. No one was in sight, so I crept over to it to retrieve my bike.

The heat was so intense that visible waves rose up not only from the paved area, but from the sandy soil beyond the reach of our lawn sprinklers. I was about to grab my bike and head out when I sensed something strange in my field of vision. I returned my attention to the gray and gritty dirt and realized that my first impression had been off. The ground wasn’t reflecting heat—it was actually pulsating. Before common sense could trump curiosity, my feet led me over for a closer look.

The soil pulsed like there was a heartbeat just beneath the surface and as I watched, the particles started to attach themselves to each other. At first, there were only five little ridges, like five anthills forcing themselves upward. But within moments, the ridges grew and a distinctly human shape began to form in their place. A scream started to form in my lungs, but the sound didn’t pass my lips as anything more than a muted, “Meeep.” My mouth opened and closed, like a fish gasping in the air. A hand began to reach up from the earth in front of me. No, it wasn’t reaching up from beneath the surface, it was forming itself from the powdery dirt. A wrist and then a forearm grew before my eyes, stretching up toward the sun. I couldn’t move. A shoulder formed and then in one forceful jerk, a roughly hewn head and neck tore themselves from the ground. As gray as the soil from which it came, the creature’s skin was smooth, and it glistened in the sun. Then its eyes opened, soulless and streaked like large amber cat’s-eye marbles.

I finally found my voice. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I fell back onto the ground, frantically crawling away from the creature that was coming to life before me. Its upper body and torso were fully formed now, and it continued to watch with glassy eyes as I scrambled backward. I felt arms wrap around me from behind, pulling me up from the ground. I screamed and started striking wildly with my hands.

“It’s me, Mercy,” Jackson spoke into my ear. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He swung me up into his steely arms like I was a small child. “What the hell is that thing?” he asked, backing away as he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Sobbing, I buried my head between Jackson’s neck and shoulder. I could feel his pulse against my skin, and his scent was calming. I looked back up when someone bumped into us.

A steady stream of cousins had started to pour off the front porch and out of the house, coming to a stop directly in front of us. The creature was complete, and it took a couple of hesitant steps, as if it were trying to orient its body to its surroundings. A sinkhole had formed in the earth that had given it birth. Even though the cousins had formed an impromptu wall between us and the creature, I still had a prime view. The thing had to be almost seven feet tall.

“Well I will be damned!” I heard Connor’s voice and then saw him force his way to the front of the group, pushing cousins aside as he went. “I’ve heard of these things, but I never thought I’d live to see one.” He walked right up to the creature and touched it.

“What is it?” I felt Jackson’s chest rumble as he asked Connor the question, holding me tightly all the while.

“A golem,” I heard Maisie’s voice reply. My eyes sought her out, and I was surprised by how cold her expression was. “It’s an animated body made from inanimate matter.” She made her way over to us. “You can put my sister down now; she’s safe.” Jackson hesitated for a just a moment. From the expression on her face, Maisie had taken note of his hesitation and read a whole lot of something she didn’t like into it. Jackson lowered me gently until my feet felt the ground. My knees were still wobbly, but considering the way Maisie’s eyes were narrowed, I knew better than to lean against Jackson for support.

“It scared the crap out of me,” I said by way of explanation, or maybe even apology. “It just started forming from the ground with no warning.”

The cousins had joined Connor in admiring the thing, and they were no longer paying us any mind. “Okay, so it’s a golem,” Jackson addressed Maisie with a noticeable edge to his voice. I could tell that he had been frightened too. “What’s it doing here?”

“The families,” she responded, her shoulders slumped a little when she took in Jackson’s tone. I knew she was referring to the nine other witch families who wouldn’t be present for the ceremony. “The families created the golem to house the energies from their representatives. You are seeing one body,” she explained, “but there are nine intelligences inside of it. They’re the families’ witnesses to the drawing of the lots.”

“You knew this thing was coming?” I asked.

“We only found out like an hour ago,” she responded impatiently. “I came up to your room to warn you, but your door was locked, and you wouldn’t answer. I figured you were hiding out with your earphones on.” She looked up at Jackson. “And I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“What? I was outside on the porch having a beer with your cousin from Athens. We were talking football.”

Maisie eyed him up and down. “Well, I would appreciate your support. Today of all days.” She shot me a quick, sharp look. “And I mean both of you. I couldn’t get to either of you, and then I come out here to see you looking like the cover of some cheap romance novel.” She turned and started back toward the house in a huff.

Jackson followed on her heels. “Now, baby, don’t be that way,” I heard him calling after her. Meanwhile the group surrounding the golem shifted as the creature began walking toward the house.

With the wall to my back, I inched farther and farther way. Its movements were halting and cumbersome at first, but after a few more steps, it began to proceed at a nearly human gait. I realized that its features had refined themselves quite a bit over the past few moments. It no longer looked like a roughly hewn statue. Except for its unnatural color, it might have been mistaken for an actual human being from a distance. A large and naked human being. I prayed that the creature wouldn’t be anatomically correct, but as the cousins moved to give him a wider berth, I realized that nothing was going to go my way today. Its skin was turning a Mediterranean olive, and for some reason the realistic new skin tone made the whole naked thing more of an issue.

Although I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the creature, I gladly lifted them and focused on its face instead. It was beautiful, and I recognized it instantly—it was the spitting image of Bernini’s David. Dark eyebrows had taken shape on the thing’s well-formed skull, and its scalp was filling in with curly black hair. After some indeterminate point in the transformation, I found myself thinking of the creature as a “he” rather than an “it.” All the same, I didn’t like the idea of being too close to him. After a few more moments had passed, he fixed his gaze on me and took a few confident steps right up to me. The cousins who had been entranced by his metamorphosis crowded in on us.

“You are Emily’s child,” he said, and it sounded as if many voices were speaking at once. Baritone and tenor, soprano and bass mixed into an unnatural wave of sound.

“One of them,” I responded, pushing my back closer to the wall. “But you are probably looking for my sister.”

He drew nearer, and I noticed that the amber in his eyes had begun to recede, whites forming around them. The cat’s eye swirl had coalesced into a large but fairly normal looking pupil. Those eyes took me in from head to toe. “Do you consider your outfit appropriate mourning attire?” The multilayered voice asked.

At that moment all my fear dissipated, and I wanted nothing more in the world than to kick him in his newly formed testicles. “Do you consider your outfit appropriate mourning attire?” I parroted, poking him in the chest with my finger. He was warm to the touch. Very warm. I pulled my hand back quickly.

“No, you are correct,” he replied, and the air around him began to shimmer. A well-tailored, single-breasted dark suit wrapped around him. Under it, a crisp white shirt and an expertly knotted tie. He had gone from Georgia dust to male model in mere minutes. “Please change into something better suited to the occasion. Something that shows respect for Ginny’s memory and for the role you will be playing in selecting her replacement. We will wait for you inside.”

“How about you go straight to hell?” I put my hands on my hips and dug my heels in.

Although the golem stood stock still, the voices burst from the golem, this time not in chorus, but like an angry debate. For a moment I thought the golem might be coming undone. Then the voices paused. “You are angry because we frightened you,” he said—they said—in a unified and reasonable baritone. “It was not our intention. It was unfortunate that you witnessed our arrival without warning.”

“And this is the point where you apologize for your bad attitude, young lady,” commanded Connor, who had drawn up near us.

I realized what the families had said through their mouthpiece was as close to an apology as I’d ever get. I wasn’t sorry, but I knew my life would be easier if I gave them what they wanted. “You’re right. I apologize,” I said, mentally adding for being scared out of my wits twice today and thinking there was a rule of one person per body. Without another word to acknowledge my apology, the golem turned from me and headed toward the front door.

“Do as he says—change into something appropriate,” Connor barked as he pushed past me. “And then meet us in the kitchen.”