The Line

EIGHTEEN

Several moments later there was a light knock on my door. “Everything okay in there?” Ellen asked. “I heard you yelling.”

“I was having a bad dream. I’m okay,” I said a little shakily and then added, “Everything’s fine.” I opened the door so that she could see for herself that I was in one piece.

“All right, then.” She hesitated a moment. “Listen, I’d like to talk to you about last night if you feel up to it. Maybe we could get out of here for a while? We could get dressed up all girly, and I’ll treat you to high tea at the Gryphon.”

“I’d love that, but I need a shower first,” I said.

Ellen was exactly the person I wanted to talk to about last night—not the drawing, but what had happened with Peter. In a normal world, I would have rushed upstairs this morning to tell Maisie about it. I wondered if not having her around was going to become the new normal.

“I’ll be in my room,” she said. “Come and get me when you’re ready.”

I showered and dressed in a vintage 1950s cocktail dress that Ellen herself had gotten for me. I let my hair hang loose and put on the string of pearls that Iris had given me for my eighteenth birthday. After adding on a pair of ballet flats I had excavated from my closet, I felt much more girly than I had since I turned twelve and stopped wearing princess costumes for Halloween.

When I reached Ellen’s door, I could heard Wren’s voice from inside. I was about to knock and ask Ellen if she was ready, but the opportunity to eavesdrop on the two was too tempting. I strained to hear through the thick oak door.

“Maisie scared you.” Wren’s falsetto was as clear as a bell through the wood.

“Yes, she did,” Ellen replied, her voice more muffled.

“She scared me too,” Wren confessed, and I suspected that Ellen had pulled him close to comfort him in the ensuing silence.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you, baby,” she said soothingly.

“I love you,” Wren piped. I wondered if it was possible for Wren to feel real emotions.

“I love you too, little man.” I bit my lip; she used to refer to Paul as her “little man.” It didn’t seem healthy for her to call Wren that.

“Is Maisie bad?”

“Why no, sweetheart,” Ellen said, sounding surprised by the question. “She’s young and confused. A lot of responsibility has fallen on her shoulders. But she’s not bad—far from it.”

“I think she is bad. She stole from Mercy,” my ears pricked up at this comment, and I leaned closer to the door. “The power didn’t want her, it wanted Mercy.”

I suppressed the urge to laugh out loud at the ridiculous notion that the power might have chosen me after ignoring me so completely for nearly twenty-one years. I doubted that it had suddenly changed its mind and elected me homecoming queen.

Ellen stayed silent for a few seconds. “Maisie isn’t bad,” she pronounced summarily. “She’s my baby niece. But I think you could be right. I don’t understand what went on last night, but my gut tells me that the right sister drew the red lot. I can’t explain it, but I’m certain that this isn’t as settled as Iris would like to think. Nothing was ever cut-and-dried with Emily, so I wouldn’t expect for anything to be cut-and-dried with her girls.”

“Why is your hand shaking like that?” Wren changed the subject while I was still trying to grapple with what my aunt had said.

“It’s nerves baby, just nerves,” Ellen replied.

“You’d feel better if you had a drink,” Wren said. My mouth gaped open.

“No. I need to keep the promises I’ve made to the family, to Mercy.”

“I won’t say anything. A little bit will help. It’s Maisie’s fault.” That little bastard. Was he just giving voice to Ellen’s own rationalizations, or was he afraid of losing his battery in the event that Ellen pulled herself together? I needed to talk to Iris and Oliver about him, and soon.

I tapped on the door, desperate to stop her before she gave in to Wren’s advice.

“Yes?” Ellen called out.

“It’s me,” I responded.

“It’s unlocked,” she said, and I tried the knob. When the door swung open, she was sitting alone at her dresser. “I’m almost ready,” she said. I suspected that Wren was still in the room but hiding himself from my view. I came in and stood behind her, looking at our combined reflections in the glass. She smiled at me and returned to her lip gloss. “What is it, sweetie?” she asked in mid-application.

I put my hands on her shoulders, and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “It’s only that I believe in you. I really do.”

She smeared the gloss above her lip and reached for a tissue. Wiping away her error without comment, she reapplied the gloss, using the action to mask her shock. Turning to face me when she was done, she immediately changed the topic. “I sense something different about you today,” she said.

I felt a blush of warmth flush my cheeks—it wasn’t embarrassment, it was happiness. I smiled and sat on the edge of her bed. “Last night,” I began. “Peter and I—”

It was all I could manage to get out before Ellen rushed over to the bed and took me in her arms.

“I am so happy for you!” she said and then she paused, giving me a weighing look. “We are happy about this, right?”

I smiled and nodded my head yes. “Well, no wonder you’re glowing today. Tell me all about it—well, obviously not all about it,” she sputtered. “Oh, hell, just tell me you’re in love.”

She seemed so happy for me that I couldn’t bear to bring Jilo into the picture. “Yes,” I responded. “I am.”

“That should really help settle things with Jackson then,” Ellen said to herself. She shrugged when she realized that she’d said it out loud. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. You’re right. This does help clarify our relationship,” I said. “I’m not like her that way, you know?” Ellen didn’t make the connection. “My mother that is. I don’t intentionally go after other women’s men.”

“Why sweetheart, I know you don’t!” she said. “Who has been telling you tales about Emily?”

“Iris said that she was worried that I had inherited the gene for man stealing,” I said, trying to make light of my concerns.

“Well pardon me, but Iris doesn’t have any idea what her fool mouth is saying. You are like your mother in many ways, but all of them good.” She put her arms around me and squeezed me tight.

“Tucker Perry said that my mother introduced him to Tillandsia,” I said. Ellen released me, her expression alarmed. “Is Tucker my father?”

“Dear God, no!” Ellen said.

“Then you know who my father is?”

“I’m sorry, darling. I don’t. I really don’t.”

“Were there too many men to guess which?”

“I’m sorry. It’s true that Emily was a part of Tillandsia. And it’s true that she had many men in her life.” She bit her lip, then looked with narrowed eyes. “When were you talking to Tucker anyway?”

“He’s kind of been following me around lately,” I responded, searching Ellen’s eyes to see if Tucker’s stalking ways made her angry or jealous.

“I’m sorry he’s bothered you,” Ellen said. She looked away in shame. “I’ve told him that you and Maisie are strictly off limits unless he wants to end up like Wesley Espy and wear his genitalia for a boutonniere.” Wesley was a judge’s son who’d had an unfortunate taste for gangsters’ girlfriends. The fathers of Savannah’s daughters have been offering up his story as a cautionary tale to prom dates for going on eighty years. “I’ll see him tonight and set the record straight once and for all.”

“I think Peter plans to pay him a visit as well,” I said.

“That’s good, but the bastard needs to hear it from me too.”

“How can you bear to let him touch you?” The words came out of my mouth before my brain could censor them.

Ellen didn’t appear shocked or offended. “Since I’ve stopped drinking, I’ve been asking myself that very same question. And now that I know he’s been soliciting you, I can guarantee that he’ll never touch me again.” She was quiet for a moment, and the animation fell from her face. “After Erik and Paul died, I stopped caring about what was right or wrong. I didn’t give a damn what happened to me. Tucker was so attentive, and he was fun. He distracted me from the pain a little.”

“I am so sorry to have brought this up,” I said.

“No, don’t be. It’s good to get it out. I’ve been thinking about them a lot after what happened to Ginny.” Ellen looked me in the eyes. “Mercy, I know this is a terrible thing to say, but I hope that if they find this Martell Burke guy, they give him a medal. And Jilo too, if she sent him to do the deed.” I was shocked by her words, but the floodgates had opened, and Ellen wasn’t through. “Erik died at the scene of the accident, but my boy was still alive. Barely alive, but there was enough of a spark left in him for me to save him. I could have done it, I know it. But she stopped me.”

“How?” I asked. “Why?”

“You were young, but you probably remember. The week before Erik and Paul died, a young man was hit by a car outside my old flower shop.”

“Yes, I do remember—” I replied, but she wasn’t listening.

“The car went right over him. He was mangled. I didn’t think. I just reacted,” she said. “I went to him and held him in this world.” She looked up at me with wonder in her eyes. “He was so close to death that I saw it, Mercy, I saw that tunnel they talk about and the light. I could hear voices coming from that light, but then he opened his eyes and asked me to please save him.” She shook her head, and closed her eyes, the memory taking her someplace else. “Somehow I did it. I pulled enough juice to heal his worst injuries. By the time the ambulance arrived, all he had left as a couple of broken legs and a cracked rib. Ginny was furious. She said I had damaged the balance of nature by saving that boy.”

“But how could she have stopped you from saving your own son?” I asked.

“She was an anchor, but sometimes she confused being an anchor with being God. She used her control to dampen my powers that day. It was kind of like she put a kink in my hose. Truth is, my ability has been waning ever since.”

“No, I mean how could she have just let Paul die?”

“Honestly, I think she was afraid of him,” Ellen said. “You know the ten main families, the ones who are linked together and maintain the line. But there are three other families that we don’t talk about much.”

“The three who helped create the line but then regretted it.”

“Oh it’s more than regret. They’ve tried to break the line more than once. Bring the whole system down.”

“But why would they do that? Why would they want to turn the world back over to demons?”

Ellen leaned over and picked up a framed picture of her son and husband from the nightstand. She placed it in my hands. “Because when our reality was controlled by the demons, the thirteen families held a special place in the hierarchy of things. The demons were the kings, but the thirteen families were the lords. Revolution led to democratization. When we shifted our reality out from under the demons’ control, we wiped out a social hierarchy that had existed since the first humans. And although the three families were happy to be free from their bosses, they didn’t like losing control of those below them.” She paused. “Erik was from one of those families.”

“Uncle Erik?” I asked, having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I nearly dropped the photograph.

She took the picture from my hands and returned it to her nightstand. “Yes, but he was nothing like his family. He had broken allegiance with them and joined the ten families long before the two of us met.”

“And Ginny was scared of Paul because his father was from one of the three adversarial families?”

“No, Ginny was scared of Paul because of a prophecy that was made when the three families separated from the rest of us. After Paul was born, Ginny learned that it had been predicted that the mingling of our immediate bloodlines would lead to the birth of a witch capable of reuniting the thirteen families. Neither of us had heard of it until Ginny started flipping out.”

“You think Ginny sacrificed Paul because she didn’t want the families to reunite?” I reached out and gently tugged at her hand.

She rejoined me on the bed. “Who knows what she wanted. I’m not even sure she cared about the families. I don’t think she wanted any light to outshine her own, and she knew she’d end up a dim comparison to my son.”

“Do you think Ginny might have done something to cause the accident?” I asked, surprised that I’d even let myself have such a thought.

“No,” Ellen said. “If I did, I would have killed her myself years ago.” Ellen spoke with such cool clarity that I didn’t doubt her. “Ginny tried to pass herself off as a saint, as some great martyr, but she was a miserable, controlling bitch. And I am glad she’s dead, so three cheers for Mother Jilo or whoever did her in.”

“So you do think Jilo might have done it?” I asked. I knew for a fact that Jilo hated Ginny enough—she hated all the Taylors enough. Ellen just nodded her head in response. “But why would Jilo hate Ginny enough to kill her?”

Ellen crossed her arms as if she had felt a chill. “Oh, darlin’, people like Jilo always walk around with a laundry list of perceived offenses. I am sure that in all the years she and Ginny bumped heads, Jilo found reason enough.”

“I heard Oliver was close to her family at one time. That he was friends with her granddaughter, the one who drowned herself,” I said, fishing for answers. I hoped that Ellen could tell me what had happened so that I wouldn’t have to ask Oliver himself.

“You’re talking about Grace,” Ellen said after a few moments. “Where did you dig up that ancient history?”

“People talk,” I responded vaguely.

“Well, yes, he and Grace used to hang with the same group of friends, but that was way back when he was a teenager,” she said, visibly calculating the years that had passed since. “That was back when he and Adam Cook were buddies. Rumor was that the girl had an abortion and then regretted it. It was a very sad situation, but it had nothing to do with us. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you that your uncle had nothing to do with her getting pregnant,” she said, smirking at me.

“No, ma’am, I am very sure Uncle Oliver had nothing to do with that,” I said and returned her smile. I wanted to believe that Oliver wouldn’t harm a fly, that he’d done nothing to this Grace. With all that had gone on over the last several hours, I was willing to take comfort where I could find it.

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, though,” Ellen said. “And if Jilo was responsible for Ginny’s death, revenge might not have had a thing to do with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that Jilo works a lot of dark magic, blood magic. Ginny was a powerful witch. Jilo could get a lot of mojo out of Ginny’s blood. Maybe we’ve been looking at it all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a murder. Maybe it was a sacrifice.”

“But what kind of spell would require a human sacrifice?”

“Oh, sweetheart, conjurers like Jilo know how to store up energy from a bloodletting. She could expend it all attempting something big like a resurrection, or she might parse it out over years, using it little by little for money spells, revenge spells, love spells—”

“But I thought you don’t use blood in love spells.” I thought I would be ill. I had been so willing to accept Maisie’s assurances that Ginny’s death could not possibly have been related to the spell I’d asked Jilo to do.

“Well, of course I wouldn’t. You’d have to be pretty crazy or desperate to mess around with love spells anyway. But even the real witches who do them would never use blood. For someone who only borrows power, though, like Jilo, sometimes blood is the only way. Oh, I am sorry. I’ve upset you.” Ellen forced a smile. “Enough of this. Look at the two of us! The past is the past. We shouldn’t be wasting all this feminine beauty and grace on a walk down bad memory lane. Let’s go get that tea.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m suddenly not feeling well. Maybe another time?”

Ellen regarded me with concern. She placed her palm on my forehead. I knew I couldn’t fake a physical illness with her. “Of course,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should have kept my theories to myself.”

“No. I’m glad you shared your thoughts with me. I just need a little time to process them.”

She traced my jawline with her finger. “We’ll try this again soon.”