The Line

TWENTY-EIGHT

I was sent upstairs to wash off the smell of smoke before the police could arrive. Emmet stood guard for me outside the bathroom door in case Wren showed up. I blow-dried my hair so that Cook wouldn’t have any reason to notice that I’d been busy washing away what he would have deemed as evidence. While I showered, Oliver and Ellen searched the house and garden, but neither of them could pick up an impression of Wren. He had gone into hiding.

It was a little after midnight when Detective Cook left our house, Connor’s suicide note carefully preserved in a plastic evidence bag. The tears Iris had shed before the detective were real, although she was grieving the death of her good impression of Connor rather than the man himself. When Cook passed me on his way out, his eyes locked with mine, and his expression shifted in a blink from an “I told you so” to an “I’m sorry for your loss” without ever pressing the clutch.

With Cook gone, it was time to deal with Wren. Iris, Oliver, Ellen, and I gathered in the library, waiting wordlessly for Emmet to corner Wren and bring him to us. It was odd because until tonight I had never suspected that Wren was capable of existing apart from our family. It had never occurred to me that he could leave our house and go out into the world at large.

Ellen sat next to Iris and wrapped her arm around her elder sister’s shoulders. Iris stared straight ahead, her expression revealing her determination to be strong no matter what. Ellen’s face was a jumble of emotions: guilt, sadness, anger, and then more guilt.

Oliver broke the silence. “Mercy, honey, I know it has been one hell of a night,” he said, “but is there any chance that you remember anything about the dissolution spell? It’s just that I’m not sure what we should do. Wren came from my six-year-old psyche. I can barely even remember being six, let alone what I was feeling when he was created.”

“And even if you could,” Ellen said. “You’d never be able to re-create it.”

“Maybe we could just agree to tune him out, starve him off slowly,” Iris proposed, and I knew she was just trying to protect Ellen from the pain of being part of his dissolution.

Ellen understood her motives as well as I did. “No,” she said. “We have to deal with it tonight. We can’t allow him to carry on as he has been. Besides, we’re not even sure that he’s been getting his energy from us.”

“But I thought it was you,” I said, shocked. “I thought you were feeding him the energy.”

“No,” Ellen said. “I’ve been expecting him to fade away for years. Listen, I know…” She paused and swallowed hard. “I know I’ve been using Wren as a crutch to help me deal with Paul’s death. But he was never a substitute; no one could replace my boy.”

“Regardless of where he’s been getting his energy, we need to put him down,” Oliver said. “Can you remember anything at all?” he asked me.

Suddenly I remembered that I hadn’t returned the spell to Connor. I’d tucked it into the pocket of my shorts, the ones I’d just tossed into the hamper. “I have it!” I said. “Connor gave me the spell, and I put it in my pocket. It must still be in there.”

I ran to the upstairs bathroom and riffled through the hamper, pulling out the smoky smelling clothes I had been wearing at Ginny’s. I shoved my hand into the right pocket—nothing—then the left. There it was. Heaving a sigh of relief, I pulled the paper out, and even though it smelled as badly of smoke as my clothing did, the paper unfolded itself with a single shake of the hand, the creases disappearing instantly. Now that I no longer had a witch’s vision, it looked like an empty page, but I knew that my aunts and uncle would be able to read it. Together they could use it to send Wren back into the ether where he’d been formed.

I stepped out of the bathroom and into the hall, surprised to see the pool-like aquamarine light from Jilo’s secret world spilling out onto the walls. The door to the linen closet, the room Jilo had connected with her own chamber, stood wide open, and I walked toward it, keeping my steps as silent as the creaking old floorboards would allow me. I crept up to the door and peeked around it. Jilo sat there on her throne in her haint blue room, her eyes filled with terror. A knife was pressed to her throat. Wren was invisible, but I knew he was the one holding the weapon. It threw me to see someone I’d once thought of as so unassailable looking so old and fragile. Somehow Wren had surprised her, made it past her defenses. I knew about her haint blue room, and how it was connected to my house. But she had wanted me to know. She had invited me there. I had a suspicion of how Wren had found his way here. She must have invited him there at some point too. Part of me considered just walking away. Taking the spell down to my aunts and uncle and washing my hands of it all. But I couldn’t bear the thought of witnessing more violence tonight. I stepped through the entrance, and the door slammed shut behind me, shattering my hopes for assistance.

“Drop the knife, Wren,” I said calmly.

“Do as she says,” Jilo squeaked out, only to have her neck pulled further back, the length of her throat even more exposed to the sharp blade.

Wren’s form materialized behind her. He floated in the air at her back, one hand laced through her hair, the other clutching the blade. “That spell Connor gave you will kill me, Mercy,” his child’s voice said pleadingly. “I don’t want to die.” His eyes looked big and were welling up with tears.

“And neither did Ginny,” I started.

“I was only protecting myself. She was going to hurt me,” Wren sobbed, defending himself like a six-year-old who was explaining why he’d punched his sister.

I wanted to tear into him, but I kept my cool for Jilo’s sake. “But I never did anything to hurt you, and you were ready to kill me all the same.”

“I didn’t have a choice. Connor made me promise,” he responded.

“But you have a choice now. Jilo’s never done anything to you. You’ve got no reason to hurt her.”

“I came to her for help,” he said, “but she wouldn’t give me any. I’ve been watching your family for her for years, telling her everything she wanted to know, but she won’t help me anymore now that you know what I did to Ginny.”

“She’s the one who’s been feeding you?”

“Yeah,” was all the boy said.

Jilo had used Wren to spy on my family. I quickly considered the implications of that and decided that although she deserved a good ass-kicking, spying was not a capital offense. “You let Jilo go,” I said, “and I’ll give you the spell. You can destroy it.”

“It’s too late. You’ll tell everyone what I did to Ginny,” he said.

“No,” I lied. “I’ll never say a word, and neither will Jilo. Isn’t that right, Jilo?”

“Yes,” she breathed out cautiously.

“No one has to know. We can go back to the way things were. Ellen’s worried about you. She was asking me if I’d seen you. If you let Jilo go, I’ll give you the spell.” I held the paper out to him. “We’ll have a do over,” I said.

He looked at me warily. “Promise?” he asked.

“I promise,” I said and drew closer to them, holding the spell in an outstretched hand, but keeping it far enough from him that he couldn’t snatch it away. “Just hand me the knife, and I’ll give you the paper. He silently nodded, and I could see the hope return to his eyes. “One,” I said, stepping within reach. “Two,” I said, holding my left hand out for the knife. “Three,” I said, handing him the paper.

The knife’s handle fell into my waiting palm, and I watched as his face turned bright with joy. He stood beaming up at me, the spell clutched in his little hand. Without hesitating, I swung the knife through the air, slicing a deep cut into my right palm. I reached out, and in one movement, smeared my blood across Wren’s forehead and shoved him backward.

Immediately catching on, Jilo staggered up from her chair and opened a gateway to the realm of hungry shadows that lay somewhere between where we were and Candler. Both of us knew that the human blood combined with Wren’s fear would make him an irresistible target. Wren stumbled, almost caught his balance, and then tripped backward, falling into the world of the living shades. I saw his face for only an instant, and then a blackness swooped in on him, lifting him up and away. We heard his screams for only a moment, then the sickening crunching sound of mastication. Jilo slammed the portal shut.

“Well how in the hell did you think Jilo knew all yo’ family’s secrets?” I could tell that her feistiness was her means of defense. She had expected me to come out swinging at her, but I felt nothing but relief.

“You, I will deal with later,” I said, happier than I ever would have imagined that she was safe, that we both were. “Now, open the door and let me go home.”

Jilo leaned forward on her chair and looked at me. “You just saw Jilo feed that little one to the night. You trust Jilo that the door she open is the one to yo’ home?”

“Actually I’m the one who fed him to the shadows. Besides,” I said, “I am starting to think you really are the only one I can trust.”