The Line

TWENTY

The sky turned the orange of ripe cantaloupe, and the wind began to swirl around me, pelting me with hail. A bolt of lightning zipped overhead, followed by the peal of distant thunder. Then the clouds opened up, rain falling in buckets as the quickening lightning chased it from the sky. I must have been living right, because I managed to catch an empty taxi that had just let off a bunch of fool tourists at the gates of Bonaventure. I knew the driver, and she refused to turn the meter on. “I got a hotel pickup on Bay anyway; I’ll drop you off on my way,” she said. “Sorry about all of your family’s troubles of late.” I thanked her and forced her to take a five for an after work drink before letting her drive off.

By then the worst of the wind had blown through, and the sky had gone from sherbet to gunmetal. Even though the wind had relented, rain was still falling all around me as I tore up the steps to the front door.

“Mercy.” Jackson’s voice surprised me. I hadn’t even noticed his presence until I heard my name. He was soaked and shivering in the rain that was still whipping through the porch’s columns. His car was nowhere in sight, so he must have walked here in the storm. “I’ve been waiting for you. We need to talk.”

“Sure,” I replied. “About Maisie?”

“No. About us.” Lightning flashed around us like a strobe light with a migraine, and I wanted to be inside.

“There is no ‘us.’ ” I wanted to put a barrier between myself and the elements. I wanted to put a barrier between myself and Jackson too, but I wasn’t sure why. Had Jilo’s magic worked so completely? Thunder trampled on the lightning’s heel, with hardly a second between them. I couldn’t just leave him out here. I reached out and tried the door.

“It’s locked,” he said. “I rang a few times. No one’s home.”

I found my key and opened the door. “Let’s get you a towel,” I said and stepped into the dim foyer. I tried to switch on the lights, but nothing happened. “Looks like we’ve lost power.”

Jackson followed me inside and closed the door behind us, leaving us nearly in the dark. My eyes were slow to adjust, dazzled as they had been by the lightning. I felt him draw close to me, placing a tentative touch on my shoulder. He pulled me to him—gently at first, but with increasing urgency. I tried to extract myself, but his other hand reached for me too, and before I knew it, I was in his arms. His skin was hot beneath the chill of his wet shirt, and I could feel his heart thudding against mine. My body began to respond to his, fire building between us, but as my body’s will weakened, my conscience took over. I could not—would not—betray Maisie. I reached up to push him away, my hands pressing against the steel of his chest, his shoulders, but his mouth found mine. His tongue forced its way past my lips, and for a moment all of the old feelings were there, as sharp and as intoxicating as they had always been. My scruples deserted me. He should be mine.

But even as that thought burned its way into my consciousness, my body began to strain to free itself from his grasp. Jilo’s magic wrestled with my emotions, repressing my ardor for Jackson, making its color drain away until I felt nothing. Peter’s face rose up in my mind, and the warm glow I felt for him once again transformed itself into the passion I had sold my soul to Jilo to kindle.

“Stop,” I said, and then again more forcefully, “Stop.”

He loosened his hold, and I pushed away from him. Even in the dark, my eyes had no difficulty registering the disappointment on his face. “I know you feel it too,” he said. “I know…”

A flash of lightning flared through the window, lighting up the room around us. There was a bloody stain on the wall behind him. A handprint. Adrenaline flooded my body. I tried to speak but couldn’t find my voice. I pounded on his chest with one hand, pointing over with his shoulder with the other. At first he wrinkled his forehead in confusion, but then he turned. Another less furious flash illuminated the print once again.

“Stay here,” he said, scanning the entrance way for a viable weapon. There was nothing.

“No way,” I replied, reaching out to take his hand. This time he was the one to pull away. “Stay behind me if you’re going to come,” he said.

I followed him into the library, my view blocked by his broad shoulders. He banged into an end table. “Damn,” he said under his breath. “Can’t see a thing.”

“In the desk,” I said. “Connor usually keeps a flashlight in the top right drawer.”

Jackson carefully made his way to the desk and rummaged for the flashlight as noiselessly as possible. After a moment, he pulled it out and flicked it on, its beam hitting my eyes and temporarily blinding me. He turned and ran the beam over the room. “Nothing,” he said and led me back across the foyer and into the living room. Jackson swept the room with the light, and I stepped out from behind him and took in the scene. A struggle, a fierce one, had taken place here. The poker from the fireplace lay in the center of the room, and the rug beneath it was stained black.

“Don’t touch it,” Jackson commanded before I even realized that I’d bent over to pick it up. I took a step back and surveyed the room. Furniture had been knocked aside, and there were shards of broken crystal everywhere—the remnants of Iris’s favorite vase. Jackson shone the light on the floor, revealing a trail of blood drops that led from the room to the handprint on the foyer wall. He crossed over to the fireplace, grabbing the log tongs. “Take the light,” he said, handing it to me. It was only when I took it that I realized my hands were shaking.

Jackson returned to the foyer, and I followed close behind. Drops of blood led us the first few steps down the hall, and then the drops turned into a smear. Someone had fallen and been dragged away from the spot. The smear served as a bloody marker, pointing us in the direction of the kitchen. We crept up to the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the hallway. Jackson turned to face me and raised the tongs in his hands like he was holding a baseball bat. He nodded at me and then kicked open the door, which hit the wall behind it with a whack as loud as the dying thunder. He dove through the opening, but the door swung back through the frame before I could join him, flapping until it came to rest.

“Oh, my God,” his voice carried over to me. It felt like an eternity had passed since he’d crossed into the kitchen. “My God,” he kept repeating, his tone keening and filled with panic. I didn’t want to see what was on the other side, but I stepped forward and eased the door open with the gentlest of pressure, and my feet carried me across the threshold.

My brain had a hard time processing the scene before me. Oliver was lying on his back, tied to the tabletop. Each arm and leg had been tightly secured to one of the table’s legs. His clothing had been shredded, and what was left of it hung from him in blood-soaked tatters. Iris crouched in the shadows in the corner of the room, a straight razor dangling from her fingertips.

“Iris,” I said, my voice rough and shaky at the same time. “What have you done?” She bounded from the shadows and crossed the room in a furious leap. Her eyes glowed red, her lips curled back to reveal her canines, and she swiped at me with the razor. I jumped back. I knew then that Iris wasn’t acting of her own will. Her body twisted around on itself in a way no human body was meant to bend as she leaped onto Oliver, perching herself on his chest. The moan that escaped him told me that he was still alive.

Jackson pressed up next to me. I had almost forgotten that he was there. “What do we do?”

“You leave!” Iris raged. “He need to pay. He gonna pay. Pain for pain. Life for life.”

To say that we were dealing with an angry spirit—whether it was a ghost or demon or what—was an obvious understatement. So it was angry. It felt wronged. Maybe encouraging it to air its grievances would keep it from inflicting any more damage on Oliver. But I realized that I’d be taking away its role as a victim if I asked it why it was doing this to Oliver. Instead I asked, “What did he do to you?” My tone intimated that his crime must have surely matched the punishment she was meting out.

She looked at me, and although her eyes were still wild, the red glow toned down. I knew I had come up with the right incantation. “He murdered my baby is what he did,” she said with a flat intonation, as if she were trying the words on for the first time. She must have read the shock and disbelief on my face. “He made me”—she emphasized the pronoun—“murder my baby. And when I came to and knew what I done…”

“You walked into the river and didn’t come out,” I finished for her, the pieces coming together in my mind. Had Grace and her child come between Oliver and something he wanted? I had seen him trample over the will of others time and again and had often wondered how far he’d go to get what he wanted. I asked myself if I believed Oliver’s moral compass was damaged enough to allow him to commit murder. Possibly, under the right—or wrong—circumstances, was the answer that turned up. “You’re Grace, aren’t you?”

At the mention of her name, she halted. “Yes,” she said, but then a howl tore from her and she began swiping at Oliver with the blade, slicing him open with indiscriminate blows, some deeper than others.

“Help, help, help,” I pleaded in my mind, not even knowing whom I was addressing. Maybe it was a prayer. Maybe my mind was just trying to muster up its own courage. I rushed forward, reaching for the blade. She swiped at me and would have cut me, but Jackson swung the tongs at her hand with such force that I heard the radius in Iris’s forearm crack. The razor skidded across the floor, and Jackson dove at her. She struck him with her good arm, and he was knocked back across the room.

Before either of us could recover, she lifted her good arm and the razor flew back into her hand. “Fine then. I’ll let you watch,” she said, poising her hand over Oliver’s throat.

“No!” I said and was surprised to hear it come out as a command. “You will not do that. You will drop the razor.” I gave my words all the authority I could muster. Grace shot me a ferocious look over her shoulder. Iris’s face was twisted beyond recognition by the force of Grace’s fury. I turned the flashlight fully on her. Her skin was nearly purple, the veins bulging behind the skin. She labored and strained, growling and spitting, every ounce of the spirit’s power focused on forcing Iris to make the final cut. But Iris’s hand remained locked a mere inch or two above her brother’s jugular.

“The young lady told you to drop the knife,” the words were followed by a shimmer in the air that resolved into the golem. I dropped the flashlight in shock. “And you will vacate Mrs. Flynn’s body immediately.” Iris instantly fell limp on top of Oliver.

I heard the squeal of brakes and a slamming door, and within moments Ellen was by my side. She stopped dead at the sight of her siblings. Her eyes fixed on me for a moment, wide with confusion, but instead of waiting for answers, she rushed over to the table. “Get Iris off him,” she commanded, and Jackson obeyed, lifting Iris’s dead weight off Oliver. The blood that had bathed Iris now coated Jackson, and he shuddered at the sensation.

“He’s dying. Call an ambulance. I don’t think I can help him. He’s almost gone,” Ellen said, the words spilling out with no inflection. “He’s lost so much blood, and I don’t have it in me to heal him.” She placed her hands on Oliver and closed her eyes. “I said call an ambulance!” This time the words were an order. I turned and ran to the old landline that Connor had insisted we keep, slipping in the blood that had formed a puddle around the table. Emmet’s hand shot out and righted me before I toppled over.

“Stay,” he said to me. “You have the power, Ellen. We just need to reconnect you to it.” Emmet let go of me and laid his hand on Ellen’s head. She bolted off the ground an inch or so, suffused with a golden light. “The blockage has been removed. Another one of Ginny’s many follies.”

Ellen’s suspicions about Ginny had been right all along. Her face grew radiant as the power surged through her. “That bitch,” was all she said before turning her attention to Oliver. Light emanated from her fingers, from her hands, and then from her whole being. The bulbs in the overhead light began to glow as if electricity had been restored to them, and the room went from gloomy to intensely bright. Within seconds Oliver’s chest began to move up and down as his breathing returned to normal. The wounds closed and scarred over, and after a moment he opened his eyes. He looked around the room and started to say something, but then his eyes caught hold of mine. A look of shame washed over him, and he held his peace. The physical healing was miraculous, but I knew that the emotional healing was going to take much longer.

Iris had begun to stir, and she came to with a horrified look on her face. “What have I done? What have I done?” she wailed, staring down at her clothes, which were covered with her brother’s blood. She collapsed sobbing against Jackson, who recoiled from her, pushing her away. His blue eyes were wide as he looked from Ellen to Emmet to Iris to me, his face gray and sickly. I couldn’t tell if it was from the blood that covered him or the magic that was crackling in the air around us. He lowered his head and pushed past me. I heard his quick and heavy footsteps echo down the hall, the front door banged open, and he was gone.

Emmet walked over to Ellen and removed her hands from Oliver’s chest. “He’ll mend nicely now. You should turn your attention to your sister.”

Ellen was still on a high from the energies that had been restored to her, and her expression resembled Saint Theresa in her ecstasy. There was such beauty in the moment that I nearly forgot about the horrors that surrounded us. Carried by a wave of healing light, Ellen glided toward Iris. She took her sister into her arms and rocked her gently. “No harm done, no harm done,” she kept repeating in a singsong voice. In seconds Iris too was bathed in Ellen’s light.

“No harm indeed,” Emmet said to me under his breath as he retrieved the straight razor, using it to cut the ropes that bound Oliver to the table. “Let’s get you into bed,” he said. One moment Oliver was there in front of me, and the next he was gone. “Don’t worry about your uncle. We’ll watch over him while he rests.”

“But how did you know?” I asked him. “How did you know to come?”

“We heard your call, and we summoned your family to return home,” Emmet replied. He sensed that I wanted more of an explanation, so he continued. “We promised we would renew and strengthen the charms Ginny was using to protect you. If ever you are in true danger, we will come to you, at least as long as this body still has form.”

Something began to gnaw at the edge of my consciousness. “You said you summoned my family?”

“Yes,” Emmet replied.

“Then where is Connor?” I asked. Iris gasped and ran from the room, apparently alarmed by the mention of her husband.

“You had better follow her,” Emmet said to Ellen, and, reluctantly returning from the high she had been experiencing, she went after her sister.

For the first time, I was left alone with the golem. His dark eyes surveyed me, and he traced the back of my hand with his index finger. His touch was warm. “You enjoyed taking charge,” Emmet said. “And you did it well. You stopped that spirit from ending your uncle’s life.”

“I was bluffing. You were the one who stopped her.”

“No,” he said. “We did not. You were the one who stayed her hand.” Before I could object, he continued, “There is magic in the air from Oliver’s blood and the spirit’s rage. None of it came from you, but you made it yours. A part of it still lingers in you,” he said. “It was your will that kept the spirit from killing Oliver. When you saw us, you relinquished control, but you were wielding the power when we arrived.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“We are saying that for one not born of the power, you channel it as naturally as if you were. You do it instinctively,” he said.

“Well good for me,” I said, “but I’ve had enough for one day. I’m going to go make sure Connor is all right, and if he is, I’m going to bed. And frankly, I might stay there for a while.”

“Then we wish you sweet dreams, young witch,” Emmet said, bowing to me in a courtly manner.

“Yeah, right,” I responded and padded down the hall. When I reached the second floor, the sight of the linen closet door made me wonder if my visit to Jilo was somehow linked to the timing of Grace’s attack. But that possibility was going to have to wait until tomorrow to be considered. I needed sleep.