The Line

TWENTY-SEVEN

Peter was on me the second I entered my house. A look of relief flooded his face, and I realized that whatever anger I’d felt toward him earlier had taken a backseat to the rage and terror that were pulsing through me. I pushed past him, right into Ellen’s arms.

“Thank God you’re here. Thank God you’re all right,” she repeated over and over again, rocking me.

Oliver came up behind me and planted a kiss on top of my head. “You smell of smoke,” he said. “You were at Ginny’s?”

“You know about the fire?” I asked and then realized that they would have been alerted by the fire department.

“What happened?” Peter answered my question with one of his own.

I looked him directly in his eyes and said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“But I’m worried about you, honey,” he said, trying to pull me away from Ellen and into his arms. “I want to give you my support.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” I repeated.

Oliver sensed something in my voice that he didn’t understand, but knew enough not to like. “Leave,” he commanded, and Peter instantly withdrew and headed out the door.

I extricated myself from Ellen’s embrace. “Connor’s dead,” I said and watched for her reaction.

“We know, sweetheart,” she said.

“But how could you know?” I asked, my fear leading me to wonder if she had learned it from Wren. There was no way the fire department would have had the opportunity to look for remains yet, and given that the fire had had a supernatural cause, I strongly suspected that there wouldn’t be any.

Ellen didn’t respond—she just took my hand and led me into the library. As we approached, I could hear Ray Charles playing on the ancient stereo turntable that Connor had insisted on keeping, even though its boxy wooden sarcophagus took up valuable space. He had always claimed that vinyl records had a warmth and depth to them that other recordings lacked.

Ellen reached down and opened the door. I stepped in to find Iris floating in the center of the room, lifted by a controlled gust of air. The gown she had intended to wear to the charity auction fluttered angelically around her. I had never known that Aunt Iris could fly or that she could control the wind, but there she was. She normally kept her hair pinned close to her head, but tonight it hung loose, and the wind that kept her aloft teased it wildly in every direction. It was a strangely beautiful sight. Tears streamed backward along her cheeks, but she stayed perfectly silent. The only sign that she was still with us was when she restarted Ray after the record player’s needle came to the end of the recording’s groove.

Oliver had followed us into the library. “She was sitting in the kitchen having tea with me. Everything was fine,” he said. “Then she stood up and started wailing. She kept saying something about Connor and a fire, then she told me that he was dead. She came in here, and she’s been floating and playing that record over and over again for the past half hour.”

“We got a call from the fire department,” Ellen added, “saying that Ginny’s house had gone up in flames. The fire was too hot for them to do anything but contain it. They aren’t sure what caused it, but they said it looks electrical.”

I struggled to find the words to tell them what had actually happened. “He tried to kill me,” I finally managed to say, as if the words were the punch line to the world’s funniest joke. Rage suddenly ripped through me, and I advanced on the turntable, tearing the needle from the record before shattering it against the opposite wall. “I said he tried to kill me!” Iris landed on her feet with a thump, and a stunned silence filled the room.

“There was book Connor wanted,” I continued, even though no one had asked. “He tricked me into opening for him. And then he stole my necklace. He was going to kill me,” I repeated as another pump of adrenaline shot through my system. “He was going to have Wren kill me,” I said, on some level pleased by the sickened shock that spread over Ellen’s face. I knew then that she’d had nothing to do with Wren’s crimes.

“Wren killed my husband?” Iris asked, almost willfully misunderstanding me.

“No, Iris. The book, or whatever was in it, set fire to your husband. And it kept your husband from killing me. But Wren killed Ginny,” I said, turning to look at Ellen again. “She had decided to dissolve him, and she might have even tried to do it by herself. She had the spell; it felt really old and powerful. But she failed, and Wren killed her instead. Connor found the spell and figured it out. He promised Wren that he’d keep quiet if Wren killed me tonight while he and Iris were at the auction. When the fire started to spread, Wren left me there to burn. But it wasn’t a normal fire. The flames were alive.”

“Elementals?” Oliver asked.

“Yes. They didn’t burn me, and they carried me out of the fire. Connor had hurt me. Bad. They healed me.”

“But why would Connor have wanted to hurt you?” Iris asked.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Iris,” I said. “I don’t want you to feel any worse than you already do. I know you’re in pain. But you have to believe me. It was the book he wanted—Maisie’s journal. Ginny shared things with Maisie that she shouldn’t have, and her journal contained the secrets of the line. Connor wasn’t satisfied with the power he had, and he thought he could get more by reading it.” My words tumbled out, not lining up the way they should have, but I knew that my family understood.

“And he knew you’d tell us what he was up to if he let you live,” Oliver finished for me.

“But he helped raise you,” Iris said, struggling. The look of resignation on her face told me that she didn’t doubt me. She was just shocked that she could have been so blind to Connor’s true nature for so long. “He was a father to you.”

“No, Iris,” I said, a sense of calm descending over me, courtesy of Oliver no doubt. “He was my father. He told me so himself.”

Iris exchanged a quick look with Ellen. They knew the truth too. The shock on Oliver’s face could not be counterfeit. “Oh, come on!” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Ellen sighed and then said, “They’re both gone now, no reason to hide the truth anymore.”

“Then tell her,” Iris responded, her voice resigned. “I can’t find the words, not after everything that happened tonight.”

Ellen reached over and took my hand. “Connor was not your father,” she said softly, and I felt a wave of cool relief wash over me. “But he thought he was. We always let him believe it.”

“Why?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Because you girls needed a father. And I wanted to hold onto my husband,” Iris said. “I let him believe he was your dad so that he’d stick around and help raise you…but I also wanted to give him a reason to stay.”

Sharp words began to line up on my tongue, but Ellen spoke before I could speak them. “But there’s another reason. A more important reason,” she said. She and Iris locked eyes again before she continued.

“We were afraid of what Ginny might do if she knew the truth about you two,” she said. “The truth about your parentage.”

She hesitated for a moment too long. “Spit it out,” Oliver commanded, his face flushed and covered with worry lines I’d never seen before.

“I told you, Mercy,” she began. “I told you how Ginny prevented me from saving Paul, because of the prophecy that foretold that the bloodlines that gave birth to him would give rise to a great witch who would reunite all thirteen families.”

“Yes, and you said that Ginny was dead set against that reunion,” I said.

“We had Paul before Ginny discovered the prophecy. Afterward, she prevented us from having any more children. Just as she limited my healing powers, she tampered with my ability to conceive another child. She didn’t let me save Paul because she didn’t want him to grow up and father children. I honestly think she might have killed him outright herself if the witch in the prophecy hadn’t been female.”

“Maisie,” I said, the pieces coming together.

“I knew that she was Erik’s girl the second I laid hands on her. That you both were,” Iris said. I wondered why it had never occurred to me that her psychometric powers would have told her who our father was, even if my mother hadn’t.

“Yes,” Ellen said. “My husband Erik fathered you and Maisie. We couldn’t let Ginny find out. We just couldn’t.”

“My God, you must hate us,” I said in amazement.

“Oh, no, my darling girl,” Ellen said, beaming at me with nothing but love in her eyes. Her expression was tender as she said, “I could never hate you. You are the daughters Ginny denied me.”

“And the daughters I could never have,” Iris added, approaching us almost shyly. She and Ellen joined together and took me into their arms.

“We forgave your mother years ago,” Ellen said. “She was a weak and willful woman. She went after both of our husbands, if only to show us she could take them away. But in the end, she gave us you and Maisie.” It hurt me terribly to realize again all the harm my mother had done, and I promised myself then and there that I would never be like her.

“And now,” Iris said, her voice catching, “you girls are all I have left.” She hesistated a moment and looked at me through eyes that were filled with tears. “I am sorry Connor died the way he did.” The wind began to creep up around her again, lifting the three of us who’d embraced an inch or so off the ground. “Because I wish I could have killed the son of a bitch myself.”

She let go of Ellen and me, and we landed lightly on our feet. She held up her hand, and a piece of paper flitted into it from the desk. Letters and lines began to fill the once empty page, and as soon as it was full, she turned it to face us. I couldn’t make out the words, but I recognized Connor’s sprawling signature at the bottom. Iris had written him a suicide note.

“Oliver,” Iris said, “you should call Detective Cook. I just found a letter from Connor. He said he couldn’t live a moment longer with the guilt of what he did to Ginny.”

“And now we need to deal with Wren,” Ellen said, the resolve in her voice a sure sign that all of the fondness she’d felt for the charming illusion had faded forever.

“Let’s slow down a bit and unwind all of this first,” Emmet said, appearing from nowhere. “Your family always falls victim to its passions. You act on the spur of the moment without thinking.”

Without thinking, I crossed over and slapped the smug look right off his face. “You show up when you think it’s time to criticize, but where the hell were you when I needed you?” All nine parts of him were taken aback. “Shut up!” I warned him when he started to move his lips again.

Iris’s face was set as hard as concrete. “Call Cook,” she repeated to Oliver.