The Line

FIVE

Part of me wanted to keep my eyes shut, as if everything that had happened might go away if I chose not to face it. I could feel something sticking into my arm, and I could tell that the bed I was lying in was not my own. These two things alone were enough to tell me that I was in a hospital. I lay still for a few moments, trying to put the pieces back together, but all I could come up with was blood, a blue flash, then blackness. I heard tapping near me. Not random tapping, but a sound that spoke of someone’s well-honed skill of typing on a cell phone keypad. There was only one person on earth I knew who could work a phone like that.

“Uncle Oliver,” I said. I noticed that my mouth was very dry.

“Hey there, my little Gingersnap,” he said using his long-standing pet name for me. “You getting ready to join us again?” As I opened my eyes, he came forward and pressed the nurse call button.

I blinked against the light that was streaming in through the window. I guessed it was afternoon, but I couldn’t be sure of the day. It would have taken Oliver about a day to get from San Francisco to Savannah. From the few words he had spoken, I could tell that his southern accent had started creeping back into his voice. When he was on the West Coast, he had no accent. After a week in Savannah he went full-fledged Uncle Remus. He was early on in the process, so my guess was that I’d been out for a couple of days.

“Three days, as a matter of fact,” he stated flatly, reading my mind. I hated that he could do that with me. It didn’t work with the rest of my family, just with us non-witch types. The youngest of my mother’s siblings, Oliver was strongest when it came to telepathy, but his real fortes were glamour and persuasion, getting a person to see what he wanted them to see, believe what he wanted them to believe, and feel what he wanted them to feel. No wonder he made such a killing working in public relations. No wonder he has broken so many hearts. “And I resent the tar baby reference,” he said. “You could have said Ashley Wilkes.”

“I didn’t actually say a thing,” I said. I tried to sit up, but gave up after realizing how weak I was.

“You take it easy there,” he said. A nurse bounced in and out like a yo-yo, telling us she’d be right back with the doctor. “Bring us the young blond one who fills out those drawstring pants so nicely,” Uncle Oliver called out after her. In spite of myself, in spite of a three-day coma, I blushed. My uncle squinted. “You are beet red,” he said. At first he seemed concerned that there might be something medically wrong with me, but he must have scanned my thoughts because he laughed after a moment. “My dear, you are still a virgin. So much for the stories of your hard living Iris has been writing me about.”

I felt myself rocket from embarrassment to anger. “Stop reading me and start explaining what happened.”

He smiled at me and brushed his fingers through my hair. The anger evaporated, and I relaxed instantly. I knew he was charming me, but I was too tired to fight it. Too tired to even want to fight it.

I stared up at his smooth, serene face. I knew he was nearing forty, but the man standing next to me could not be over twenty-five, not really that much older than me. I wondered how much of what I was seeing was real, and how much was magic. What must it feel like to have a choice about whether to show the world the person time has made of you? Another wave of comfort hit me as Uncle Oliver tried to derail me from that train of thought.

“What happened?” he echoed my question thoughtfully. “Well, Gingersnap. You know how during a storm you sometimes get a power surge, and it causes one of the switches in your breaker box to switch off?”

I nodded.

“Well, you, my dear, were the switch that got flipped.” Irritation—no, outright anger—washed across his face for a moment. “Iris and Connor are idiots. They should never have tried using you as a ground. It’s like putting a child in a cockpit and telling her to land the plane. Not that you are a child,” he added, searching my thoughts for any feelings of offense, ready to soothe them away if he found them.

Pieces of what had occurred at Ginny’s abruptly flew back up and coalesced in my mind. “Did they get what they needed? Did Aunt Iris see who killed Ginny?”

“No, sweetheart. I’m afraid you collapsed like a card table at a Baptist potluck. They got nothing. And they were fools for putting your life at risk to try to find out who did it. They should have left things to the police. What were they going to do anyway? Send Connor after the killer with a rifle? Or were they planning on going all Macbeth and hexing the son of a bitch to death? Now they got nothing, and by the time the police were finally called, the crime scene was so compromised that an outright confession wouldn’t land us a conviction.”

“I’m sorry,” I started, but I didn’t complete my thought because the doctor had come in. He was in his fifties but still handsome. Not the young blond that Oliver had been hoping for, but I doubted he’d be too disappointed.

“Welcome back, Mercy,” the doctor said, then glanced coldly at Uncle Oliver. “Oliver,” he said and whisked out a pen flashlight to examine my eyes. From the way he said Oliver’s name, I knew there was history there. Seems like Uncle Oliver had history pretty much everywhere.

“Good to see you, Michael. Or should I call you Doctor?” Oliver asked.

“I’d recommend not calling me at all.” His face was an icy mask, displaying zero emotion. He must have been a hell of a poker player. I had a feeling that I liked this Doctor Michael, whoever he was. He took my pulse, looked at my chart, and then nodded, as though declaring himself done with me.

“Well the one thing I have learned in dealing with you Taylors is that I will never figure out what causes your ailments or what it is that cures them,” he said. “I’m going to keep you here another night, but that’s just to make sure the hospital doesn’t get sued. I could run more tests and fluff up your bill, but you’re a Taylor, and I know for a fact that if a Taylor wakes up, a Taylor is going to live. My condolences about Ginny. She was a good friend to my grandma.” He hung my chart up at the foot of my bed and left, being careful not to make eye contact with Oliver.

“I guess that’s that, then,” Oliver chuckled. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the doctor’s pronouncement on my health or to whatever had happened between the two of them in the past. “I should call your sister to let her know you’re awake. She was here by your side up until about an hour ago. I finally made that pretty new beau of hers drag her out of here.”

“Jackson,” I said, providing Oliver with the name. “Jackson,” I repeated, and the mere thought of him caused a pleasant warmth to flood me from head to toe.

“Mmm!” Oliver interjected loudly. “I can see we are bound to have some trouble over that boy. By the way, those flowers, the big bunch,” he said and nodded in the direction of a towering arrangement of roses, “those are from Peter. Maisie said he dropped them off at lunch. Probably spent a week’s wages on them.”

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. Trying to fool a telepath is no easy feat, but Oliver let me get away with it. In a few minutes, pretense turned to reality, and I drifted off.

It must have been around midnight when I woke up. My first thought was that a nurse must have come into the room, but as my eyes focused, my heart skipped a beat before hiding its head in shame. It was no nurse. Jackson was standing over me. He ran his right index finger along my cheek, and held the other up to his lips to shush me.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispered, his voice husky. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.” I marveled at how good he looked even under the dim fluorescent lighting—his blond curls gleamed and his eyes shone bright blue. It was as if he carried a patch of the summer sky with him wherever he went.

“How’d you get in here?” I asked. “It’s way past visiting hours, isn’t it? The monitor I was connected to bore witness to the effect he had on me—my pulse was racing. I knew he belonged to my sister, and I knew it was wrong. But in the end, it was harmless. I could never compete with Maisie, and Jackson adored her. Eventually the two of them would marry and make beautiful cherub babies, and my little crush on him would never amount to anything. If I kept it to myself, no one need to be the wiser. With time, I hoped that the feelings I had never invited would go away. I made a mental note to be more guarded around Uncle Oliver.

“I have my ways,” he responded, a glint in his eye. “Oliver said you were doing okay, but I wanted to see for myself.”

“What about Maisie?”

“Don’t you worry about her. She’s at home getting rested up. Your family has something big cooking, and Maisie is evidently going to be right in the thick of it. She spent most of the day with Iris and Connor, then they put her to bed early. They were all being real closed-mouthed about what was going on, and Connor invited me to leave right after dinner in his usual charming manner. Maisie told me she’d explain everything tomorrow. Something about a ‘line’ that’s been disrupted by Ginny’s death.”

“Someone’s going to need to take her place,” I realized out loud, instantly regretting my words. I didn’t know how much Maisie had already shared with him, but I did know that it wasn’t my place to do any of that sharing. “Ignore me,” I said, trying to sound more discombobulated than I was. “I think my brain still has some crossed wires.”

He smiled at me and took my hand. “I expect that I’ll get used to all of this spooky stuff your family’s into sooner or later,” he said, “but I’ve got to admit that I was feeling the need for a little bit of normal, and I started thinking about you.”

I felt myself flinch and pulled my hand out of his grasp. Normal wasn’t exactly a compliment in my family, and it unquestionably wasn’t a word I wanted to hear Jackson use to describe me.

“I’m sorry,” he said tenderly. “I shouldn’t be bothering you. I just wanted to check on you. You close your eyes now, and get back to sleep,” he said, and despite myself, I did as he asked. I felt his lips brush my forehead, the way a parent might kiss a sick child. And then quickly, tentatively his lips touched mine. My eyes popped back open, but he was already gone.