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“Yes,” he said, then placed a gentle kiss on my lips. “Imagine how it felt to almost be destroyed by my own kind. The sweet blood you wiped on me. It excited them, confused them. If they hadn’t been so starved and I so well fed, they might have ripped me apart before they knew what they were doing. See, you are much smarter than that sister of yours. She never even questioned that I might be something other than a little fellow your uncle dreamed up.” He gave me a thumbs-up and a beaming smile that revealed his straight white teeth. “I have to tell you, we’ve been waiting for this day for millennia. Your birth, Ginny’s intervention. It was nothing less than miraculous. We want so badly to live in your world, Mercy. But there’s only enough power for a few of us to get out at a time. When the witches activated the line, we got trapped between worlds, neither entirely in the world the witches created, nor wholly in the one they left behind. When the tunnels near Candler Hospital were dug, they filled up with such sweet despair and misery that we were drawn to them, but even feeding off all of that exquisite agony didn’t allow us to draw a fraction of the power we needed to pierce the veil. There were too many of us, and the line was too strong.
“So we’ve bided our time. Only a few of us could break free at once, and even then only for a little while. We learned that we could draw strength from the dreams of sleeping humans, and eventually we began to meet magic workers who would assist us in return for performing small favors for them. They’d give us skins that we could use to walk in your world, but the skins never lasted for long.”
“The shadows are boo hags?” I asked, every bit as surprised as if he’d told me they were leprechauns.
“Yes, that’s what we’ve come to be called in the low country, but we’ve had a lot of different names. Heck, you couldn’t even pronounce our real name if I told you. There, finished,” he said, then stuck his finger back into the blood and licked it. He tossed the container to the ground. “I got real lucky one day when I met an up-and-coming root doctor named Mother Jilo Wills. She promised me that if I kept an eye on you Taylors and reported back to her, she’d teach me how to weave my own flesh. She’d find a way to feed me enough energy so that I’d never have to go back to the world between.
“Her plan started with tricking the Taylor child named Oliver into believing that I was his special friend. After that, his desire to keep me around would be enough to hold me in your world. Oh, how proud your grandparents were of Wren. They took me as proof positive that their Oliver was the brightest and most powerful little witch ever. I could draw enough energy off the little bastard to live quite well for a while,” he said, standing back to admire the drawings he had made on my body.
“But all little ones must grow up, and soon Oliver lost interest in me. With Jilo’s help, I managed to hang on through the dry spell, but it was like living off grass after years of feeding on cow. Things started looking up when your cousin Paul was born, and then when your mother gave birth to you. Ginny did her best to ground your energy here, but she did a rather sloppy job of it, leaving a bit leaking off here, a little leaking off there. Feeding off your power, I was able to grow strong. You see, ever since you came into the world, you’re the one who has made my existence possible. You should be proud, for I am every bit as much as your child as that clot in your womb. Soon your other children are going to burst free from their prison too. And it is truly all thanks to you and your fantastically screwed up family.”
He held up a dagger before my eyes. “This is the blade that will end your life. Don’t worry, it’s sharp, and I promise to make it as quick and painless as I can. Your death is the grand finale to your sister’s plan, you see. As soon as the investment ceremony takes place and the anchor energy settles into her, she will signal me, and I will drive this blade into your heart. At that very moment she’ll free your magic, and it will unite itself with the closest match to your living blood. In the end, it always comes down to blood, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Maisie thinks that she’ll be the closest match, but…well, now we’ve reached the part of my plan that is probably going to be the most unpleasant for you.” He took the dagger and sunk the tip of its blade just above my breast. I screamed out from pain, and then from revulsion, as he pressed his lips to the wound, sucking the blood from my flesh.
“I need to do this at each one of these points,” he said, touching a few of the places he had marked on my body. Then he made a quick swipe of the blade at each of them, pressing his mouth to the wounds and drawing in deeply. He moaned in pleasure. “Oh, girl, you do taste good,” he said, his teeth red behind his bloody lips. “Your blood burns in me,” he said, growing intoxicated. His lips sought out the wounds over and over again, and my vision began to blur from the pain and blood loss. And then he suddenly pulled away.
The sounds I could hear from the other dimension weren’t fully audible and were out of sync with the visual images I could perceive, but even though my strength was sapped and my senses were weakened, I could tell that the investment ceremony had started. I felt the sharp blade of Jackson’s dagger poise itself directly above my heart.
I heard Maisie’s voice scream the word “stop” once, twice, and then a third time. Then everything turned to fire.
I felt the power of the line reject Maisie. The ground in both worlds quaked as its energy reverberated around her, causing her image to shimmer like a mirage. Then, in the blink of an eye, she was gone.
The witches who had formed the circle around her looked shocked and horrified, but they held to their discipline, keeping their hands linked together. From the middle of the circle rose up the most beautiful ball of light I had ever seen. It turned at an angle that wasn’t possible in a world with only three dimensions and removed itself from their reality. The ball brushed against Emmet’s side as it disappeared from the witches’ world and entered into mine, growing ever larger and shining ever brighter.
I could still feel the point of Jackson’s blade pressed into my flesh, and with one last desperate move, he tried to stab me. But the orb expanded around us, burning into the shadow that had masqueraded as Jackson. A roar of flames drowned out his cries of rage and anguish and vexation as he disappeared into ash. The dagger he had been holding fell to the ground before me, landing blade first in the earth.
There was a brilliant flash of light, an effulgence that took over my body, and I felt the power of the line enter me, but before it could entirely settle in me, before I could even acknowledge the rapture pulsing inside, a second wave hit me—my own power. I was drowned by a feeling that lay somewhere between ecstasy and coming home.
When the light faded, when the elation subsided, I was no longer tied to the tree. I was in the center of the circle of thunderstruck witches, on a patch of burned earth that would never again grow a blade of grass.
THIRTY-THREE
“I ran into Peter this morning,” Ellen said as she unloaded a bag of organic fruit and vegetables from the farmer’s market onto the kitchen table. “He was walking on cloud nine. He’s ecstatic that you’re letting him take you in for the baby’s first sonogram.”
“He’s Colin’s father. Of course he’s going to be there,” I said.
Iris entered the kitchen with another bag of groceries and set it on the counter. “Well, call me old-fashioned, but if you’re going to marry the boy, I sure wish you’d do it before little Colin is born. It would be nice if both of his parents had the same last name on the birth certificate.”
“Stop pressuring her,” Oliver said, coming in on Iris’s heels. “The other nine families pester her plenty enough about taking over anchor duties. She doesn’t need any pressure from us.”
“Thank you, Uncle Oliver,” I said and with a snap of my fingers, I put away the groceries they’d carried in.
“Now you are just showing off,” Iris said, barely able to suppress a smile.
“Emmet says it’s good practice to start with the little things first,” I responded, crossing my arms and sticking out my tongue.
“You keep practicing like that, and it’ll be your butt growing, not your abilities,” Iris said and made a playful swipe at me with a dish towel.
“About Emmet,” Oliver said in a serious tone. “Are you sure you’re okay with spending time alone with him? I mean, aren’t you a little weirded out by him?”
When the power of the line had brushed past Emmet on its way to me, it had broken the nine intelligences he’d embodied off from their sources and had somehow melded them together into a single consciousness. Emmet was no longer a mere golem. He might not exactly be a real man, but for all intents and purposes he was close enough. I wasn’t sure if he had what you might call a soul, but who was I to judge?
“No,” I replied. “I was a little weirded out by him before, but now he seems right to me. And he’s the best teacher I could have hoped for,” I said. After all, he had maintained the knowledge of each of his nine creators.
After the investment, my aunts, uncle, and I had made a pact: no more lies or secrets, even if they were well-intentioned. I decided that the present would be as good at time as any to live up to my side of the bargain. “Listen, y’all. I’ve been thinking about something. Well, more than thinking about it…I’ve been working with Emmet on it.”
