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“What is it?” I felt Jackson’s chest rumble as he asked Connor the question, holding me tightly all the while.
“A golem,” I heard Maisie’s voice reply. My eyes sought her out, and I was surprised by how cold her expression was. “It’s an animated body made from inanimate matter.” She made her way over to us. “You can put my sister down now; she’s safe.” Jackson hesitated for a just a moment. From the expression on her face, Maisie had taken note of his hesitation and read a whole lot of something she didn’t like into it. Jackson lowered me gently until my feet felt the ground. My knees were still wobbly, but considering the way Maisie’s eyes were narrowed, I knew better than to lean against Jackson for support.
“It scared the crap out of me,” I said by way of explanation, or maybe even apology. “It just started forming from the ground with no warning.”
The cousins had joined Connor in admiring the thing, and they were no longer paying us any mind. “Okay, so it’s a golem,” Jackson addressed Maisie with a noticeable edge to his voice. I could tell that he had been frightened too. “What’s it doing here?”
“The families,” she responded, her shoulders slumped a little when she took in Jackson’s tone. I knew she was referring to the nine other witch families who wouldn’t be present for the ceremony. “The families created the golem to house the energies from their representatives. You are seeing one body,” she explained, “but there are nine intelligences inside of it. They’re the families’ witnesses to the drawing of the lots.”
“You knew this thing was coming?” I asked.
“We only found out like an hour ago,” she responded impatiently. “I came up to your room to warn you, but your door was locked, and you wouldn’t answer. I figured you were hiding out with your earphones on.” She looked up at Jackson. “And I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“What? I was outside on the porch having a beer with your cousin from Athens. We were talking football.”
Maisie eyed him up and down. “Well, I would appreciate your support. Today of all days.” She shot me a quick, sharp look. “And I mean both of you. I couldn’t get to either of you, and then I come out here to see you looking like the cover of some cheap romance novel.” She turned and started back toward the house in a huff.
Jackson followed on her heels. “Now, baby, don’t be that way,” I heard him calling after her. Meanwhile the group surrounding the golem shifted as the creature began walking toward the house.
With the wall to my back, I inched farther and farther way. Its movements were halting and cumbersome at first, but after a few more steps, it began to proceed at a nearly human gait. I realized that its features had refined themselves quite a bit over the past few moments. It no longer looked like a roughly hewn statue. Except for its unnatural color, it might have been mistaken for an actual human being from a distance. A large and naked human being. I prayed that the creature wouldn’t be anatomically correct, but as the cousins moved to give him a wider berth, I realized that nothing was going to go my way today. Its skin was turning a Mediterranean olive, and for some reason the realistic new skin tone made the whole naked thing more of an issue.
Although I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the creature, I gladly lifted them and focused on its face instead. It was beautiful, and I recognized it instantly—it was the spitting image of Bernini’s David. Dark eyebrows had taken shape on the thing’s well-formed skull, and its scalp was filling in with curly black hair. After some indeterminate point in the transformation, I found myself thinking of the creature as a “he” rather than an “it.” All the same, I didn’t like the idea of being too close to him. After a few more moments had passed, he fixed his gaze on me and took a few confident steps right up to me. The cousins who had been entranced by his metamorphosis crowded in on us.
“You are Emily’s child,” he said, and it sounded as if many voices were speaking at once. Baritone and tenor, soprano and bass mixed into an unnatural wave of sound.
“One of them,” I responded, pushing my back closer to the wall. “But you are probably looking for my sister.”
He drew nearer, and I noticed that the amber in his eyes had begun to recede, whites forming around them. The cat’s eye swirl had coalesced into a large but fairly normal looking pupil. Those eyes took me in from head to toe. “Do you consider your outfit appropriate mourning attire?” The multilayered voice asked.
At that moment all my fear dissipated, and I wanted nothing more in the world than to kick him in his newly formed testicles. “Do you consider your outfit appropriate mourning attire?” I parroted, poking him in the chest with my finger. He was warm to the touch. Very warm. I pulled my hand back quickly.
“No, you are correct,” he replied, and the air around him began to shimmer. A well-tailored, single-breasted dark suit wrapped around him. Under it, a crisp white shirt and an expertly knotted tie. He had gone from Georgia dust to male model in mere minutes. “Please change into something better suited to the occasion. Something that shows respect for Ginny’s memory and for the role you will be playing in selecting her replacement. We will wait for you inside.”
“How about you go straight to hell?” I put my hands on my hips and dug my heels in.
Although the golem stood stock still, the voices burst from the golem, this time not in chorus, but like an angry debate. For a moment I thought the golem might be coming undone. Then the voices paused. “You are angry because we frightened you,” he said—they said—in a unified and reasonable baritone. “It was not our intention. It was unfortunate that you witnessed our arrival without warning.”
“And this is the point where you apologize for your bad attitude, young lady,” commanded Connor, who had drawn up near us.
I realized what the families had said through their mouthpiece was as close to an apology as I’d ever get. I wasn’t sorry, but I knew my life would be easier if I gave them what they wanted. “You’re right. I apologize,” I said, mentally adding for being scared out of my wits twice today and thinking there was a rule of one person per body. Without another word to acknowledge my apology, the golem turned from me and headed toward the front door.
“Do as he says—change into something appropriate,” Connor barked as he pushed past me. “And then meet us in the kitchen.”
ELEVEN
I ignored the request for a wardrobe change. I was not about to be bossed around by a mud pie with an attitude. When I entered the kitchen, the creature and my family were sitting around the table with a bunch of tiles spread out between them. They were the size of dominoes and all but one were white. The odd one out had been stained red. Maisie was gingerly running her finger over the red lot, fascinated but cautious, as if she expected it to deliver a shock. None of the cousins had joined us, and Jackson was nowhere to be seen. He would undoubtedly be glued to Maisie’s side if he hadn’t been purposely excluded. I wondered who had done the excluding, the rest of the family or Maisie herself.
The creature scanned me with emotionless eyes. “She is an insolent creature,” he said as I sat in the last empty chair. His voice modulated between a few different tones at first, but then seemed to settle on one.
“She sure as hell is,” Connor said.
“And that is why we love her,” Oliver said, pulling me close and planting a kiss on my cheek. “Quite a day we’re having here, huh?” he asked me.
“And you don’t know the half of it,” I responded, wondering when or even if I should ask him Jilo’s question. I turned toward the visitor. “What are we supposed to call you anyway?”
“The body does not have a name,” he responded. “The body is only a shell.” He looked at me as if he were considering a grave problem. “The child is ignorant of our ways,” the creature said, speaking about me as if I weren’t in the room. “Why have you not taught her?” My heart beat faster as I heard him echo Jilo’s words.
“She’s got no power,” Connor stated as if that explained everything.
