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“No, not really,” I said, but with none of the rancor that my heart usually held for him. “Thank you for healing my hand.”
“You probably could have done it yourself today,” he said. “The golem told me that you’re all juiced up on Oliver’s magic.” He paused and looked at me, weighing his words.
“You’ve obviously got something to say, so out with it.”
He grimaced. “I do. I have something very important to say. Actually a lot of important things to say, but I’m trying to figure out how to say them without pissing you off.” He started to speak again, but hesitated. His shoulders drooped forward, and he shook his head. “You always see me as the enemy, Mercy, but I’m not your enemy. So hear me out for a few minutes, okay?”
Part of me would have preferred spending more time with the living shadows in the tunnel than listening to my uncle’s lectures, but I nodded anyway.
“Good,” he said, adding “thank you” in an uncharacteristic show of good manners. “Regular hospitals aren’t equipped to handle witch births. You two were born at home, and you came early. Only Iris and Ellen were home when your mama started labor. I wasn’t there when you girls were born,” he said. “I was out of town. But Iris told me that Maisie came out shining with life and power. We all thought your mama was only carrying one child. You weren’t even expected. Emily picked the name Maisie out for your sister as soon as she was sure the baby was a girl.” Connor stopped speaking for a moment and chuckled to himself. “She said there were too many damned witches named Sarah and Dianna in the world. You were a surprise to us all. When you came out, you were scrawny and blue—you’d practically starved to death in your mother’s womb.
“Your mama, she was dying,” he said, and a large tear dropped down his cheek. He brushed it away without seeming to notice that he had shed it. “Ellen was a gifted witch back before Ginny docked her powers, but even she had her limits. Nature only lets her get away with so much. A choice had to be made, and your mama made it. She refused Ellen’s help, using the last of her strength to beg Ellen to save her baby. To save you.”
Tears formed in my own eyes, tears too large and numerous to ignore. Connor waved his hand like a stage magician and produced a handkerchief. He held it out to me, and I took it.
“Ellen held you tightly in her arms and breathed her own breath into your little lungs. It took a while, but she got your body to warm up. By the time you had some color in your cheeks, your mama had already passed on. Ellen named you Mercy then and there, ’cause she thought a poor child like you was going to need some mercy. I, on the other hand, took a different tack. Once we determined for sure that you were powerless, I took it upon myself to personally knock you down every time the opportunity presented itself. I bullied you. I said bad things about you. I rubbed your nose in your failures every chance I got. And I did it all because I love you. I wanted you to be tough enough to face the rest of the witches who were saying much worse about you behind your back. I wanted you to be tough enough to face—”
“To face Ginny,” I interrupted him. He nodded his head yes, and to my surprise tried to pull me into a hug. I resisted, and even used a bit of the witch power I’d borrowed from Oliver to escape his grasp. I wasn’t ready to forgive a lifetime of hurt, at least not yet. I saw the pain of my rejection flicker through his eyes.
“She had it out for you from the beginning,” he said. “She blamed you for your mama’s death. And then, when she realized you had no powers, she started calling you ‘The Disappointment’ behind your back.” The words cut through my heart. “So I started calling you the same thing to your face to make you stronger. But you gotta know, Mercy, you were never a disappointment to me. Not to any of us, other than Ginny.”
He circled around me to block me from leaving. It was only then that I realized I had been moving away, trying to evade the pain his candor was causing me. “Listen,” he said. “I kind of know what it’s like. Ginny looked down on me too. She thought that Iris had made a mistake in marrying me, and that I didn’t carry enough power to be a good match. The old bag cut me off at the knees and embarrassed me about my limits every chance she got. I know that she joked about me with the extended family. But you,” he said, and the expression on his face told me that he had never fully understood what he was about to relate, “she hated you, Mercy. I’m sorry to say it, but we all knew it was true.”
“I always knew it too,” I said. “But why did she bother putting up protective charms for me if she hated me so much?”
“Pride,” Connor said. “The old bitch wasn’t going to let you be the weak link in her armor. If someone had harmed you, it would have been an affront to her dignity.” He reached out for me again, placing his hand on my shoulder. I let him, and then he surprised me by tilting my chin up so that I was looking him in the eyes. “There are things I want to share with you. Some that I’ve only recently figured out, and some that I’ve known all along and should have told you about years ago. But I can’t just tell you. I have to show you. I need you to come with me,” he said, his eyes pleading.
“Where?” I asked, knowing the answer before he even replied.
“To Ginny’s,” he said, confirming my suspicion. “If you’ll go with me, I’ll be able to explain everything.”
“I’ll go,” I said, hoping that the show would be worth the price of admission. I had intended never to set foot in Ginny’s house again.
“Thank you,” he said again, relief flooding his face. “But first, let’s get you cleaned up a bit.” He pointed at my ruined shirtfront. He started to work his magic, but I held up a hand to stop him. I ran my right hand down the front of my shirt, and the dried blood that would have been impossible to remove by any other means instantly erased itself. That being done, we crossed over Drayton and walked into Forsyth Park, taking the center path past the Confederate Monument with its four rebel angels. Darkness was taking hold, and I watched as the last of the wholesome families evacuated Forsyth, their departure acknowledging that at nighttime the park belonged to the drug dealers and thugs that never seemed to get mentioned in the visitors’ bureau’s brochures.
As we drew near Park Avenue, the park’s lower boundary, my attention was captured by the monument memorializing those who had fought in the Spanish American War. I stopped dead in my tracks when I looked at the southern-oriented soldier’s face. I’d seen it a million times or more, but today, with the way the dying light was caressing it, I recognized an unmistakable resemblance to Jackson. My feelings for him washed over me like a tidal wave, aggravating my anger at Peter and my guilt for whatever role I had played in crushing Maisie’s dreams of a happy marriage. The temptation to run away with Jackson was strong, but I knew that if I gave in we’d both someday regret it.
“You okay?” Connor asked. I said nothing; I simply nodded and crossed the street. We turned left onto Barnard Street and then carried on to Duffy. Sooner than I would have liked, Ginny’s house stood before us. The house had stood vacant since the murder, and that’s more than likely how it would remain, a museum to the life and death of one Virginia Francis Taylor. I knew Connor and Iris had spent a lot of time there lately, sorting through Ginny’s belongings, which were few, and cataloging her magics, which were much more numerous. I started to ask him whether or not he had found anything interesting, but he raised his hand to stop me. “Inside,” he said and held the door open for me.
The first thing I noticed was that Connor must have removed the battery from Ginny’s clock—its annoying strumming had stopped. I let my witch senses kick in, trying to pry any secrets they could from my surroundings.
Connor seemed to understand what I was doing. “There’s nothing down here,” he said. “Ginny kept the important stuff upstairs.” He left me at the foot of the stairs and slowly made his way to the upper story.
I was filled with a giddy uncertainty. Ginny had never allowed me on the second floor. Never. I put my foot on the first step, applying gentle pressure as if I expected it to be booby-trapped. It took my weight without any objections, and the next step beckoned me. Each step I took felt like an act of retribution against the old woman who had done her best to alienate me from my family because I didn’t share their gifts.
A door stood open at the end of the hall. Sensing that it had been Ginny’s room, I crossed the threshold, running my hands over her dressing table, bed, and nightstand, trying to pick up any remaining vibrations. All I felt was Ginny’s absence. Emboldened, I flipped on the light, only to see pictures of Maisie at various stages in her development staring back at me. One of them had originally been a photo of the two of us, but Ginny had cut the picture in half and used thick matting to hide the part of my presence that couldn’t be easily excised. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t hurt, that it didn’t matter. Ginny was gone. Truth was, it hurt like hell.
Connor’s voice called to me from another room, so I extinguished the light and went down the hall. He was standing in the doorway of a pink and girly room that was obviously Maisie’s home away from home. He stepped aside to let me enter.
One full wall was taken up by a built-in bookcase, filled from one end to the other with modern journals and ancient texts. I opened one of the newest looking ones to find notes Maisie had made during a lesson she had received at Ginny’s feet. The idea of Ginny happily training my sister while forcing me to wait downstairs staring at a blank wall angered me. I threw the notebook to the floor and pulled another one out at random. The handwriting in this one was more mature, the spells more complex. Diagrams I couldn’t even begin to understand were traced along the margins, composed of geometric shapes that seemed to defy Euclid’s wildest imaginings and strange symbols that I had never seen before, some of them seemingly astrological. I almost returned it to its shelf, but instead tossed it to the floor in another gust of temper.
Connor sat on the foot of Maisie’s bed, and with a casual gesture of his hand, the chair from her dresser pulled up next to me. “I think you’ll want to sit for the next part,” he said, his voice breaking nervously. I complied without protest. “These books, the knowledge in them, I never wanted to hide any of it from you. Not really. But as long as Ginny had her hands on the reins, none of us dared to defy her, not even Maisie. Now that Ginny’s gone, I’m glad that the families support your education. I never wanted to keep you in the dark. Do you believe me? Do you believe everything I’ve been telling you?” His desire for me to say yes buzzed around him as brightly as a pawnshop’s neon sign.
>“To face Ginny,” I interrupted him. He nodded his head yes, and to my surprise tried to pull me into a hug. I resisted, and even used a bit of the witch power I’d borrowed from Oliver to escape his grasp. I wasn’t ready to forgive a lifetime of hurt, at least not yet. I saw the pain of my rejection flicker through his eyes.
“She had it out for you from the beginning,” he said. “She blamed you for your mama’s death. And then, when she realized you had no powers, she started calling you ‘The Disappointment’ behind your back.” The words cut through my heart. “So I started calling you the same thing to your face to make you stronger. But you gotta know, Mercy, you were never a disappointment to me. Not to any of us, other than Ginny.”
