AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Oliver nodded. “Yeah, but that was the one and only time. I owned up to him that I had done it, and I promised us both I’d never suggest anything to him again.” He took a sip of coffee and then looked at me over the rim of his mug. “Adam is worried about you, you know?”
“Worried about me? Why?”
“?‘Gut feeling,’ he says. Peadar Tierney showing up with a hole punched through him. You’ve been acting all cagey around him, he says. Don’t worry; I didn’t say anything about the old guy.”
“Is it hard for you, keeping secrets from Adam?” I found myself piling up secrets in my relationship with Peter: my mother’s return, the truth about Maisie, the incident with Peadar, Emmet throwing himself at my feet, my liking that Emmet had thrown himself at my feet.
“Honestly, I don’t know, but the way things happen around here, I am sure I will have many opportunities to find out. Tell me, Gingersnap. What was all the commotion with Claire last night?” He sat down his cup and leaned his chair back so that it balanced on its hind legs. “No, I was neither too wasted nor too preoccupied to notice.”
“You tell me. Claire thinks she knows Emmet or at least ‘his people.’?”
“People?” he rocked his chair back on all fours and tilted his head.
“She says he isn’t human. She thinks he is something otherworldly, but other than that I don’t know more than you do.”
“But you will get to the bottom of it?”
“Of course. I have ideas, but they sound crazy, even to me.” My instincts told me to hold off on sharing more than I had to, at least until I knew the full story of what was going on with Claire. “I love Peter, and I want to marry him, but I want to know what I’m getting into with the Tierneys. You know?”
“Indeed I do. Let me know if I can help.” The sun had made its way high enough in the sky to illuminate the whole of our garden. “Lord, doesn’t that feel good?” Oliver asked as he stretched up into the golden light. He stopped mid-stretch and stood, walking over to where he had placed the sundial. He held out both hands, palms down, toward the marker. “Someone has been messing around here.” He turned and regarded me, his right eyebrow raised. “You have been messing around here. Just what have you been getting up to, Gingersnap?”
My mind breezed over a thousand lies, none of which I had the heart to tell. I rose and rushed over to his side. “Connor,” I said and gave a slight nod toward the dial. So much for taking the secret to my grave. “I was trying to resurrect a memory of Mama,” I said. “He hijacked the energy.”
Oliver’s face turned gray, somehow understanding the whole of the situation from these few words. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. Say nothing . . . to anyone. I’ll handle this. Okay?”
I felt myself begin to tremble in spite of the sun’s warm rays. I drew my arms up around myself and nodded once. And with that began yet another Taylor family conspiracy. That’s all it took. A secret and a shared desire to protect the ones we loved. Oliver put his arm over my shoulders and led me back to my chair.
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what the Tree of Life told us about your sister’s situation,” he said in an obvious attempt to pull my thoughts away from Connor. “I think we ought to consider borrowing from your mother’s bag of tricks. We need Tillandsia.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think it’s what the Tree of Life was trying to tell us, you, when you saw the doorway to the new Tillandsia house.” He leaned in toward me. “We need power. Big power that the families cannot trace, power that the anchors can’t just switch off if they figure out what we are doing.”
“And you think we can get this power through Tillandsia.”
“Think about it. We may not know what Emily intended to do with the power she was summoning, but we know that she spent years using the Tillandsia ‘gatherings,’?” he said, and I felt grateful for the euphemism, “to build up a battery of power. Power that the united families could not control.”
“Assuming that power still exists, that it hasn’t all been used up or dissipated, how would we access it?”
“If I knew my Emmy, and I do believe I did, that power is still locked up tight somewhere. We, however, don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting at it.”
“Then why even bring it up?”
“Because we don’t, but you, Gingersnap, do. I’m sure Emily put some kind of lock on it, so that only she could access it, but you carry a bit of Emily in you. I’m willing to bet that it will make itself accessible to you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t, but don’t you think it’s at least worth a try? For your sister’s sake?”
I turned my face toward the sun and closed my eyes, letting myself hide behind the flamingo color of my eyelids. “Of course I’ll try, but I don’t have a clue as to how I’ll do it.”
The brightness faded, Oliver having stepped between me and the light. “’Fraid there is only one way to get ahold of the Tillandsia power.”
“And that would be?” I asked, opening my eyes to see him standing there, haloed like some earthbound angel.
“The only way to access the power built up through Tillandsia is by ‘participating’ in their activities.” This time I didn’t appreciate the euphemism. Not one little bit.
