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“Sit,” I said, hoping that Peter would let the tension leave his body if he did. He spun a chair around, placing his forearms on the back of it, but he didn’t relax one little bit.
“I am, of course, in no way a danger to Mercy or your child. I have vowed to protect Mercy until she can protect herself.”
“She shouldn’t have to protect herself. I should be the one to protect her.”
“You have no magic, but you are marrying a witch who is one of the anchors of the line. The dangers she will face require great power to stave off, and again, you have none.”
Peter started up from his chair. “Sit,” Claire commanded. Peter hovered, not sure whether to obey her or toss Emmet out of the bar. “He’s right, son. I’m sorry. I know you’d like to be the one to keep Mercy safe, but today I’ve seen what she’s up against. You’re a good man—a strong man—but you are only a man.” She rushed through the words as if she feared either Emmet or I might object to them. “The things I’ve seen today . . . There are monsters out there. You owe it to Mercy and your son to be man enough to let Mr. Clay teach her what she needs to know. Don’t get in the way. I did, and it almost cost us everything. If you love her, you are going to have to let her be the strong one.”
“I gotta get back to work.” Peter pushed away from the table and left the three of us staring at the door as it slammed shut behind him.
“He’ll be okay,” Claire said after a moment of silence. “I know my boy. He’s frightened, but he’ll come around. You’re his world.”
“Frightened people do foolish things,” I said, not even really thinking about how this could be applied to what Claire had done, inviting Ryder and his gang into our lives, but once the words had been spoken, I couldn’t call them back.
“Yes, we do,” she said. “I must apologize to you, Mr. Clay. I was wrong about you, both about what you are and about your intentions. I hope you can forgive me. I pray that you will keep your word and remain silent for my son’s sake as well as Mercy’s.”
“You have already suffered a much more severe punishment at the hands of the collector than I myself would have ever meted out. In regard to Peter, I will kneel at the altar of Harpocrates.”
Claire looked at me for clarification. “That’s Emmet for ‘We’re good.’?”
She nodded. “I think I’d like a bit of a lie-down,” she said. “I don’t know how we are even going to open tonight with this mess. Good Lord, the smell. It may take days for it to fade.”
“Rest,” Emmet said, addressing Claire. “As a sign of goodwill, I will repair the damaged floor and rid your establishment of this scent. It will be a way to ‘clear the air’ between us once and for all.” Emmet tilted his head to the side and smiled. He seemed quite pleased with his pun, but Claire was too overwhelmed to even notice. She just nodded and left the room.
As soon as she was gone, Emmet set about restoring the damage that had been done. The floorboards seemed to rearrange themselves on a molecular level, the deep gouges welcoming the returning wood dust that had until recently filled them. The burn marks lightened in color and faded to match the original shade. He stopped a moment before finishing the restoration. “As a point of clarification,” he said, “a fetus’s ability to call to its father in times of danger is not a witch trait. That magic belongs to the Fae.”
EIGHTEEN
My family and Emmet were wrapped up in the final preparations for the cleansing of the old hospital, but I was distracted. Iris had warned me that ridding Old Candler of the demon would be a challenge, but now I could barely concentrate on anything other than my son. What his life would be like. What he would be like. How could I find out if there were any records of a hybrid witch and fairy birth without raising some very difficult questions from my aunts and uncle? Even if I were certain I could trust them, I felt I had to honor my promise to Claire. I regretted having told Oliver as much as I had about Claire’s misgivings about Emmet. I could come up with a cover for that. I didn’t know what that cover would be, but I’d find something. I’d recently promised myself there would be no more lies in my life, but that promise was probably the biggest lie of them all. To try to escape the labyrinth of my thoughts, I made a stronger effort to concentrate on Iris’s words.
“A hundred years ago, such a thing as a witching hour still existed,” Iris said as she removed a few essential items for the cleansing ritual from the cupboard and put them into a grocery bag. “Electric lights, night shifts, twenty-four-hour restaurants. These things have pretty much done away with it.”
“How so?” I asked. After waiting a lifetime, I had finally made it to the inside track of the world of magic. In spite of other concerns, I wanted to soak up as much information as I could, as quickly as I could.
“Well, because the witching hour has never had anything to do with a certain time on a clock. It isn’t midnight. It isn’t three in the morning. It’s simply the time when the majority of conscious minds are sleeping. Reality becomes a bit more pliant, more flexible, when the world around a witch is dreaming. It made it easier for him or her to work magic, imprint his or her will on reality using much less energy. Now folk are up at all hours. The world is always awake—calculating, measuring.” She consulted her list. “Sage, lavender, and cedar oils.” She looked at me. “You do get that these things have absolutely no effect on spirits, leave alone demons, right?”
“Then why are we using them?”
“They might not have any effect on the bogeys,” Oliver chimed in, “but they affect the people who enter the environment where the spirits have been.”
“Okay,” I said, shaking my head at the same time to show I didn’t follow.
“Sage doesn’t chase away spirits,” Iris continued, “but it does mask their scent. Spirits carry an ozone scent, and demons smell like sulfur or rotten eggs. A person might not even consciously register the smell, but they’ll sense it on some level. It’s that awareness that the spirit can use as a doorway to return to the environment.”
“So you are telling me that what you don’t know really can’t hurt you.”
“Only after the spirits have been removed, sweetie,” Ellen said. “The herbs and oils just make the place more pleasant. The less creepy the vibes are in a place, the less likely a person is to go looking for shadows and inadvertently invite them back in.”
“Now salt does affect demons directly,” Iris said, and Oliver chuckled, as though her words had summoned up a memory. “When one does manage to materialize in our reality, it usually starts out quite small, with a body made up of a mucus-like substance.”
“Think snails or slugs,” Oliver said, shaking the box of rock salt that Iris had placed on the counter.
“Ugh,” Ellen said. “I always hated salting. That sizzling and whining sound those things make.”
I stood there staring in disbelief at the three of them. “Your grandfather used to take us out with him when he went hunting, as he liked to call it,” Iris explained.
