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“It’s going to be okay,” I told him, and then found myself looking to Jilo for confirmation. She said nothing. She went from window to window, opening the blinds. Each window framed a growing shadow. The band of darkness had changed, becoming a devourer of light. I shuddered, realizing that it had stopped growing and had begun contracting, like a serpent squeezing tighter. The world beyond its grasp had ceased to exist for us. On its inner edge, the side that grew ever nearer, the last bit of bright blue summer sky was being drained of color and light. The sky began to press down on us, its heaviness palpable, and the ground beneath our feet trembled. Like a bubble rising to the surface, the world around us lifted up, forming an ever-contracting sphere. It was like a black hole sucking everything into it.
Jilo turned to me, and I saw true terror in her eyes. “It coming for Jilo.” Her voice was a dying whisper. “She sorry it catching you too,” she said, still looking at me. “Yo’ granny, she sorry,” she said, reaching out and pulling Martell to her. I glanced out the windows, but nothing was visible beyond them. The world stopped at the panes of glass, and then the windows themselves began to crack under the growing pressure. All sound stopped as gray seeped in through the walls, draining the already faded flowers of Jilo’s wallpaper to nothing.
Walls began to curve around us, and the baseboards warped before our eyes. I ran to Jilo and took her and Martell in my arms. The boy was trembling, but instead of resisting, he clung to me. I didn’t know if it would work. I wasn’t even sure a world still existed outside this quivering bubble, but I grabbed them both and held them tight. I closed my eyes and focused on home.
The next thing I knew, I felt the sun on my face and heard the sounds of birds and traffic. I opened my eyes, and there I stood in the garden, still holding my hitchhikers in a death grip. Martell broke away, stumbled a few feet, and began to wretch. Jilo looked at me with something that went past respect and spoke of wonderment. “Bless you, baby,” she whispered, and then went and stood beside her grandson, patting her hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
“I’ll get him some water,” I said, heading to the kitchen door.
“If yo’ uncle has any of that scotch left, I’d be much obliged,” Jilo replied, giving Martell a final pat. I smiled. The old girl was nothing if not resilient; she was already on the mend.
Walking into the silent house, I sent out a psychic ping to see if it would bounce back to me from any of the house’s corners. Nothing; no one was home.
I went into the library and found some whiskey for Jilo, then passed through the kitchen to grab a couple of glasses, filling one with water and one halfway with the stronger stuff. I returned to the garden, almost dropping the glasses when I found Iris standing next to the table across from Jilo and a defiant-looking Martell, who sat slumped into his chair. He was pointedly looking away from my aunt and feigning boredom. I handed him his water, which he took silently.
“Martell,” Jilo said.
He sat up a little straighter. “Thank you,” he said without much feeling and began to nurse his drink, eyeing the glass I handed Jilo with covetous, underage eyes.
“Thank you, my girl,” Jilo said.
“Oh, my goodness,” Iris said. “Have I taught you nothing? Those are the everyday glasses, not the ones we use for guests. This young man here, Martell”—she raised an eyebrow, probably recollecting where and when she’d first heard the name—“he looks hungry to me, and the best you can offer him is water?”
“I could eat,” Martell said.
His grandmother tut-tutted him. “Martell, you a guest here.”
“But Gramma, I was just saying—” He stopped as Jilo’s eyes opened wide, and she pointed her index at him.
“Thank you, Miss Iris, but they no need to fuss over Jilo and the boy.”
Iris laughed. “Pardon me, Mother, but there we disagree. If after all these years, Mother Jilo Wills is gracing this home with her presence, it is indeed an occasion worth a bit of fuss.” She looked at me with a wide, lopsided smile that caused the corners of her eyes to wrinkle. I could tell she had always hoped for the chance to start putting the bad blood behind us all.
Jilo remained silent. She took a deep sip of her drink and slowly closed and reopened her eyes, as happy as a fat cat by a warm fire.
“Martell, hon,” Iris said, and Martell regarded her with a coolness he must have spent hours practicing in front of a mirror. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me and tell me what you’d like.”
Martell was not stupid. He looked to Jilo for approval this time. She nodded once and waved him ahead. “Go on, boy. Don’ you just be hangin’ around in there neither. You help Miss Iris.”
“Yes’m,” he responded, and actually rushed up to hold the door open for Iris.
When the door closed behind them, I went and sat next to Jilo. “What was that? What force could possibly swallow the world around us like that?”
Jilo wouldn’t look me in the eye. Her eyebrows were lowered, and her right hand quivered and reached up to touch her hair. “That Wren, he ain’t the only demon Jilo had truck with over the years. She honored most of the deals she made, but she might’ve cut corners on a few of ’em.” She cleared throat. “Ever since yo’ uncle and his tree, Jilo ain’t had the heart to take the steps she need to keep the angry ones in line.”
“What would those steps be,” I asked warily.
“You gotta offer up appeasement, sacrifice,” she said.
“Blood,” I said, my mind flashing back to the first time I had encountered her at her crossroads, how she’d been carrying a live chicken in a burlap sack.
Jilo looked up, shaking her head and holding her hands before her, palms up. “Too much blood. Too much blood on these hands.”
I grasped her hands and squeezed them. “It may be what you think, and if it is, we’ll figure out how to handle it, but I’m not sure if the attack was aimed at you or me,” I said, thinking of Ryder and Joe and what they had done to Birdy. “The one thing I do know is that this house is the safest place for you and Martell to be right now. At least until we figure out what happened back there.”
“Are you plumb out of yo’ mind, girl?” Jilo laughed. It was not a happy laugh. It sounded much closer to the ones I used to hear when she was still hiding her gentle side from me. “You tellin’ Jilo that you want her to spend the night beneath the Taylor roof?”
