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“Now, Mercy, that isn’t possible,” Iris said. “You know she’s been gone for quite a long time now. Someone is playing some kind of cruel and horrible joke.”
“Perhaps she came to you in spirit? A ghost?” Ellen offered.
“No. She was real. She felt solid,” I said, even though my own experiences told me that didn’t really count for much. “She said she was alive. That she didn’t die having me.”
“Oh, Mercy,” Ellen breathed. “If only that were true, but I was there. Iris too. You know. We’ve told you what happened.”
“She said you lied. That you took Maisie and me from her, and then forced her to create a double that you could bury.” I lowered my eyes. “Besides, Wren told Jilo that he saw Mama here in the house on the day you all supposedly buried her.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Oliver held up his hands. “Let’s slow down a bit here and start over at the beginning. Someone—someone pretending to be Emily—came to you—”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure she was pretending.”
“You think it really could have—”
“A double, you say?” Iris interrupted him.
“Yes. She said that she can create doppelgängers.”
Iris and Ellen looked at each other. “Do you think it’s possible?” Iris finally asked. “We were so focused on the girls,” she said to her sister. “Could Emily have managed to give birth and then switch places with a double?”
Ellen paused before answering. “Yes. It’s possible,” she finally said. “By the time I knew that Mercy would live, and I could turn my attention back to Emily, she had passed. I’m not sure that I’d sense the difference between a dead body and a body that had never had any life.”
“But even if Emmy had the magic to do that, why would she?” Oliver asked.
“Tell us what she said. All of it,” Iris commanded, ignoring her brother. “Don’t skip anything, even if you are afraid it might hurt us.”
“Go ahead, sweetheart. Tell us exactly what’s been happening.”
Oliver nodded, telling me to go on.
I dug deep into my gut, asking it to tell me whether I should put my trust in these three. I wanted—no, needed—to believe in them. But I’d also needed to believe in Maisie, and I had learned the hard way that my desire to trust someone didn’t make them trustworthy. Someone was lying to me, be it my mother, someone pretending to be my mother, or one or more of the three sitting before me. In the end, I decided to offer my family the benefit of the doubt. I took a deep breath and told them everything. Almost.
TWENTY-SIX
Iris and Ellen both retreated to the places they felt most comfortable, Iris pulling on my grandmother’s sunhat and heading to the garden, Ellen opting for the darkened library and an open bottle. Now, however, didn’t seem like the appropriate moment for any kind of intervention.
Oliver sat deep in thought, staring down at nothing, wiping his hand down his mouth and chin. I could practically hear the wheels spinning in his head. He looked up at me. “I have an idea of how we might find out who is behind all this.”
He paused as if he were reconsidering. “I’m listening,” I said, prompting him to continue.
“I can’t read your mind like I used to, you know?” he asked. I had suspected as much, so I just nodded, even though the statement struck me as a non sequitur. “Non-witches, though, it’s a bit of a struggle not to read them.”
“So, what? Tucker, Emily, Ryder. There has to be a witch at the bottom of it.”
Oliver ignored me and grimaced. He was still wrapped up in his own train of thought, and his smooth forehead pinched into an uncharacteristic worry line. “We’d have to do it without telling Iris or Ellen. Iris would think it unseemly, even if it proved effective. And well, Ellen, she couldn’t know.”
Great, another secret, I thought. “Exactly what is it you are considering?”
“Going to the morgue and paying Tucker a visit.”
“What?!”
“No, listen. If you can channel enough energy into him to fire him back up, even for a few moments, I should be able to read his thoughts.”
I shook my head and felt a chill travel down my spine. Ellen would be devastated to know we were even considering it. “No, even if it were possible, Tucker had a huge hole punched through him. The only thought you are likely to pick up is ‘Ouch.’?”
