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“Because, lovely one, a leader should never ask her people to pay a price she isn’t willing to pay herself.” A tear, luminous and as silver as the eye from which it fell, traced down her cheek. “We Fae are not monsters. We are living, breathing souls fighting for our lives. I am not heartless. I am a mother. Even though I rejoice at the return of my son, my heart breaks at your loss of him. I sense you loved him, perhaps even more deeply than you realize yourself.”
“How could he leave me so easily?” With those words I swung again from heartbreak to anger. “How could he leave our baby?”
She looked down on me sadly, then turned to step nearer the portal that I’d only just realized had been shrinking, dissolving. “Don’t hate him for leaving you.” She paused. “I cannot find the words to explain to you in the time we have left, but when we place our children in this world, it is more than a change of physical locations for them. It is an absolute rewriting of their potential at a level deeper than what you have come to call ‘quantum.’ This twisting, it is done at the point of nothingness.”
“The great void,” I said, more to myself than anyone else who might have heard me.
Her look of approval told me she had appreciated my description. “Yes, the great void where nothing exists but from which all potential springs.” In the passing moment, I sensed she was weighing her words, wondering how much more I might take without breaking. “He didn’t forget you, my beauty. If it were a simple matter of forgetting, you would have never left his heart. He has been returned to his natural course. A course where you are a stranger, a stranger he never has and never will meet.” She cast an uneasy glance at the fading portal.
“But our baby . . .”
At my words, she seemed to forget her anxiety about the closing window on her world. She was suddenly before me, her lovely face a mask of pain. She reached out with both hands and placed them over my stomach. For the first time in days, I felt little Colin jolt to life. I could feel his joy at meeting his natural grandmother flood through me, but her face told me this was in no way going to be good news. “You must be strong,” she said, her voice taking on a musical quality, as if she were trying to sedate me through sound. “If I could give my own life to change this for you, I gladly would.”
I pulled back, dragging Iris with me. “You’re scaring me.”
“I am so sorry, but there will be no child.”
“What are you saying?” I lunged at her in desperation. I grabbed hold of her arm. A gentle pulse of electricity caused my fingers to tingle. My hand relaxed, and she slipped from my grasp. “You held on to my son with your hope. I suspect your hope will enhance your magic so that you continue to sense the child, for a period at least, but the child will cease to exist. It will cease to have been.” She placed her hand over her heart, and moved gracefully backward toward the portal that had dimmed so as to be nearly imperceptible. “I am sorry, dear one. I am. Please know this.” She paused beside the portal and looked once more into my eyes. “May you find a love who will never leave you, who will never forget you. This is my wish for you.” With that she stepped into the fading window. She and the light were gone.
In the next moment I had fallen to the ground, digging my fingers into the dirt of Jilo’s crossroads. I could hear my own screams as I reached out to any magic that might still lie buried there.
TWENTY-FOUR
I could not remember how I came to be home. I had been bathed and put to bed, Iris’s bed, but how that happened remained a blank. Reality began taking sharp bites from the comfort I felt upon waking. Everything, my husband’s abandonment, his parents’ murder, my mother’s death, Gudrun’s escape, and the Fae’s warning that my baby would soon be no more, competed to bring the emotions attached to them to the forefront. Bereavement and rage, horror and despondency bent around each other like a kaleidoscope of every shade of anguish.
For a moment I let myself slip into the fantasy that it had all been a bad dream. Any second Peter would come through the door and fall on the bed next to me, leaning on his elbows and crawling up along the mattress to place a Killian’s-flavored kiss on my lips. I closed my eyes and pushed the fantasy away. I knew only madness lay in that direction. With my magic, with my pain, I might just manage to create a fantasy world for myself, where I could deceive myself with a false happiness, but lose any chance of saving my child.
An unpleasant scent pierced my awareness. Ammonia? Panic jolted through me. I felt for my distended stomach, so grateful to feel it was still round and hard to the touch that I began to cry. It was more than that Colin was all I had left of Peter, more than that he was a link to the person I had been. I hadn’t even laid eyes on Colin yet, but he was my son. I felt him. I knew him. I loved him. He was real to me. He was real. I would be damned if I’d simply let him dissolve into the ether. I pushed the sheet down, surprised to realize I was completely naked beneath it. I startled at the sight of runes, the ancient magic symbols of the northern peoples, that had been drawn on me from just beneath my breasts all the way down my thighs. I realized the ammonia smell came from the India ink used to make the marks.
The character Uruz, the symbol of health, strength, tenacity, was repeated in a large circle on my stomach. My finger traced over one of the markings. I felt Ellen’s magic in this rune and knew she had drawn it with her own hand, filling it with both her love and her power. Laguz, representing life energy, formed a second circle that lay within the borders of that formed
by Uruz. This character and others I did not recognize—Chinese? Hebrew?—had been drawn by Iris. I knew Iris had connected her powerful intellect with a level of magic I doubted she had ever before attempted. It struck me as odd that I didn’t feel Uncle Oliver connected to any of the magic, but maybe since giving birth was a female act, the spelling was left to the women?
I was so entranced by the discovery of the symbols, I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until I heard a book hit the floor. I turned to see Iris curled up in a wingback chair from our library. She was sound asleep, soughing, her legs pulled up under her. The noise from the falling book didn’t wake her. I recognized the book as one of my grandfather’s journals. He had been a specialist in creating spells using runes and other magical symbols, and if his knowledge could help save Colin, I was sure it would go a long way for all of us toward finding forgiveness for him.
The shutters had been pulled tight; the only light in the room came from the floor lamp Iris had slid over to the side of her borrowed chair. I was unsure what time it was or how long I’d been sleeping. A feeling of déjà vu came to me. I soon realized I’d felt this same disorientation when I awoke in the hospital after Ginny’s murder. It felt impossible that the previous awakening could have occurred only six months before. The memory of discovering Ginny’s body was still sharp and clear. I could still hear the ticking of Ginny’s dime-store clock competing with the buzzing of flies. Had it been that moment when everything in my life had changed from dull to full-speed? Or had it been the night before, when I got it in my head to turn my romantic problems over to a certain surly conjure-woman?
I thanked God I’d taken my tour into Colonial Park Cemetery in time to see the old woman of the crossroads working her way through the monuments like a needle through cloth toward the exit, holding on to her bright-red cooler and using her lime-green lawn chair as a makeshift walker. Her progress was slowed by an unfortunate woman who’d sought the death penalty against her husband, then wanted the magic undone once she realized she’d convicted him under false evidence. Did Jilo undo the curse in time, or had the poor innocent man been punished over a stupid misunderstanding? I wished I’d asked Jilo. I should have cared enough about what is right and what is wrong to at least find out. Or had I simply been too afraid to learn the truth? I wanted to believe Jilo had undone any harm before it became permanent.
Jilo didn’t always take the concept of right versus wrong into account when practicing her magic, but still I came to love her and she me. My family could access exponentially more magic than Jilo ever dreamed of having, but I knew if she were here, she’d find a way to protect Colin. I wondered if I’d worry about her methods if she were still with me, or if I’d back her in whatever steps she thought might prove effective.
Still, as much as my friendship with Jilo had changed me, I knew the adulteration I’d experienced had been triggered before that encounter in Colonial. I tried to cast myself back into the girl I had been the day Maisie first brought Jackson home and introduced him to the family. I had grown so used to living on the outside of magic, on the fringe of my family, that I had become a solitary soul. Not exactly lonely, but not a part of anything either. Perhaps I’d enjoyed leading tourists around, telling them tiny white lies, because for a brief moment I was more than the center of attention; I was connected to them. Then, before things had the chance to turn messy, I was able to wave good-bye and send them off to City Market or the Pirates’ House.
Still, I’d been happy. Happy, adventuresome, curious, committed to Peter through a promise that had never needed to be spoken, but one I’d very nearly broken. When I laid eyes on the beautiful lie that was Jackson, I saw my own magic in him. A magic that had been stolen from me. I loved the magic, and because I loved it, I, for a brief and foolish moment, had believed I loved Jackson. My callousness toward Peter drove him to take desperate measures to win me over, the result of which was the beautiful being I now nurtured in my womb.
I placed my hands on my stomach and sent all the love in the world to the little boy growing inside me. “You’re gonna be all right, baby. We both will. Mama promises.” I whispered the words knowing full well I couldn’t really make that guarantee, but my love was so strong I felt sure it had to count for something. I felt an incomparable joy when I felt my feelings being returned. Colin believed me. More than that, he believed in me. He knew I was not simply going to give up on him and let him fade away, regardless of what his fairy grandmother had told me. I opened myself with all my heart and soul to my child. I made a promise then and there, that no matter what, I’d do what it took to protect him, to make sure he had the chance of having a life in this world, even if his life turned out to be every bit as messy and confusing as his mama’s.
As my soul resolved to protect him at any cost, I felt a tug. An unfamiliar and powerful magic called to me. I recognized the magic’s source by the fact it felt so entirely different from my own. This power was wholly alien in every sense of the word. Gudrun was nearby, and she called to me.
Still, it felt like an invitation, not a summons. A promise of assistance, of security, of enough power to take care of myself and those I loved. Enough power to save my son.
“No, this is all your fault. Josef may have set the fire, but you wove the spell that killed Claire and Colin,” I said aloud as if Gudrun were there with me. Iris shifted, but did not wake. “My son lost his father trying to ease his father’s pain, a pain you caused. And now . . .” My words failed me as I couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow myself to give voice to the idea that I might now lose my son.
Gudrun’s answer came to me through impressions rather than words. A declaration of innocence. A promise of retribution against the guilty. A tickling reminder of how those who should be my allies had betrayed—and continued to betray—me was woven into the fabric of the calling. An offer of camaraderie. Hadn’t we both suffered at the hands of the line’s other anchors? Wasn’t it true that we two were somehow special? Those who should have rightly formed a sure foundation beneath our feet had bound themselves together in their attempt to weigh us down. Yes, we had much in common.
I knew it would be foolish to answer the summons. Gudrun’s magic came from a place of darkness, a place I’d never want to visit. My good sense screamed out at me to wake my aunt, tell her what I was experiencing, but my good sense had no idea of how to protect Colin. If Gudrun had even the flimsiest of ideas how I could save my son, I had to take the risk. I had to hear her out. I waved my hands down the length of my body, and my nakedness was traded for street clothes.
I closed my eyes and focused on the tug. I had no idea to which unholy realm it might lead me, but I would walk barefoot over the coals of hell, the real one, if there were indeed such a place, to give my boy a chance of being born. I heard the familiar sound of a tourist trolley loudspeaker and opened my eyes to find myself in Oglethorpe Park, standing beneath the tree Peter and I had long known as the “climbing tree,” the very spot where we had wed only months before.
