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“You did exactly like I asked you to.” I held my arms wide and Ginny flung herself into them.
“I knew she didn’t understand. I knew she was innocent, but you—”
“I told you to keep her separate, ignorant of magic.” A harder truth hit me. “I asked you to take her magic, and use her sister as an anchor for what you could. To send the rest to a dimension where no one would notice it.” I was the one. I had been the one to betray Maisie. To warp her by channeling power through her that no simple witch could experience without going mad. How strong Maisie must have been to resist as well as she had. Those times I waited in Ginny’s hall, staring at the damned blank wall I had resented so, that was when Ginny had worked so tirelessly to balance the powers that threatened to tear me apart. I realized it had been a blessing in disguise that Ginny had found a way to channel some of that power through Jilo.
“Emily never intended for you to grow to an adult. They meant to end you as a baby.” She shuddered at the thought. “If the other anchors had known who you really were, they would have taken you away from me. They would have sought some way to dissolve you as Mercy without bringing down the line. Failing that, they would have locked you away. Tried to contain you. They would have fumbled around until the line was destroyed as sure as if they were working for Emily themselves.”
“As above, so below,” I said. Anything the anchors tried to do would have filtered out through the line as a whole. Dissolve Mercy, end the line. Contain Mercy, trap the line. Either way, their actions would have been the end. They would never have let me be, and as soon as they started in, the rebel families would have piled on. They almost had me as a grown woman. As a small girl, I would have never stood a chance. “The anchors think of themselves as my masters, not as my partners.” I had tried for millennia to free myself from their grasp.
“I had to protect you from them. I had to protect you from Emily.” Ginny’s body heaved with heavy sobs. “I had to let Ellen lose Paul. I couldn’t risk the other anchors finding out about you.” Ginny pushed back from my arms to look at me. “When that other boy got run over in front of her shop, he was hurt too badly. His injuries should have killed him. Ellen didn’t have enough power to bring that boy back like she did. The anchors knew that. What they didn’t know was she drew the magic from you.”
I remembered watching as she laid her hands on the broken boy, wishing she could save him. Willing that she would. And save him she had. She had managed to pull him right back from the tunnel of light that had called him. Afterward, I had avoided Ellen for days, afraid of her awesome power. Now I knew I had been afraid of seeing my own reflection.
“I couldn’t risk letting her draw power from you again. The other anchors were suspicious. We were being watched . . .” Her voice trailed off as she relived that dark day. “Oh, how my beautiful Ellen hated me after Paul’s death. I saw it in her eyes every time she looked at me. The whole family hated me.” Her eyes looked deep into my own. “Perhaps you most of all.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I had to ask you to give up your own life, your own happiness for this.”
“No. I dedicated my life to a cause. A cause I believe in to the very depths of my soul.” She released herself from my embrace. “There is no shame in that. It was an honor to act as your protector. To help you keep the demons who would destroy our world at bay.” With those words, she faded from sight. I reached out, trying to bring her back.
“No, no, no, child,” Jilo said and shook her head. “You let her go now. She’s been waiting to see you this one last time, but that old girl has earned her peace.” All animation left Jilo’s tired face. “I think this old girl is about ready for a little peace herself. You think you can handle things on your own from here?”
“I don’t know what—” I started to protest, but she grabbed my hand in hers.
“Of course you know what to do. This bell of theirs, it’s counterfeit, but it’s still powerful. They may not have created a sun, but they sure as hell strapped together a pack of atom bombs. Emily, she put you here thinking that its power combined with all those damned anchors trying to put an end to you would whisk the line away, totally undo you. She think this power hers. That she can use it to destroy.”
“She’s wrong, though, isn’t she?”
“Damned right she wrong, my girl.” Jilo pulled me into a tight embrace, her thin arms like bands of steel. I felt it. She never wanted to let me go, but she knew she had to. For her sake, and for mine too. She picked up on the intentions that had begun to form within me.
This place. This void, artificial or no, would allow me to try my own hand at creation, or at least recasting the world that had been. Tiny surgical cuts to the timeline, a changed decision here, a different action there, perhaps I could set things right for those I loved. “Damn, girl. Don’t get all carried away. You can’t reach back and yank the apple out of Eve’s mouth. You can’t reach back any further than when Emily done conjured you into the world.”
“Yes, I understand,” I said.
“And you understand the other bit too, don’t you?”
“Yes.” I understood, even better than she did. The spell had been broken. No matter what else I might manage to achieve, the one fact I couldn’t change was that Mercy Taylor had never really existed.
THIRTY-FOUR
Change a word here, a word there. We’re not talking about rewriting the history of the world, just a judicious editing of events that are truly minor in the grand scheme of things. There may be a momentary sense of confusion, an uneasy déjà vu, but the chattering of seven billion minds will join in to drown out those odd but passing sensations. History might cough, but in a day or so, it will feel just fine.
A young woman lies on a bloodstained bed. The color of her hair is very nearly a match for the color of the life that has been bleeding out of her. Ellen holds the stillborn child, reaching into the deepest well of her magic, and when that seems to be failing, matches magic with prayer. “Come on little one,” she whispers. “Come on.” The baby is blue. It doesn’t move. Perhaps the child had never truly been meant for this world. “Don’t you do this to me. You breathe. Take a breath. One small breath for Ellen.” The child gasps for air and cries. Ellen can’t suppress the sound that peals from her, a groan that speaks of the deepest relief mixed with joy. She turns back toward the mother, reaching out with her magic to grab the escaping spark and hold on to it for dear life, but she realizes her aid has come too late. The spark is at first just out of grasp, then fading as it moves away at an exponentially increasing speed. Before Ellen can blink, it has moved beyond the veil. Ellen sits on the foot of the bed and clutches the orphan tightly to her chest.
Iris closes Emily’s eyes. Iris blames herself. She should’ve taken better care of her little sister. Played a more active role in her life. Emily had seemed so lost since Mama and Daddy died. Then again, so has Iris. No time for self-pity now, though. She will find time to fall apart. Later. Now, Ellen sits crying and rocking a little girl who’s just lost her mother. Iris goes to the foot of the bed and kneels before Ellen. A wave of anger strikes Iris out of the blue. Why had Emily been so stubbornly insistent about not telling them who the baby’s father is? The child has the right to grow up with at least one of her parents. Then again, Iris has heard rumors her baby sister had been venturing into places better left alone. That club she’d been going to, what is it called? Tillandsia. Iris has heard stories about what went on at those gatherings. It may be that Emmy herself wasn’t sure of the child’s sire.
“The baby is out of danger now?” Iris asks her sister. Ellen trembles, won’t or can’t speak, but she begins nodding. “Then you’ve done all you can do. Let me have her, sweetie,” Iris says to Ellen. “Let me take her and clean her up. Then I’ll give her right back to you. I promise.”
“Emmy wanted to name her Maisie,” Ellen says.
“And so we shall.” Iris has never really cottoned to the name Maisie. It strikes her as a somewhat unfortunate choice. Had Iris ever had a daughter, she would have named her Adeline, after her own mother. “Come to Auntie Iris, Maisie. I’ll take good care of you.” She places her first gentle touch on the newborn. “Oh,” she says aloud, shocked by a psychic form of static electricity. Well, this, she thinks, is something Erik and Ellen will have to work out between themselves. She takes the baby from her sister’s arms.
A young man, so hurt, so angry, stands at an open door. A heated exchange is occurring between him and a dark woman, beautiful, proud, too young to understand the danger of pushing a desperate lovesick fool a step too far.
“If you believe Adam really loves you, then prove it to me.” Oliver pauses, the darkest of thoughts fighting its way to the surface. The one bit of magic he couldn’t perform, that it came so easily to
her made him physically ill. Grace would give birth to Adam’s baby. No matter what, she would always have a hold on him. She stood there gloating, taunting. It would be oh so easy to make her undo it.
An unseen hand on his shoulder, a whisper to his heart. A reminder of what true love means. The words that have begun to form fall away, replaced with “You raise that baby right.” His face turns red, and his body shakes. “You hear me? You fall one step short of being the most perfect mother this world has ever seen, and I will come for you. Believe me, I will. Now get the hell out of here and leave me the hell alone.” Oliver slams the door in Grace’s face.
