TWENTY
Jilo licked her dry lips and readied herself to speak. “You know Wren was keeping an eye on yo’ family for me.”
I nodded, noticing that she had repeated herself but not pointing it out.
“Well, he the one that told Jilo. He saw yo’ mama wandering around this house the day she was s’posed to be getting planted in the ground. Said she was goin’ through the place lookin’ for something.” Under its own volition, my hand flew up to touch the chain of my mother’s locket.
Jilo started to say something more, but before she could, Martell barreled through the door. “Gramma, you gotta come see this.” He ran back to the porch. “Damn,” his voice carried to us through the screen door. Our eyes locked, and I scrambled up to my feet. I stopped to help Jilo hoist up her light and brittle body.
I let Jilo come under her own steam as I hurried outside. I didn’t see anything unusual from the porch, nothing that would get Martell going like he was. I walked out into the yard after him and followed his eyes to the sky. A dark arc, like a rainbow drained of its colors, had stretched across the western horizon. In the few moments I stood watching it, its color changed from steel to granite to coal.
Jilo had found her way to the porch and was leaning out to examine the phenomenon. The arc began to unfurl, forming a curtain of dusk, not so much hiding everything on the other side as draining the color, fading it to black and white . . . and then all light disappeared, leaving only darkness. “You two come up here. Get out of the yard.” Jilo’s voice quivered. “Go on,” she commanded when we didn’t move. Martell stood where he was, entranced, frozen in place like a statue. I grabbed his hand, my own fright giving me the strength to drag him across the gravel, up the steps, and into the house behind Jilo.
We watched through the window as the veil against the sky began to close in on us. It grew in both proximity and length, the edges curling up toward each other, encircling us. “Gramma, what is it?” Martell asked, his face trembling, fear stripping him of the contrived swagger, revealing the innocent little boy behind it. In spite of my own fear, my heart went out to him.
“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?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying.”
“They ain’t no way that gonna happen.”
“Why not? Are you too good for us, or are we too good for you?”
Her face bunched up into a mass of wrinkles, and her eyes drew together into tight little slits. “Yo’ family will never allow it.”
“Oh, I think what my family will allow would surprise you. You see how Iris is falling all over herself at the sight of you.”
“Jilo in her yard, she ain’t under her roof. They’s a big difference in those two things.”
“I don’t know about that. She just dragged your grandson inside, droopy pants and all. Listen, do you really want to go back out . . . out there while you think something has it in for you?”
She sat there, honestly weighing whether the danger she might face would merit sacrificing her pride. “I don’ know. Jilo, she has history with the Taylor—”
“And history is all it is. You tell me, which of the still-living Taylors does the great Mother Jilo Wills have a score to settle with?”
“She gonna have one to settle with you if you keep talking at her with that tone.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and then she began chuckling too. “Come on,” I said to her. “Come on inside.” I stood up and went over to the kitchen door, holding it open for her so that she could go in before me.
“No,” she said after a few moments. “Jilo ain’t going in through the back way.” She pushed her chair back and leaned into the table to prop herself up. “You raised in a very different world than Jilo. When Jilo young, that back door was the only way she could go into a fancy white house.” She struggled around the table until she got a firm footing. “When Jilo a girl, she done made herself a promise, and by God, she gonna keep it.”
“What promise was that?” I asked, letting the door close.
“Jilo done promise herself that if she ever step foot in the Taylor house, she was going to go in through the front door. You hear me?”
“Yeah. I think I understand.” I took her arm, and then led her through the gate and around the side of the house to the front entrance. We went up the steps until we were standing before the door. “Well, go on, then,” I said nodding at the bell.
She reached forward. The way her hand quivered touched me, her index finger shaking as if she expected the bell to shock it. She gave it a quick poke, and then a more forceful one. Jilo pulled her hand back, and stretched as tall as she could make herself. She held her head up as high as her neck would allow when my smiling, but slightly confused, aunt answered the door. Iris looked at me for explanation. I would have shrugged, but somehow this moment struck me as solemn. “Jilo always promised herself that if she ever entered our house, she would go in by the front door.”
A look of understanding registered in Iris’s eyes, causing them to appear a little sad in spite of her smile. “Well, of course,” she said. “Do come in, Jilo,” she said and stepped back.
“Before she do, Jilo has to make something clear,” she said and shot me a look that told me I’d better hold my tongue.
“Yes?” Iris asked, the smile fading.
“Before she come in, it only fair you know. Jilo, her sins, they comin’ home to roost. You offer Jilo sanctuary, and you might find yo’self caught up in her mess.”
“Sanctuary?” Iris looked at me, trying to glean information from my expression. She must have accepted whatever she saw there. “The Taylors can take whatever the world tosses at them. Come in, Mother.”
“Thank you,” the old woman said, gingerly lifting her foot over the threshold.