TWENTY-TWO
At Ellen’s insistence, Iris drove her to meet with Detective Cook. I stood in the kitchen, staring out after their car and trying to take it all in. The air in the house felt thick with tension, so after a few moments I went out to the garden. I found a place at the table and first rested my chin on my hands, then leaned back, placing my right hand as a protective barrier between Colin and the world around us. I couldn’t believe Tucker Perry was dead.
I tried Peter’s number for the third time, but it went straight to voicemail again. I hoped to catch him before he heard from someone else. I texted him, telling him to call me.
Adam had intimated that Tucker’s death seemed somehow similar to Peadar’s. I could only surmise that meant Tucker had been left with a hole punched through him. Tucker had without doubt made plenty of enemies over the years, but how many of them had access, natural or borrowed, to magic? And why was his murder made to look like the accidental harm I caused Peadar’s body? Was the intention to implicate me or just toy with me? Who might have connected the dots between me and the body left at the old powder magazine?
Ryder’s face, twisted in rage, rose up in my thoughts. I’d humiliated him and cost him an appendage. On top of that, he probably blamed me for what he’d done to Birdy. Could he be trying to seek revenge? I’d assumed he’d arrived in Savannah after Peadar’s death, but he’d been awfully proud about his ability to follow me around without attracting my notice. Maybe he’d been here early enough to witness what had happened at the powder magazine?
I needed to find out just when Claire had contacted Ryder. I reached for my phone and almost clicked on her number, but was derailed by the thought that Ryder had been granted the powers of a collector by a witch. A real witch. And there were so many witches who had been unhappy to see me chosen as anchor. If I were somehow Ryder’s true target, there was any number of witches, half of them from my own extended family, who might have sent a collector to do their dirty work for them. Maybe Claire had just been a puppet? Had she somehow been influenced to contact Ryder? Had her distrust of Emmet been fed by magical means? I hated myself for making Tucker’s death, Ellen’s tragedy, all about me, but I suspected due to the circumstances, it might actually be all about me.
My left hand sought out the locket my mother had given me, pulling it out from beneath my shirt. The feel of it caused my analytic mind to switch off and my emotions to take over. I knew I had to be strong for Ellen, but I was deeply afraid. I craved my mother’s comfort and wanted the reassurance of her scent, her embrace, but I hadn’t even heard from her since she’d spoken to me through a tourist’s borrowed mouth outside St. John’s. I loosed the locket’s clasp, wanting to take a little comfort in the baby pictures of myself and my sister.
The locket popped open, but to my surprise, it did not hold the same pictures I’d seen before. Maisie’s had been replaced with the photo of a man. Confident blue eyes beneath a shock of blond hair. Lean face with sensuous lips and a dimpled chin. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. The picture that had replaced my own I immediately recognized as a miniature version of the photo Ellen had given me of Erik’s grandmother, my own great-grandmother, Maria.
Using my nail, I carefully peeled out the man’s photo. It came out of the locket with minimal effort, but nearly fluttered past my hand to the ground. I reached out and snatched it up. The man bore a certain undeniable resemblance to Erik, although I remembered my uncle, my father, as being more robust, more virile than the young man in the all-too-small oval. Carefully, I turned it over in my palm. The ink on the back had blurred and faded with age, and the script was painfully cramped and foreign-looking, but I could still make out a word, a name: Careu. I returned the picture and closed the locket. Grabbing my phone, I did a quick search on the name. The results came back with a definition in Romanian (“square”), and several options for health care, but nothing that provided any insight.
The skin on the back of my neck began to tingle. Sensing that someone was watching me, I turned, expecting to find Emmet. “Your mother has requested that you come with me.” The words came from my mother’s driver, the man I’d only seen for a few moments a couple of weeks ago. Now he stood on the other side of the gate that opened onto our garden. This time, maybe because it was the first chance I’d had to observe him in full sunlight, I realized something was off. His complexion was gray and waxy in appearance, and the muscles in his jaw didn’t seem to move enough to produce the words he said. It seemed almost as if someone was projecting words through him. The out-of-sync way his lips moved, combined with the synchronicity of his arrival and my thoughts about my mother, prickled my intuition.
I had been waiting, day after day, for word from my mother. I had heard nothing from her since the cathedral, and now her driver was showing up right after news had broken about Tucker’s death. As badly as I wanted to see my mother, I didn’t feel right about the situation. I didn’t like her driver’s vibe. I didn’t like the way she’d implied that my aunts had made her desert Maisie and me but refused to divulge any details. Iris and Ellen and, to a lesser degree, Oliver, had taken care of me my entire life. When it came right down to it, I didn’t know my mother. Besides, I’d grown wary of getting into limos alone after the last spin around town I’d taken in one.
“I tell you what; I need a few minutes to get ready. You give me the address, and I’ll meet her there.” He stayed where he was by the gate, not stirring. My phone began to ring. No number showed, but I answered anyway. I could use this as an opportunity to create a cover story for why I couldn’t go with the driver.
“Please get in the car with Parsons before the family comes home,” my mother’s voice commanded. “You aren’t safe there, darling girl. Let Parsons bring you to me. Please come.” The phone clicked off at the same moment the driver reached over and unlatched the gate.
An unexpected arrival. An ambiguous threat implying that the people who had raised me might want to harm me. Neither of those things felt right. On top of it all, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this Parsons was being held up by invisible strings, and should they be cut, he’d fall immobile to the ground. I wondered if my mother herself was the puppeteer, using Parsons much as she had controlled the tourist outside the cathedral. Still, my need to see my mother and get some answers trumped my inhibitions, so I did as she told me.
The drive led us out of Savannah proper, and I squirmed as we passed the old powder magazine on Ogeechee, the memory of my last visit there making it impossible for me to take an easy breath until we entered Richmond Hill, where Ogeechee changes into the Ocean Highway. Richmond Hill came and went. We passed a small graveyard to my right, and shortly afterward, we turned off the highway and entered into a maze of country roads, more of them gravel than not.
I felt a bit claustrophobic behind the tinted glass. I pressed the window button and was relieved that it opened, relieved that at least something in this world remained under my control. Dusty, dry air hit me. Outside the limo’s arctic twilight, a fine early fall day was taking place. The blue sky and warm air worked together to help unwind some of my tension. I hung my hand out the window, enjoying the feeling of the air rushing around me. It reminded me of Iris, and how she could use the air currents to fly. I was more than a little disappointed that that particular trick didn’t seem to be in my repertoire. If I could let myself be taken and carried by the wind, I’d probably never come down. I couldn’t understand how Iris could have voluntarily put that ability on hold during her entire marriage to Connor. He had been weak but extremely prideful, and Iris had managed his resentments by dumbing down her abilities.
One thought of Connor led to another, and my blood began to boil as I considered the way he’d planned to let Ginny’s house burn down around me. Even though the son of a bitch had believed himself to be my father, he’d been ready to kill me to get his hands on a little more power. I trusted that Oliver would dispose of the spirit trap in a way that would free us from Connor for good. I looked down and realized that blue sparks had begun to form on my fingertips, my magic ready to strike out and protect me from a danger that was no longer there. I closed my eyes and leaned my face into the breeze, letting it calm me. The car hit a rough patch in the road, jarring me back to attentiveness. That’s when I realized that I could be heading into another, very similar confrontation right now. As badly as I wanted to trust my mother, experience had shown me the importance of remaining vigilant. I wanted to believe she wouldn’t expose me to danger, but only a little over three months ago, my own sister had turned me over to a boo hag for sacrifice. If it weren’t for the betrayals I’d suffered at the hands of my uncle and my sister, I would never have entertained my mother’s insinuation against my aunts and uncle. Maisie and Connor had both betrayed me, though, so I needed to hear my mother out. I was running a little low on trust all the way round right now.
We slowed as we approached a private drive, framed by stone gates and canopied by parallel rows of ancient live oaks. The driver eased between the gates, turning off the rough public road and onto the newly paved roadway. The smell of creosote perfumed the air. I leaned out of the car to get a better view of the house—no, mansion—at the end of the lane. The words “decrepit grandeur” came to mind as we came nearer. It was a fine old house. Georgian, with a nearly square base, stretched into a rectangle by the addition of a wide porch at both the entrance and above that, on the second floor. Four windows down, four windows up, with a door dividing each row. Six Doric pillars, obviously intended more as decoration than support, stood guard, wearing their badly battered and peeling coat of white. Various pieces of construction equipment staged around the house promised that better days would be coming. In front of the house, the straight drive intersected with an oval. The fresh soil in the oval’s center was clearly destined to provide nourishment for flowers, perhaps a young magnolia? Was this to be my mother’s house? Had she truly come home?
The car came to a full stop, and I swung my door open and hopped out before the driver could reach it. “You should have allowed me to assist you, miss,” he said, the words sounding again as if he’d swallowed someone else’s phone. I gave a weak smile in answer, and let him push the door closed. I took a few steps back, away from the house, so that I could take in the full effect. I backed up without looking behind me and bumped into a sawhorse, surrounded by very fresh sawdust. My eyes had started back to the house when they got stuck on a name stenciled on the sawhorse. “Tierney Construction” leapt out at me, and I swung around surveying the rest of the equipment that had been left in place. Everything that wasn’t large enough to have been rented had Peter’s name stenciled or otherwise inscribed on it. The unexpected connection between my mother and my fiancé didn’t sit right. My instincts had kicked in again, doing their best to warn me away. Something was not right.
“Mercy,” my mother’s voice called to me from the porch. “Come in,” she said, and stood there waiting at the top of the steps, her arms wide-open for an embrace. As confused as I felt, the sight of her buried my apprehensions. I wanted so badly to believe in her. I couldn’t resist it. I ignored the pavement and took a straight line across the oval’s unplanted garden. “Careful, careful,” my mother called out, laughing.
I flew up the steps and into her arms, spinning her around. The joy was undeniable until it up and winged away when my eyes landed on the house’s black-and-red door. “Tillandsia,” I whispered into her ear.
She pushed her way free of my weakening embrace. “Yes, my darling girl, Tillandsia.” She took me by one hand, and with the other, turned the knob on the very door that I had seen in my vision. The improbable hope that Maisie would be standing there, safe on the other side of the door, flooded through me, but when the door creaked open, it revealed nothing but a freshly sanded wood floor and two comfortable and modern armchairs that looked hopelessly lost in this enormous space. As my eyes traced the lines of the entranceway, I wondered what furniture could possibly be consequential enough not to be dwarfed by such a setting.
The area in front of me was immense and hexagonal. A dome skylight, which had not been visible from the house’s exterior, hovered above it. A set of stairs to my right carried on past the second floor to a gallery, which probably allowed a 360-degree view of the surrounding landscape, thanks to the dome. I realized the Georgian exterior was merely a fa?ade. Symmetry played a very small part in the house’s interior. My mother closed the door behind us and took her place in one of the easy chairs. “Spectacular, isn’t it?”
“Yes. From the outside, I would have never guessed.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much more to show you yet. The entrance here is the most complete portion. All the same, your fiancé’s crew is doing a wonderful job.”
“Peter doesn’t know about you, that you are involved with all of this?” I asked, cautiously taking the seat next to her, almost as if I were expecting it to bite me.
“Of course not,” she replied. “As far as he knows, he’s handling the work for a group of Tucker’s friends.”
“Tucker’s dead.” I said, collapsing into the cushions.
“I know.” Her voice broke as she said the words. “That’s why I knew we could meet here. When the news spread, Peter sent the crew home.”
“You’re using magic to spy on Peter?”
She laughed a slow, sad laugh as tears came to her eyes. She raised her finger at a security camera neatly hidden in a corner. “No, my dear one. I am using technology to keep an eye on progress.” She took a breath and wiped her tears. “Tucker was a dear friend. My oldest and perhaps even my last in Savannah.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you two were close.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said and folded her arms across her chest, bracing herself. “You don’t know anything at all about me. Thanks to Ginny and my sisters.” I felt a pain in my chest as she lumped Iris and Ellen in with Ginny.
“I promised to tell you everything, and I plan on doing it now. Tucker’s murder has convinced me that it’s urgent for you to know the full truth.”
“But what does he have to do with any of this?”
“Tucker has been helping me . . . helping me take the steps I needed to make my way home to you. Someone has been working against us.”
“Ellen would not have killed Tucker,” I said, my loyalty kicking in. “He and Ellen were engaged.”
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Everything Tucker did, he did to help us, including proposing to Ellen.”
“He was lying to her?” My emotions ran along a zigzag path; I could not find a firm footing. Just when I had begun to believe that Tucker really loved my aunt, a new reality had been revealed to me. “How could breaking Ellen’s heart be of any help to us?”
“Breaking Ellen’s heart?” She raised her eyebrows and lowered her chin, looking at me with astonished distaste. “Your concern is touching,” she said, looking down her nose, “but your loyalties are misplaced.” It was all too much for me. I could not bring myself to think of either of my aunts as a murderer. My mother seemed to read my thoughts, whether through magic or because they were telegraphed by my face. “I am not making any accusations. I am only telling you that the man who has been helping me in my return, in reaching out to you, has been murdered. And that is a sign that someone knows I have returned and is working against me. The way Tucker was murdered tells me that that same someone has it in for you as well. They are trying to fit you up for Tucker’s murder.”
“I don’t think I really have to worry about the police,” I said, reasoning out loud. “I only have a tangential relationship to Peter’s great-uncle, and of course I know, knew, Tucker, but . . .”
“It isn’t the police I am worried about. It’s the families. They are of course aware of your mishap with the old man. They must have felt you draw on the line’s power, but even if they did not, their golem spy would have reported it to them at the first opportunity.”
“I don’t think Emmet is spying for them,” I said.
She paused to consider, and then nodded. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe I’ve grown too suspicious over the years, but soon you will understand why. All the same, I am sure the families know of the incident.”
“You’re probably right about that much,” I agreed.
“So now Tucker has been murdered, his heart burned out of his chest just like with the old man. This time, though, there was no tug on the line’s power.”
“So the families should realize I had nothing to do with it.”
“Or perhaps they will decide that you have been practicing magic using other means to gain the power. They are aware that you have been holing up with Jilo, that you and the crone have been up to something together.”
“But we’ve been trying to find Maisie.”
“Something that they have expressly forbidden. I don’t believe that they’re aware that’s what you two have been up to, but they smell rebellion brewing.”
“I’m not rebelling . . .”
“Then what would you call it? You are simply doing the exact opposite of what they have told you to do.”
“How could you know what the families are thinking anyway?” I asked.
“I have my resources, and I know their concerns about you.” So she had her own spy among them. I wondered who might be filtering information to her. “You have been refusing to spend time under the tutelage of their golem,” she said, “preferring the left-handed training you can get at Jilo’s feet. You are not knuckling down and taking the steps you need to assume your position as an anchor of the line. If that wasn’t enough to convince them that trouble is nigh, there is the final and most damning point of all. You are my daughter.”
My heart warmed at the sound of pride in her voice, but I could not make the leap she seemed to want me to make. “I still don’t see how any of this relates to Ellen and Iris,” I said. “How you could possibly think that they are attempting to set me up? Why would they want to?”
She placed her hand on her chin, her flawlessly manicured index finger resting against her lips. Her eyes looked down and away. She seemed to be considering events long since passed. She looked back up at me. “So much history. So many secrets. I’ve been keeping them for so long, I don’t quite know how to start.”
“Tell me what happened,” I said, kicking off my shoes and drawing my legs up under me, making a conscious effort to appear more relaxed than I was. “If Ellen and Iris are so horrible, how could you possibly have left Maisie and me with them?”
Her perfect complexion turned gray. “What have you been told?” she asked. Her lips pressed together into a tight line.
“The short version? You seduced Connor and Erik, got pregnant by Erik, and then died giving birth. You were noble at the end, though, and you put me before yourself. You begged Ellen to use the last of her power to save me.”
“You poor child,” she said. “Hanging the responsibility of your own mother’s death on you.” Our eyes met. It felt wonderful to be validated, to have her see things from my perspective. The comfort did not last long; I found myself wondering if she were mirroring me, trying to say what she knew I’d want to hear to gain my confidence. She pressed her hands together as if preparing to pray. “Okay,” she continued. “Let’s start with the easy part: Connor. What do you know of my powers?”
“Nothing. We never discussed your powers.”
“Of course they wouldn’t have been discussed with you.” She concluded a train of thought I hadn’t yet boarded. “Still, your mother has a few tricks up her sleeve. One of the most useful is that I can create a double of myself. A doppelg?nger. As outwardly real as I am before you now. I cannot maintain the double for long, although I have over the years gotten much better at it.”
“Kind of like Wren.”
“Kind of like my parents supposed Wren to be. They weren’t at all shocked when Oliver showed up with his new playmate. Projecting energy as matter was something they had already seen from me. Maisie used a similar skill when she helped Wren grow into Jackson. Yes,” she said after a pause, “I am aware of it all.”
I squirmed as she reminded me of what Maisie had done to me. I had very little solid emotional ground to stand on, and now this stranger, my mother, was causing it to quake.
“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I know it’s unpleasant for you to dwell on that, but I have so many unpleasant things that I must share with you.”
I nodded. “Connor?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Connor. You know what he was like. Weak, greedy, and lecherous. It’s true Iris wasn’t meeting his needs. She’d had so many miscarriages, and she reacted by shutting him out. When they returned to Savannah, Connor became fixated on me. Always there. Always reaching out to touch me. I tried to divert his sexual energies into Tillandsia.” She paused and gave me a cool look. “You know I participated in the group. I will get into my reasons shortly, but for now, please understand that I did all I could to turn Connor from me. In spite of my best efforts, he only grew more eager. I think it was more than sex, more than obsession. He had caught on to what I was trying to do with Tillandsia.” She paused. “But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.”
“I spoke to Iris. I reasoned with her. I pleaded with her to handle her husband. She refused to believe me. One morning I woke up to find him sitting at the foot of my bed. Staring at me and . . . well, touching himself.” Her face tightened with distaste. “I moved out that very day. Rented a little place near the river, but he followed me there too. Always waiting for me the second I came out the door. Telling me how I was the one he loved, not Iris. Going on about how deeply he needed me. I knew what he felt for me was not love; what he called ‘love’ was the desire to possess. Finally I decided that the only way to get rid of him was to give him what he wanted. I hoped he would eventually tire of me and move on to someone else.” A smile curved only the right side of her mouth. “I created a double, and I sent her to him. Once he had satiated himself and was asleep, she, it, would dissipate. He carried on a hot little affair with a series of my doubles, but he never touched me.”
“And Erik?” I asked and watched her face soften at the mention of my father’s name.
“Erik was different,” she said. “I am guilty of having an affair with Ellen’s husband, but I’m not ashamed. The times I spent with Erik were the happiest of my life. I never meant to hurt Ellen, but as I hope you will understand, I was in love with Erik and he with me.”