THREE
As I walked my bike up our drive, it struck me that the house I’d grown up in had been really nothing more than a stage set. A theater of lies. The set may have been made of actual wood and brick, but nothing else was real. My mother’s perfume still clung to me. She was alive. Alive! That was real. That was the truth. Everything I’d ever believed about her, about my family, about my life rang false now. A darkness squeezed my heart as a newfound hatred for Ginny took root. I had been working on letting go of my anger toward my great-aunt, but now any thought of forgiveness evaporated. Forgiveness, hell. I would go tomorrow and dance on her grave. She had stolen my power from me. I could overlook that. But taking my mother from me, from Maisie? That I could never forgive. I prayed that wherever Ginny’s essence had landed, eternity would find her without one moment’s peace.
How could Ginny have justified keeping my mother from me? But then what could she have hoped to accomplish by separating me from my birthright of power? She would have claimed she was doing her duty as anchor. Protecting the line. Protecting it from my mother. Protecting it from me. But the line had chosen me. It didn’t fear me; it welcomed me. Ginny must have been wrong about my mother too. She must have been.
I touched the locket my mother had placed around my neck. The feel of its precious metal confirmed it wasn’t merely a figment of my imagination. I leaned my bike against the garage and fumbled with the locket’s clasp. It sprung open to reveal two tiny photos, one of Maisie and the other of me. We seemed such little things—there was barely enough hair on our heads to support the ribbons someone had put on us. How had she gotten these pictures? Had Ellen or Iris sent them to her to assuage their own guilt?
That my aunts had been lying to me yet again was obvious. My mother was still very much in this world, and they had spent the last twenty-one years reminding me to take flowers to her grave. My mother had told me point-blank that Iris and Ellen had colluded with each other and Ginny to keep the truth from Maisie and me, but I knew these women, and my heart would not let me believe that they had been anything other than Ginny’s victims. The truth I needed to uncover was why they’d decided to lie to me. There had to be a reason—a good, strong, forgivable one—and once I got to the bottom of it, I would find a way to bring my family back together. We couldn’t recapture the lost years, but we could recover and build a future. Together we would deal with the families. Together we would bring Maisie home.
I turned toward the house, but stopped dead in my tracks as another thought hit me. Had I been the only one kept in the dark? Up until a few months ago, they’d thought me powerless. Had Maisie known the truth this entire time?
A year ago, even a few months ago, I would have never entertained my mother’s accusations. I would have rushed home and confessed everything to Iris in a single breath. But that was before I learned that my aunts had hidden the fact that Ellen’s late husband, Erik, was my father; before Iris’s husband, Connor, left me to burn in Ginny’s house; and before my own beloved sister had turned me over to the hands of a demon. Now that the line had selected me as an anchor, I was on everyone’s radar. I felt it in my bones that there were any number of witches, including members of my own extended family, who would jump at any excuse to remove me as anchor. I would keep my promise to my mother. I would remain silent about her return to Savannah. But I would do so only until I could get a better grasp on the slippery truth.
It took every bit of my self-control not to burst into the house screaming, demanding answers. I slipped the locket beneath my shirt and took a deep breath. I prayed that I would have the strength and the good sense to keep my fool mouth closed. My hand trembled as it opened the door leading into the kitchen.
“You’re late,” Emmet said without even turning to look at me. He sat at the table, staring intently at an apple that hung suspended in midair. The apple spun slowly, its peel coming off in one thin, clean strand.
“Yeah, sorry. Got distracted,” I replied. I circled around and took the seat opposite him, unable to resist the pull of his gravity. Emmet was so dark, so intense. So lost. A mere few months ago, the man sitting before me had been nothing more than dirt in our driveway. As a golem, he had been well groomed, perhaps overly groomed, certainly overly self-confident. After a few months as a man, he had taken on a more feral look. The shadow on his cheeks pointed well past five o’clock, and his once closely cropped black hair had grown much longer, falling in thick, careless curls. He pushed them back from his forehead, and I noticed from the sorry state of his hands that he had picked up the habit of biting his fingernails.
“You are easily distracted,” he said, and the apple stopped spinning and flew directly at my face. I held up my hand to repel it, and in a mere blink, it combusted and fell as ashes. Emmet looked at me, unimpressed. “Now was that really necessary? You used too much force to dispel such a tiny threat.”
“Don’t start,” I said. “I am so not in the mood.” His words cut too close. The smoke issuing from the apple’s powdery remains reminded me of the scent of the old man’s charred flesh.
“You are willful,” he said ignoring me. “You are stubborn. You are unfocused. The families have asked me when you will be ready to take over as the line’s anchor. I’ll have to tell them I don’t know. That you haven’t given me any time. That you haven’t given your magic any time.”
I felt my temper flaring, heat rising up all around us. There was a rattling noise from behind me—the sound of the dishes in the cupboard beginning to shake.
“Good. Good,” Emmet shouted and pushed away from the table. “You are full of power. Full of emotion. Now let’s see you control either one of those things.” He stepped up to me, getting right in my face. I clenched my hands, feeling a nearly electric fire build up in them. Cupboard doors opened and slammed shut. A glass fell to the floor and shattered, sending tiny shards into the air where they hung like deadly little prisms. I grew terrified of my own rage. I was acting out magically in a way I’d never allowed myself to behave before my magic had been returned to me.
Emmet reached forward and grabbed my wrists. He towered over me. His black eyes burned into me with a look of . . . what? Anger? He leaned in close.
“What’s going on here?” Peter’s voice shot into the room. I turned to see him at the doorway, and the shards of glass fell to the floor like so many raindrops. The dishes stopped rattling. Quiet returned.
Emmet released my wrists and spoke. “We are training. You should not be here.”
Peter stomped into the room and put a possessive hand on my shoulder. “Don’t tell me where I should and should not be, and don’t tell me that what I saw going on in here was ‘training.’ I know Mercy, and I know when she is pissed. I don’t need to see the kitchen getting shaken apart to know.”
“She has to learn how to control her magic. To do that she has to learn to control her passions.”
“She’s pregnant. She doesn’t need this kind of stress placed on her.”
“She,” I said, “is sitting right here. And she can speak for herself,” I said to Peter, but caressed his arm while saying it. I loved the way he wanted to protect me, even in the face of something that I myself hadn’t yet been able to comprehend or control. Deep down, I knew Emmet was right. I had to learn to control the energy flowing through me. The hole in the chest of the poor old man I’d been trying to help proved that well enough. I wished I could talk to Emmet about what had happened, but his disapproval would rain down on me. I wished I could share what had happened with Peter, but he would just worry for me.
“All the same,” Peter said, “I’m getting you out of here.” He pulled my chair back and lifted me to my feet.
“We aren’t done. We haven’t even really started,” Emmet said. He crossed his arms and leaned casually against the refrigerator. He appeared thoroughly composed. Infuriatingly relaxed.
“Oh, you are done.” Peter guided me toward the door. As he ushered me over the threshold, I turned back and caught a glimpse of Emmet. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I would have sworn I registered a look of jealousy.
“I’m going to have to deal with him sooner or later,” I said.
“But not now. I don’t know what was going on in there, but I don’t want you to spend any more time with that guy. It’s not good for you or the baby.”
“The families want him to work with me. Teach me how to use my magic. How else will I ever be able to take over as the line’s anchor?”
“I don’t give a damn what the families want, Mercy.” He stopped walking and turned me toward him. “I care about our family. You and the baby and me. That’s all I care about.”
“Me too,” I said, and then leaned forward to kiss him. His eyes lit up, green and blue and warm and loving. “But I need to learn how to control this magic inside me. You saw me in there. I need to step up and fulfill my duty. The line wanted me. It chose me. I know it sounds crazy, but it believes in me, and there haven’t been many people in my life who do.”
“I’ve always believed in you. Magic. No magic. I’ve always believed in you, and I always will.”
“I know. I know that,” I said.
“Good.” He paused. “Listen, I am aware this isn’t the best time to bring this up, but I came over this morning for a reason.” He hesitated, trying to find the right words.
“Go ahead. Spit it out.”
He nodded once. “My boss found out about the moonlighting I’ve been doing on the weekends, and he told me I had to make a choice. And I have. I’ve decided to leave my job and work full-time on my own company. I want to build a future for us, Mercy, create a legacy for Colin. I don’t want to be somebody else’s lackey anymore.”
“That’s great.” I would have felt better about the decision if he’d discussed it with me first, but I would have encouraged him to do just that if he had talked to me about it.
“Well, hold on. There’s a bit more.” He took a few steps away from me and leaned against his truck. “I can handle small stuff by myself, but I’m not set up for the type of work I need to bring in. And I don’t have the money to go out and buy equipment and hire folk on my own.”
“That isn’t a problem. Like I told you, I have plenty of money now that I get access to the family funds.” I had been astounded by the size of the monthly checks. When the first one had arrived, I’d assumed it constituted payment for the full year. I had grown up without ever realizing how wealthy my family was. Maybe that was a good thing.
“No,” Peter said, pointing his index finger at me. “I’ve told you how I feel about taking money from you. Please understand, I need your faith and support, but I need to be able to stand on my own two feet.”
“Okay. I understand. At least I think I do.” I couldn’t help but smile.
A look of relief flooded his face, but then his brows knit back together. “I’ve found a partner. Someone who can back me financially. More importantly, he has a project, a big one, he wants completed. Immediately.”
His hesitancy waved a red flag. This was why he had cut me out of the decision process. “And who is this ‘someone’?”
“Tucker,” he said as my mouth fell open. “Tucker Perry.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, spinning around, about ready to storm back into the house until I realized Emmet would still be in there waiting for me and was probably enjoying every minute of this display. “That man is harder to shake off than a deep woods tick,” I said, nearly causing a smile to form on Peter’s lips. I flashed him a look that put that expression to bed.
Tucker was my Aunt Ellen’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. Right now it was off, and I prayed to my maker that it would stay that way. Too suave, too sure of himself. Along with being a lawyer and a real estate developer, Tucker was a professional seducer. He had bedded a good percentage of Savannah’s female population and a respectable number of the men as well. Once he’d even hit on my fiancé and me, prompting Ellen to threaten to turn him into a capon if he didn’t leave us be. Tucker was a predator, a smooth and oily snake. It was fair to say I wasn’t overly fond of him. The thought that Peter would take him on as partner fell beyond my ability to comprehend.
“No, listen,” Peter said, reaching out for me. “It’s not as crazy as it sounds. There aren’t many people building around here these days, especially not people who are willing to take a chance on the new guy. Tucker may be a jerk, but he has money, and he has projects. Please support me in this. Please.”
The thought of Emmet watching us made me capitulate more quickly than I probably would have otherwise. “All right. I will tentatively support this. But I am not convinced it’s a good idea. For now, just get me out of here.” I went to the truck and let him open the door.
“Where to?”
“It doesn’t matter. Anywhere but here.”