THIRTY-ONE
“What the hell is going on here?” Peter’s voice caused the world around me to shimmer, and then break apart. He grabbed Emmet by the shoulders, and even though Emmet was by far the larger man, he threw him onto the floor.
I was shaking, a scream still caught in my throat. The tower and its dome had vanished. We stood in the true entranceway of the house. All the other guests were gone, and the room where we stood was still very much in a state of aborted renovation.
Peter turned from me to Emmet, who had managed to sit up, although he was still obviously in a state of shock. “I asked you what the hell’s going on.”
“Peter,” I managed. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
He spun back to me, his face flushed red and a pulse visible at his right temple. Such anger burned in his eyes. “I don’t even know what it looks like, Mercy, so why don’t you tell me what you two are doing here?”
“We’re here looking for Ellen,” I said. That at least constituted part of the truth.
“And what? You thought you’d find her in his coat pocket?”
“We can explain if you’ll allow us,” Emmet said, managing to stand and regain a bit of his sense of decorum.
“You shut up before I shut you up.” Peter’s voice quivered. “What’s wrong with you?” he addressed me. “I thought we had this settled once Jackson took off, that we had decided it was going to be you and me. Now here I find you doing I don’t know what with this guy. I mean, for God’s sake, Mercy, he isn’t even real. He isn’t even a man.”
I looked at Emmet, begging him with my eyes not to retaliate with the knowledge he held about Peter. Nodding slightly, he lowered his head and stepped away. “It isn’t like that,” I said, even though my conscience took little nips at me as I said it. “You don’t understand what’s been going on.”
“Well, how about you break it down for me? Nice and slow and easy so I can get it.”
I stood there trying to find the words to say to him, to explain how my life had turned upside down and nothing at all felt like it was under my control. The words would not come. He started shaking, but I couldn’t tell if it was from rage or heartbreak. I wanted to say something, to make it right, but a movement in the corner of my eye drew my attention. I looked away from Peter to see my mother coming toward us. I reached out to Peter to get him to turn and look, but he stepped back from me.
“To hell with it,” he said and turned to leave, but in that split second, my mother appeared directly behind him and drove a blade deep into his chest. He convulsed and coughed up blood.
“There,” she addressed me. “Mama just made it an easy choice for you. That one”—she nodded toward Emmet—“looks good in a tux. This one works my last nerve.” She pushed Peter away, and he fell to the floor.
“What have you done?” I broke from my rigor and threw myself down at Peter’s side.
“That blade is made from iron, you know,” she said. “Iron through the heart is the one sure way to kill a fairy.”
I knelt next to Peter and, my hand trembling, pulled the blade from his chest. I threw it aside, and it melted in midair. Emmet tried to run to my side, but Emily raised one hand, palm out, toward him. An unseen magic flung him up and backward, pinning him to the wall. He struggled, but couldn’t release himself.
“Why?” I asked that woman, the woman who only seconds before I had still thought of as “Mama.”
“Call it ‘Plan B’ if you like,” she said and stepped toward us. She moved her foot gingerly forward and kicked Peter’s body. “Go on. I’m curious to see what you can do. There’s still a little life in him. Let’s see if you can save him. That is, if you want to save him.” She smiled and leered at Emmet. “Quickly now, before I change my mind.”
“I’m not Ellen. You saw what happened when I tried a healing before.”
“Yes, I did. Your efforts proved delightfully amusing.” She laughed. This had to be a nightmare. Peter couldn’t be dying next to me. My mother could not be such a monster. She read my thoughts. “Oh, baby. This is real. This whole night has been real. Maybe not on the plane that you’re used to, but real all the same. We came so, so close. You and your golem here, with all your beautiful power blending in with mine. It was lovely. Lovely. We came so close to completing the Babel spell. So, so close to building a tower that reaches beyond the line, all the way to the old gods. The line may keep them from coming to us, but it can’t keep us from going to them. This one”—she glared at Peter—“caused us to waste a perfectly good demon. Barron’s power has been expended, and I can’t get it back.” She delivered a savage kick to Peter’s side. “I knew you’d bring the golem rather than risk your changeling, but he still just had to show up and interrupt. It must be the magic in his fairy blood that allowed him to break the spell.” Her eyes focused on my throat, as tightly as if the look were intended to strangle me. “If you’d been wearing the locket I gave you rather than your aunt’s tatty pearls, he might not have managed it even then.”
She mocked me by pulling her lips into a pout. “That’s right. Mama put a spell on her little gift.” She shook her head as the exaggerated expression turned into a true frown. “You do have some power in you, little girl. There was enough magic in that locket to charm a normal witch into believing anything I wanted her to. You, it only made a little more amenable.”
I was an anchor. She shouldn’t have been able to charm me at all, but that was the last thing I had time to contemplate right now. I pressed my palm over the wound on Peter’s chest. Half praying, half reaching out for my own magic, I tried my best to close the hole, to will a beat back to his heart. She circled us once, as if taking a moment to consider. “All right, you are a novice, so I’ll let you have a little help. Josef,” she called into the darkness, “bring her.”
Joe entered, dragging Ellen’s naked form with him. His hands dug into my aunt’s shoulders, bruising the skin around the points of contact. He flung her to the ground next to us.
“There,” Emily said. “There’s your precious Ellen.”
Ellen lay there barely conscious. Blood from multiple needle pricks had trickled down her arm and dried. “A tenth of what’s in her could kill a platoon of regular men,” Joe said. “It’s so nice to have a toy you can’t break, no matter how hard you are on it.”
“Tick tock, tick tock, my girl,” Emily said. “It makes no difference to me if he lives or dies, but your leprechaun’s running out of time.”
“He isn’t a leprechaun.”
“And in a few moments more he won’t be anything at all.”
Ellen lay on the floor, barely able to move. She tilted her head toward me, but I wasn’t sure if she actually registered my presence, or if her effort was simply a reflex. But then she reached her hand out to me, and I took it. There shone only a glimmer of awareness in her eyes, but when our hands connected, I watched the aunt I knew and loved surface, like a swimmer breaking through the water. She inhaled sharply and let go of my hand, rolling over and pushing herself to her hands and knees. She crawled to Peter’s side, placing her right palm across his forehead and her left over the wound on his chest. She closed her eyes, and then her lips began moving in silent prayer.
As she knelt over him, as her golden light began to spread through him, I focused in on his face, that face I’d loved but taken for granted since I was a little girl. Now that I was at risk of losing him forever, I realized how much I needed him, how much I loved him. Ellen opened her eyes and looked at me. She had difficulty speaking, her mouth still dry from the drugs that had been pumping through her body. “I’ve found him,” she said. His eyes opened a crack, and he drew a breath.
“Brava. Brava, my darling.” Emily applauded. “You saved the boy.” She turned to face me. “It’s a shame you can’t do the same for that Negro of yours.”
The joy that had reached my heart ran cold. “What have you done to Mother?”
“That darky is not your mother. I am your mother.”
“No, not anymore. I guess maybe even never. What did you do to Jilo?”
Emily narrowed her eyes, leaned her head at a coquettish angle. “We dosed her.”
“You and Joe drugged her?”
“Oh no. Not Josef and I. You and I. The magic you asked her to collect for you. It had a little bit of something extra in it. Something so fine that your old ‘digger’ would never notice it,” she said and laughed. “All right, it’s true that puns are the lowest form of humor, but I couldn’t resist. Your Jilo, your ‘Mother,’ I knew she could never resist tasting the magic you sent her way, so I added a little something special just for her. She was dead within seconds of touching the power. I do hope her passing was peaceful.”
The word no sooner escaped her lips than a loud bang sounded on the door. Emily turned, surprised. As soon as she lost focus, out of the corner of my eye I noticed Emmet moving. He launched himself across the room and placed himself as a protective barrier between Emily and—bless his heart—Peter and Ellen.
Another bang. Emily shot a look at Joe, and he took a step toward the door, but halted in his tracks as a third bang rang out, sending a reverberation through the entire house. A final bang sent the black-and-red door bursting open with such vehemence it broke free from its frame. It spun through the air, just missing Joe’s head as it flew over him. He fell to the floor as it passed, scurrying over to Emily on his hands and knees. When he rose to stand, he positioned himself strategically behind her, letting her shield him.
“Next time you’ll open the damn door when Jilo knock.” Jilo crossed the threshold into the entranceway, her walking stick still held high. As she stood framed in the door opening, several bolts of angry lightening ripped across the sky, backlighting this fury in a purple turban, lilac floral-print housecoat, and crocheted slippers.
“You are as hard to end as the cockroach,” Emily said, crossing the room to face Jilo.
“That right, Jilo a cockroach.” Jilo lowered her cane to the floor and leaned her weight into it as she bent toward Emily. “And she be here long after you dead and gone.”
Emily raised her hand in the air, a ball of red light forming at her fingertips. She screamed in anger, hurling the ball at Jilo, who dropped her cane and opened her arms wide the instant before the power hit her. Her anguished face showed that it hurt like hell, but in a moment, her expression changed from one of pain to one of victory. She clapped her hands together, and as the energy danced on her fingertips, it transformed in color from red to royal blue. She pulled her hands apart and shot the ball right back at Emily. It hit her dead on. The smell of singed hair rose up around her, but she remained standing.
“You gonna have to do better than that if you want to take out Jilo.” The old woman cackled. Her laughter caused Emily’s face to twist with rage. “Jilo been borrowing power all her life, and now she ready to learn you a thing or two for messing with her girl.” She motioned toward the ground, and her cane popped up into the air. She grasped the stick between both hands as a delighted gleam lit up her eyes. “Come on, batter up, bitch. Let Jilo see what you got.”
Emily howled with fury and drew both hands into claws. Another ball of fire formed at her fingertips.
“Stop it,” Iris’s voice commanded as she entered the room. “Stop it.”
The fire at Emily’s fingers dissipated. Iris crossed the room, doing her best to take it all in. Oliver followed on her heels.
Iris stepped up to Emily, reaching out a hand to touch her face. In spite of the violence that had stained the room, her gesture was one of love. “We thought you were dead,” she said and tried to draw Emily into her embrace.
“Do not touch me,” she said, nearly hissing out the words.
“Emmy,” Oliver said stepping out from behind Iris. “What has happened to you? Why are you doing this?” He looked around, obviously struggling to comprehend what exactly “this” was.
“Oh, little brother, I have been liberated. Freed from the tyranny of the line. That is what has happened to me.” She reached out and tousled his hair. “Wouldn’t you like to taste that freedom? Move past any sense of guilt or regret? You too have suffered under the line’s yoke. You too have been exiled.” Her fingers traced down his temple to his jaw. “We two are so alike, so much more so than you and those two drab creatures. You’re not afraid of a little fire. You like having your own way. Join with me. Join with us.” She reached up with both hands, her long red-lacquered fingernails tracing down both sides of his face. She tossed her hair back and looked up into Oliver’s face, blinking her green eyes at him like an affectionate feline. She smiled and chanted, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Oli on over.”
Oliver’s hands grabbed hers and pushed them away. “It’s true. I am one selfish peacock of a bastard. I know that, but I am nothing like you. There’s something inhuman about you now . . . maybe there always has been.”
Emily laughed. “Inhuman? Oliver, if only you knew. You’ll have to trust me that the irony is delicious.”
“It isn’t too late, Emily,” Iris said. “It isn’t too late for you to stop traveling down this path. Let us help you.”
“Isn’t it too late?” she asked, her question addressed to me rather than Iris. “I’ve allied myself with the rebel families. I have sworn to help them destroy your precious line.” She nodded in the middle sister’s direction. “I’ve tortured your dear Ellen, and I enjoyed every second of it, I might add. Did I mention that Josef and I were the ones who killed her worthless Tucker?”
“You said he was helping you.” Ellen looked up at me as if my words would be the straw that broke her.
Emily laughed. “Oh my dear, I lied. I have some of the most powerful witches in the world supporting me. Why on earth would I need anything from Tucker Perry?” Her eyes narrowed, hardened. “I’m not a desperate lush.” She tossed a glance in Ellen’s direction, and I knew she was looking to see if her barb had hit home. She smiled, satisfied when Ellen winced. She turned back to me. “He was a pawn. I burned his heart out just to keep you off balance.”
“And to take him away from me,” Ellen said from the floor at Peter’s side. Her physical energy had been exhausted. She pressed against the floor with both hands, barely strong enough to keep her upper body from collapsing to the parquet.
“Oh, yes,” Emily said, nodding as she looked down at Ellen, “there was that too.” She paused. “What about what I’ve done to you, Mercy? I’ve toyed with your delicate feelings. I stabbed your fiancé, oh, and speaking of your fiancé, I got you to cheat on him.” She raised her chin, looking down the bridge of her nose at Peter. “Do you hear that, Peter? It’s true. She surrendered herself to that creature. Maybe not physically, but he inserted himself inside her all the same. My whore of a daughter loved it.”
“Shut up,” Peter said, trying to sit up, but still too weak.
“That’s no way to talk to your future mother-in-law,” she said, and then again addressed me. “Tell me, darling, is it too late?”
I looked up at her and felt the power of her toxicity. So much anger, revulsion, and hate filled me, but then I stopped and dug deep into myself. In spite of everything, I wanted to find a way to end this. To reach out and rescue her from the darkness. “No, it isn’t,” I said. “Let us help you.”
She snorted. “Living up to the charming name that Ellen hung on you, huh?” Her eyes flashed wide, and her mouth pulled up at one corner into a sneer of disgust. “If I could have named you, it would have been different. I would have called you ‘Abomination,’ for that is what you truly are.” She looked away from me and back to Iris. “I don’t need help. I need you to get out of the way. It’s time for the line to fall. Our old friends have waited long enough,” she said, and then added in a plaintive voice, “and they are so, so hungry.”
“Then I’m sorry, dear one,” Iris said, her voice breaking. “You can no longer hold the power in your possession.” She paused and lifted her head high. “Emily Rose Taylor, I bind you. May the power reject you. May it not claim you as its own.”
“Emily Rose Taylor, I bind you,” Uncle Oliver joined in as Iris repeated the words.
“May the power reject you.” Ellen added her weary voice to the chorus. “May it not claim you as its own.”
“Emily Rose Taylor, Mama,” I said, the word ripping the outer layer from my heart. “I bind you. May the power reject you. May it not claim you as its own.”
“You little bitch,” she said, looking at me through narrowed, venomous eyes, her head held back as if she were regarding something distasteful. “Do you really think you can control me? That any of you can control me? I do not depend on your line for my power. It comes from an altogether different source. One that you fools, you worthless ants can’t even begin to comprehend.”
“You wrong again,” Jilo said, banging her cane. “Jilo can comprehend your dirty magic. She smell it on you. The death. The horror. The desecration you have fused with yo’ soul.”
“?‘Desecration’? That’s a mighty big word for you, Jilo. Don’t strain yourself.”
“Oh that right. You all high and mighty and just pissing magic, but they also one other thing you is . . .”
“All right, you old hag, I’ll bite. What’s that?”
“Outnumbered,” Jilo said and raised her cane. An arc of electricity shot out of it, bowing out over Joe and Emily’s heads. Iris took the hint and raised her hand, shooting another bolt of energy. Emmet joined in too, adding another arc, the powers joining together to form a nearly completed cage.
“Last chance, Oli,” Emily said. “You know I was always so fond of you. Come away. Join us. We won’t keep each other ignorant of the greater truths. We won’t place the real power in the hands of the few. With them you are an underling. With us, you will nearly be a god in your own right.”
“Thanks for the offer, sis, but being ‘nearly’ a god sounds like way too much of a time commitment.” He raised his hand to add his energy and complete the cage that the others had formed around Emily, but before he could complete the act, the vile woman descended through the floor and vanished, taking Joe with her.
“Well, I reckon I’ve lost my spot as the black sheep of the family,” Oliver said into our stunned silence.
“Yes,” Iris agreed. “It looks like you have.”