I should have thanked Jilo, but when my mouth opened, the words, “He betrayed me” spilled out. He had made love to me, knowing that Jilo’s spell was what brought me to his bed. I had been able to accept Jilo’s intervention when I’d thought the spell was my choice. Knowing that he had arranged for it made me feel violated.
“Open yo’ eyes, child! It ain’t just your man who betrayed you. Everyone, and I do mean every last one, of the folk you love, the ones you think love you, they all done betrayed you in one way or t’other. Truth is Jilo just might be the only one in this world you can trust.”
“I can’t believe that,” I said.
“Believe it, don’t believe it. It ain’t no never mind to Jilo. But sooner or later, you gonna come to believe it, and when you do, you gonna be wishing you had power of your own, if only to protect yo’self. You be smart. When yo’ sister get back to Savannah, when she all nice and settled in, you talk to her, and then you leave the rest up to Jilo.”
I said nothing. I simply clasped my hand around my necklace as if it were a magical life preserver. The power began to surge through with renewed force, gaining strength as my hunger for it grew, and although my anger remained, the pain I felt over what Peter had done instantly dulled. He was, after all, only a human.
TWENTY-FIVE
As I crossed the dark bridge that connected Jilo’s world to Candler, the living shadows began to press in around me, their touch like cold silk, seductive and terrifying in equal measure. I sensed that they were unrelated to the child killing demon my grandfather had trapped within the hospital’s earthly boundaries, but these entities were undoubtedly just as nasty. I could tell that the scent of blood was what made them hungry. I kept moving, certain that if I stopped for even a moment, I would lose myself to them. They stopped abruptly as a ray of true sunshine pierced the gloom from above. I forced myself to carry on at an unhurried pace, fearing that if I gave sudden flight, it—they—might risk the sun’s rays and give chase.
Finally, I found the myself standing in the narrow shaft of light that illuminated the tunnel’s entrance. I climbed the steps and found myself standing near the old hospital once again. With a wave of my hand, I moved the heavy sheet of metal back into place, sealing off the tunnel. Witch markings, invisible to the human eye, were etched across the cover. Perhaps these too were made by my grandfather, but some sixth sense told me that they had existed long before he’d walked the earth.
Time had moved differently in Jilo’s world. The light that had led me out of the darkness was the last ray that could have managed to find its way down there. Another half an hour more, and I might have been lost. A chill ran down my spine, but I shook it off. I turned to find Connor directly behind me.
“You hurt yourself?” he asked, his eyes appraising the blood on my shirt. I almost tore into him for stalking me, but there was real concern in his voice, a genuine caring that my human ears had never been able to pick up on. I looked at him for the first time through a witch’s eyes. Instead of the bloviating and disapproving dictator I had always known him to be, I just saw a man. A man who’d been quite handsome in his youth—I’d seen the pictures—and had cut a dashing figure sixty or so pounds ago. A man who looked tired and defeated. A man who had never quite been able to achieve what he wanted most.
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing from here,” he said and reached out to take the injured hand. I pulled it violently away from him, but I was a touch too slow. He caught hold of my hand and turned it palm up so that he could assess the wound. “Well, I’m not Ellen,” he said, sighing, “but I think I can handle this.”
He traced the length of the wound with more gentleness than I’d though him capable of, and I watched as the cut healed beneath his touch. I was impressed. I was excruciatingly familiar with the tracking tricks he did with his pendulum, and he was pretty good with moving small items with telekinesis, but I’d never seen him do anything like this before. The effort seemed to have tired him. He was sweating and looked a little gray. “There, now. Care to tell me what you’ve been up to?”
“No, not really,” I said, but with none of the rancor that my heart usually held for him. “Thank you for healing my hand.”
“You probably could have done it yourself today,” he said. “The golem told me that you’re all juiced up on Oliver’s magic.” He paused and looked at me, weighing his words.
“You’ve obviously got something to say, so out with it.”
He grimaced. “I do. I have something very important to say. Actually a lot of important things to say, but I’m trying to figure out how to say them without pissing you off.” He started to speak again, but hesitated. His shoulders drooped forward, and he shook his head. “You always see me as the enemy, Mercy, but I’m not your enemy. So hear me out for a few minutes, okay?”
Part of me would have preferred spending more time with the living shadows in the tunnel than listening to my uncle’s lectures, but I nodded anyway.
“Good,” he said, adding “thank you” in an uncharacteristic show of good manners. “Regular hospitals aren’t equipped to handle witch births. You two were born at home, and you came early. Only Iris and Ellen were home when your mama started labor. I wasn’t there when you girls were born,” he said. “I was out of town. But Iris told me that Maisie came out shining with life and power. We all thought your mama was only carrying one child. You weren’t even expected. Emily picked the name Maisie out for your sister as soon as she was sure the baby was a girl.” Connor stopped speaking for a moment and chuckled to himself. “She said there were too many damned witches named Sarah and Dianna in the world. You were a surprise to us all. When you came out, you were scrawny and blue—you’d practically starved to death in your mother’s womb.
“Your mama, she was dying,” he said, and a large tear dropped down his cheek. He brushed it away without seeming to notice that he had shed it. “Ellen was a gifted witch back before Ginny docked her powers, but even she had her limits. Nature only lets her get away with so much. A choice had to be made, and your mama made it. She refused Ellen’s help, using the last of her strength to beg Ellen to save her baby. To save you.”
Tears formed in my own eyes, tears too large and numerous to ignore. Connor waved his hand like a stage magician and produced a handkerchief. He held it out to me, and I took it.
“Ellen held you tightly in her arms and breathed her own breath into your little lungs. It took a while, but she got your body to warm up. By the time you had some color in your cheeks, your mama had already passed on. Ellen named you Mercy then and there, ’cause she thought a poor child like you was going to need some mercy. I, on the other hand, took a different tack. Once we determined for sure that you were powerless, I took it upon myself to personally knock you down every time the opportunity presented itself. I bullied you. I said bad things about you. I rubbed your nose in your failures every chance I got. And I did it all because I love you. I wanted you to be tough enough to face the rest of the witches who were saying much worse about you behind your back. I wanted you to be tough enough to face—”