“No. Peter mustn’t know. You can’t tell him.”

“I won’t. I won’t say a word,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers. “We’ll get you inside, and I’ll tell Colin to take you upstairs until you feel better.”

Claire managed to pull herself together. “I’m sorry. I know I must look like a mad woman to you, but you have to listen to me. If you love that child in your womb, hear me. That man. Emmet. I know it sounds crazy, but he isn’t a man.”

“What do you think he is?” I asked cautiously. I had no idea what she believed him to be, but it disquieted me to hear her hitting so close to home.

“Just believe me. He’s . . . he’s something else. I’ve known his kind before, and now I know they are full of lies. I know why he came. They want Peter, and worse, I think they want little Colin.”

“No,” I said, trying to calm her. “Emmet is harmless. I don’t know what you think he is, but I assure you that you are wrong.”

“And how can you be so sure?”

“You’re going to have to trust me on this one,” I said, suspecting that learning Emmet had risen to life from a mound of Georgia dirt would push her completely over the edge.

“I love you, Mercy, like my own daughter, I do,” she said, reaching out and grasping my hand. “I’d trust you with my very life, but I am not willing to trust anyone’s judgment, even yours, when it comes to that baby you are carrying. I’m telling you. If I ever see Emmet near you again, I will find a way to kill him or at least make him wish he were dead. You hear me now?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying to calm her. I didn’t think it wise to point out to her at just that moment that Emmet was still living with us, and I couldn’t exactly send him away. I’d save that discussion for when she was thinking a bit more rationally. Great—another wrinkle in my already complicated life. Now in addition to finding my emotionally unbalanced sister, uncovering the truth about what had caused my mother to desert me, and, oh, having a baby, I’d have to find a way to protect Emmet from my future mother-in-law. “I do. I hear you. Now let’s get back inside and find Colin, okay?” She nodded and walked back into the bar with me.

THIRTEEN

At the end of the wake, Peter was not fit to drive, and Iris and Oliver had both disappeared. For some reason, Claire’s meltdown around Emmet left me in no mood to use magic as a means of transportation, so I called for a taxi and made my way home like a regular person. When I arrived, the house felt deserted; I sent out a psychic ping to see if Iris had perhaps beaten me home, but it came back empty. No one was around, not even Emmet. I experienced a strange combination of loneliness and elation; I had not found myself alone in the house in forever. I realized that now was my opportunity to charge the atmosphere to see what memories I could make rise to the surface. My goal would not be, as Oliver had suggested, to try to get to the bottom of what my mother had been attempting through Tillandsia. Uncle Oliver meant well, but I really had no idea where I would even start on that. I suspected I could spend a lifetime sifting through the echoes that the house held, trying to find a few needles in a century-and-a-half’s worth of haystack. No, I had one specific event I needed to witness: my own birth. Once I had found my answers about that, everything else would fall into place. I was sure of it.

Even a novice such as myself should be able to shake a few lingering impressions loose, especially since I had such an exact target. I made sure the doors were locked against any nonfamilial intruder, and then I went a step further, charming all entrances so that no one, including family, could come in without my being alerted. It was a sad state of affairs, but I wanted to make sure my mother’s siblings wouldn’t discover what I was up to until I had answers.

I hoped that by holding something that belonged to my mother, I would have an easier time of honing in on the particular energies I needed to tap into. I would use my mother’s locket. That it had until recently been in her possession should be a plus. Tonight had been the first time that I hadn’t worn the locket since she had given it to me. It would have been too noticeable given the neckline of the dress I was wearing. I didn’t want to risk one of my aunts noticing it, or worse, recognizing it. I had left it in my jewelry box, mixed in with the few other pieces I had: the pearls I had received on my eighteenth birthday, the small diamond studs I’d received two years before that, the smaller blue box that held the engagement ring I still couldn’t bring myself to wear regularly—even tonight. I pushed away the emotions that reached from the ring to grab me and extricated my mother’s necklace. Something about touching it caused me to question my earlier optimism. Could there really be any hope of a familial reconciliation? Could separating a mother from her daughters truly be an explainable, leave alone pardonable, act?

I closed my eyes and took a cleansing breath. I had to keep an open mind. I couldn’t let my fears prejudice me. Still, my previous exhilaration had turned to a heaviness of heart. I put the necklace around my neck and snapped the lid of the jewelry box closed.

Iris had taken over my mother’s room, the room where Maisie and I were born, as a painting studio. She said she liked the golden late afternoon light that filtered through its windows, but she’d once confessed that being in this space comforted her and made her feel closer to the dear little sister she had lost too soon. I wanted to cry as I remembered how sincere she had sounded when she shared this with me. I pushed the sadness away and took a good look at the space.

My mother’s lesser belongings had long since been given to charity, her more personal and precious items boxed up and stored in the attic for the day when Maisie and I chose how to divvy them up. But Iris had not erased my mother from the room. Far from it. A large, and now I knew firsthand, exquisitely accurate portrait of my mother dominated the room’s southern wall. I didn’t come in here often, but every time I did, I walked away feeling somehow touched by my mother’s presence.

A large easel stood in the center of the room. It held a canvas, but the canvas had been covered with a tarp. I decided to respect my aunt’s privacy. Now I wished I hadn’t so stubbornly refused taking pointers from Ellen. I really didn’t know how to proceed.

Emmet had used a combination of surprise and passion to surface the memory he had helped bring to life. I needed to get in touch with a powerful emotion, but I worried that my confused feelings about my mother’s return might color my perceptions. So nothing about my mother. Probably better to steer clear of anything about my aunts too. My mind floated over my recent history with Maisie. Too fresh. Too painful. These emotions might bulldoze over any more subtle energies.

My feet were tired. I kicked off my shoes and took a seat in an awkwardly placed armchair. For some reason, Iris had left it turned at an angle, away from the portrait of my mother, away from the easel. The only thing it faced was a bit of blank wall. A sense of familiar resentment started to rise up in me as I reflected on Ginny and her manipulations. I remembered how Ginny made me wait in the entrance hall of her house, staring at nothing but a blank wall for hours. I had dealt with it by making up stories for my own entertainment. Stories that would later serve as the backbone of my Liar’s Tour. The hall and the chair I had been forced to sit in were now both gone, burned away to nothing by the same fire that had consumed Connor. Resentment flared into anger, and then I heard voices behind me.