The Line (20 page)

“Connor said that you wouldn’t have enough power to free Martell on your own,” I pressed her.

“Oh do he now?” she laughed, her whole body shaking.

“Yes. He thinks you couldn’t siphon off enough power to physically transport him from one place to another.”

“But you know otherwise, don’t you?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as her mood quickly morphed from mirth to anger. “Oh don’t you worry, sweet little princess,” she hissed. “Jilo know you think she killed Ginny for yo’ little love spell, but those lily hands are clean. Jilo ain’t no fool. If they a price to pay for stealing a little bit of power, what do you think gonna happen to someone who take out an anchor? Jilo, she might be up for a skirmish with a witch or two from time to time, but they ain’t no way she taking on every last damned last one of them. Killing Ginny, whoever done that signed they own death sentence.”

I wanted to believe her, but I’d also wanted to believe Maisie. My family seemed so certain that transporting Martell was beyond anything she should be able to do. If I found out how she’d worked this particular feat, it might help me figure out the true depth of her power. Whether she really could work miracles under her own steam, or whether she was lying to me too. “But you moved him like you moved me. How do you find the power to do that unless you took it from Ginny?” I asked.

She looked me up and down, “If Jilo tell you, can she trust you not to go blabbing to your people?”

I knew she expected a lie, so I tried to take her off guard. “Of course not. I’ll tell Aunt Iris as soon as I get within earshot of her,” I responded.

My words were met with laughter. “You all right, girl.” She winked at me. “And it a good thing you tell me the truth, ’cause Jilo was gonna lie to you anyway. Someday, when you know what your people been up to, then Jilo gonna be able to trust you. And then she tell you. But for now, she gonna let you in on a little secret. Just ’cause something look the same don’t mean it is the same.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She began to move the stone between her fingers again, rippling it over and under each digit smoothly before returning it to its starting point. “I mean that what Jilo done with her gran’baby ain’t the same thing she do with you. All I had to do with Martell was bend the light around him so that no one see him. When they open the doors, he walk out on his own.”

“You made him invisible?”

“That’s right, and it don’t take no power at all to do that. Well, at least not much. There now. Jilo done hand you enough on good faith. You want the rest of what Jilo know about the day Ginny killed, you gotta give a little back. You ready for your first lesson?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am ready.” I felt nervous and distrustful, but my pulse raced at the thought of finally touching magic. Suddenly I found myself questioning my true motivation for having risked this visit with Jilo. There was no doubt that I felt guilt over Ginny’s death, but the thought of having my own magic was seductive.

The slightest smile curved on her lips. She held the stone up to me. “You see this here rock?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Good, now you look real good at it. Don’t you take your eyes off it, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

“You lookin’?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I responded again.

“Good,” she replied and then threw the stone right at me. I yelped as it bounced off my shoulder and onto the ground.

“Why are you throwing stones at me?”

“Just ’cause it felt so good to do so.” She was bent over with laughter.

“Well I am not going to stand here and let you hit me with rocks,” I spat out, turning to leave.

“Wait girl, don’t go off all mad, I didn’t hit you with no rock.” She continued laughing. “I just threw it. You did all the hitting yourself.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked. My shoulder was visibly starting to bruise. Jilo stopped laughing and walked cautiously toward me, like she was approaching a spooked animal; at that moment it wasn’t far from the truth. She reached out slowly and brushed my shoulder with one wrinkled hand. The pain disappeared, and the bruising faded before my eyes.

“There now,” she said patting me. “What that mean is that Jilo threw that rock, and she threw it at you. But you stop and think, though. You slow it down in your head. What happened?”

“You hit me with a stone,” I replied tersely.

“No, think it through. You see Jilo with the stone. You see her throw the stone at you, but what did you think when she threw it?”

I stopped and let the event run through my mind. “I thought the stone was going to hit me, and then it did.”

“That’s right. Jilo put the energy in by throwing the stone, but they ain’t no reason it had to hit you. It coulda fallen to the ground. Hell, it coulda flew cross the river. The power was Jilo’s until she threw. When that stone left her hand, the power went with it. It was you who took that energy and hit yourself with it.”

“Wait. You’re blaming me for being hurt? I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re the one who threw the stone.”

“You want to talk about right and wrong, you go to Sunday school. This ain’t about right and wrong. Someone try to hurt you, sure they doin’ wrong. But when they attack you, they are sending energy your way. Strong energy. And that energy belongs to you. You have every right to use it for your own purposes.”

“But that’s blaming the victim,” I rebutted. “You’re saying that they take the energy that’s sent toward them and then hurt themselves with it.”

“You ain’t listening, girl. It ain’t about fault. This victim you talk about, he accept the intention of the person trying to hurt him. He accept it out of fear. He accept it ’cause he don’t know he don’t have to accept it. You got to start small. You start with a stone, not a bullet,” she said and chuckled. “It take a lot more energy to stop a bullet, your own common sense should tell you that much. Now I admit, this only work if you aware of the dangers around you. Someone sneak up on you, that one thing. But when you see the danger coming head on, then you got the time to turn the energy to your advantage.”

“But if you don’t know someone’s trying to hurt you, what then?”

“Girl, the trick is paying attention. Always being aware and keeping guard on your blind spots. Jilo, she gonna show you how to do that, but it take practice. It don’t just come to you overnight. There. That your first lesson.” She turned from me and watched the river around the bend. “Sorry, you gonna have to find your own way home. Jilo got not more juice for you today.”

“But you promised me that you’d tell me everything you knew about Ginny if I came to you.”

“That may be, but I never said when I would tell you. I done told you Martell ain’t done nothing, so you go on home now. Jilo need her some time alone.”

“You promised me,” I said, feet planted firm.

“Do not make me angry, girl!” Jilo hissed. “Get movin’!”

My feet turned of their own impetus, as if they had more sense than my head did, and I had taken a few quick steps toward the cemetery path before I even registered what was happening.

“Mercy!” Jilo’s voice called out to me, and I turned in time to see her hurl a large flat river rock at my head. I felt a burst of anger, and the stone stopped in its course, hanging in midair. For a moment I sensed the rock as part of the air that was holding it, and then my rational mind said that air and rock were very different things. The stone fell to the ground in front of me. I had worked magic. Real magic. I was no longer on the outside looking in. The power may have been borrowed power, but it felt good.

“You passed, all right,” Jilo said with what I could almost have taken for respect. “I believe you came for the lesson and for the truth. You can leave without the truth. It’s your last chance.”

“No,” I responded, wondering if I was making the right choice. “Tell me what happened to Ginny.”

“All right then,” Jilo said. She produced a small string bag in her hand and dangled it in front of me. “You know what this is?” she asked.

“I guess it’s one of the juju bags you make,” I said. Jilo was famous for her spell mixtures. “You got herbs and stones and things like that in there, right?”

“Dirt,” she responded. “I got dirt in this bag.” With a wave of her hand the bag disappeared back to wherever she had drawn it from. “Dirt from the old woman’s yard.”

“But why would you have dirt from Ginny’s yard?”

“Like draws like. When Jilo do a spell for money, she take a little dirt from the bank and mix it in her juju. She do a spell for love or sex, she take it from where you young folk park your cars. She do a spell for death”—she paused, looking around us—“she take from a cemetery. But always, no matter what kind of spell she doin’, she add a sprinkle from the old woman’s yard, ’cause that where the power lie. That’s why Jilo’s juju work better than any of the others who try to do Jilo’s work. Course you gotta remember when you take from someone, like I took from Ginny, you gotta leave something in return, or what you taking loses its power.”

“But what does this have to do with Ginny’s murder?”

“Jilo do her own diggin’. Everywhere that is but the old woman’s place. She done told Jilo not to come around her place no more, and Jilo respected that. She never said nothin’ though about Jilo sending someone else to dig.”

“Martell,” I interjected.

“That’s right. I sent my Martell,” she said, shaking her head. “I sent him at sunrise, so he could dig when the sun first hit the earth. He heard the old lady yelling. He crept up to the window, and when he look in, well, he saw Ginny getting hit with a tire iron. Thing is, they weren’t nobody holding that iron. At least nobody he could see.”

“So someone was bending the light, like how you helped Martell disappear?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around it.

“Maybe. Maybe not. You gonna have to figure that out for yourself.”

“But what I don’t get is that Ginny must have known how to protect herself from whatever was attacking her. Based on what you’ve told me, she must have accepted the intention of her attacker.”

Jilo smiled like a proud teacher. “That’s right, my girl. You seeing the big picture now. Who would that old woman have accepted her death from? That’s the question you need to be askin’.” And with that I was standing by the river alone, as alone as if Jilo had never been there at all. The air was as hot and moist as a dog’s breath as I started making my way through the cemetery. A storm was brewing, and I just hoped to make it home before it broke.

TWENTY

The sky turned the orange of ripe cantaloupe, and the wind began to swirl around me, pelting me with hail. A bolt of lightning zipped overhead, followed by the peal of distant thunder. Then the clouds opened up, rain falling in buckets as the quickening lightning chased it from the sky. I must have been living right, because I managed to catch an empty taxi that had just let off a bunch of fool tourists at the gates of Bonaventure. I knew the driver, and she refused to turn the meter on. “I got a hotel pickup on Bay anyway; I’ll drop you off on my way,” she said. “Sorry about all of your family’s troubles of late.” I thanked her and forced her to take a five for an after work drink before letting her drive off.

By then the worst of the wind had blown through, and the sky had gone from sherbet to gunmetal. Even though the wind had relented, rain was still falling all around me as I tore up the steps to the front door.

“Mercy.” Jackson’s voice surprised me. I hadn’t even noticed his presence until I heard my name. He was soaked and shivering in the rain that was still whipping through the porch’s columns. His car was nowhere in sight, so he must have walked here in the storm. “I’ve been waiting for you. We need to talk.”

“Sure,” I replied. “About Maisie?”

“No. About us.” Lightning flashed around us like a strobe light with a migraine, and I wanted to be inside.

“There is no ‘us.’ ” I wanted to put a barrier between myself and the elements. I wanted to put a barrier between myself and Jackson too, but I wasn’t sure why. Had Jilo’s magic worked so completely? Thunder trampled on the lightning’s heel, with hardly a second between them. I couldn’t just leave him out here. I reached out and tried the door.

“It’s locked,” he said. “I rang a few times. No one’s home.”

I found my key and opened the door. “Let’s get you a towel,” I said and stepped into the dim foyer. I tried to switch on the lights, but nothing happened. “Looks like we’ve lost power.”

Jackson followed me inside and closed the door behind us, leaving us nearly in the dark. My eyes were slow to adjust, dazzled as they had been by the lightning. I felt him draw close to me, placing a tentative touch on my shoulder. He pulled me to him—gently at first, but with increasing urgency. I tried to extract myself, but his other hand reached for me too, and before I knew it, I was in his arms. His skin was hot beneath the chill of his wet shirt, and I could feel his heart thudding against mine. My body began to respond to his, fire building between us, but as my body’s will weakened, my conscience took over. I could not—would not—betray Maisie. I reached up to push him away, my hands pressing against the steel of his chest, his shoulders, but his mouth found mine. His tongue forced its way past my lips, and for a moment all of the old feelings were there, as sharp and as intoxicating as they had always been. My scruples deserted me. He should be mine.