The Void (Witching Savannah Book 3) (28 page)

THIRTY-SIX

Next to the statue of Corinne Lawton is an empty seat, expressing her family’s sentiment that Corinne’s fate in the afterlife would depend on a conversation between her and God. Corinne had been born into one of Savannah’s leading families, and spent many years as a patron of the arts. Long after the point when most women of her age had already married, Corinne fled to Italy, where she finally found her true love, an Italian painter. Upon learning of the impending nuptials, her family followed Corinne to Italy and forced her to return to Savannah. They found a “suitable” husband for her, and so her wedding was planned.

On the morning she was to marry the man her family had chosen, Corinne’s body was found floating in the Savannah River, her wedding gown billowing up around her.

Her memorial is replete with imagery, not expressing her family’s grief and regret as one might expect, but instead seeking to demonstrate how Corinne’s death had been her own fault; they had done all they could to bring her back to a respectable life.

The rejected headdress she was to wear in her wedding lies at her feet, and her back is toward the cross and the archway that, for them, symbolized the gate of paradise. The outrageous audacity many people can demonstrate, believing themselves to be the arbiters of the will of the ineffable’s secret heart.

I doubted if Emmet knew the significance of where he sat, or he might not have become so accustomed to plopping down there. Then again, knowing Emmet, he might have taken great delight in keeping God’s seat warm. “So tell me,” Emmet said as he joined Corinne, “what lies did you tell about this lovely lady?”

Truth was Corinne counted among the few of Savannah’s historical figures whom I had not maligned in one way or another during my years leading the Liar’s Tour. I had felt a kinship for the fallen bride, no, more than that, a sisterhood, that prevented me from making Corinne a target. Emmet reached up and placed his palm against the cool marble, caressing Corrine’s cheek, then folded his hands in his lap and waited for me to answer.

“Corinne’s story is sad enough as it is without tossing lies on top of it.”

“I’d say that is true of the lives of most people.” His face lost all animation, taking on its own stone-like and inscrutable expression. “Your family is having their annual picnic today, you know. The one you told me you enjoyed so.”

Yes, I had loved the feel of the hot sun, the smell of the grass, the shade from the live oaks, the sips of champagne Oliver always sneaked me when Iris pretended not to be watching.

The enjoyment of these things was no longer possible for me, as even though Mercy Taylor’s memories lived on in me, I was not Mercy Taylor. I was the line. Of course I had known the Taylors would gather today in Forsyth. The only Fourth the family had ever missed was the one following Ginny’s death.

My desire to see the family had been so intense, it overwhelmed my better sense. I rationalized I deserved one last look, a chance to see them together and happy one last time. That Colin saw me and seemed to recognize me told me this was indeed the last time I’d dare give in to the temptation.

“I too have been invited.” Emmet looked at Corinne. “Perhaps if you would consider being my date? No?” Emmet’s lips tried to curve up into a smile, but the effort faded the second he turned back to me. “The others haven’t picked up on the little tweaks you’ve made to the flow of time, but they have noticed you’ve shifted the boundaries of the line further out.”

I nodded. It was true. I shifted the edge of protection out to include the realm of the Fae. I couldn’t undo the horrors perpetuated against the Fae by the witches who created the line, but I could make sure that now the Fae enjoyed equal protection. Of course, my actions were not entirely noble. I had done what I did for Mercy’s sake. Now Colin need never face losing his father, even if Peter did again learn of his parentage. There would be no more changelings causing heartbreak on both sides of the divide. There no longer was a divide. The realm of the Fae and of mankind might not be one, but now they were close enough.

I was about to answer Emmet, to explain why I had done as I had, when he threw his hands over his face. “How could you? How could you leave me and not take your memory with you?” Emmet said and began rocking back and forth. “Even Emily you have granted peace through true death.” He looked upon Emily’s demise as a boon. To me it had been the only option. The woman had used her magic to draw the line into human form. A form she nurtured in her own womb in anticipation of the day she could bring about my demise. She had declared war on me and all those I had loved. Had sending her once and for all to her grave been self-defense, a casualty of war, or murderous revenge? Maybe a bit of each. God would be my judge. Emmet shook his fist in the air. “You grant her peace, but me you have deserted, leaving me with nothing but this pain, this sense of loss that will never fade.”

“I haven’t left you. Not really. And your pain will fade. All pain does in time.”

He pulled back his hands from his eyes and looked at me. “You lie.” He stood up and drew closer. He reached out for me, letting his hand pass cleanly through. “Why did you not steal my memory of you? You did it for the others. Why did you leave me the sole person to feel your absence? I am left with nothing but grief, and I cannot even share it with those who loved you.” His fists clenched at his sides. “They don’t even remember loving you. For them, you never existed.”

That he still saw me in Mercy’s form made acceptance harder for him. Over time I would have to change my image so he could find a way to let go. That change would not come easily, for either of us. I had spent millennia simply as the line, but the two decades I’d spent as Mercy Taylor felt more real to me than the thousands of years before Mercy. I had lost a friend; I had lost myself.

Heavy tears fell from his eyes, mixing themselves with the sandy soil at the base of the monument. “For everyone else, you spin pretty lies.” For the first time, I heard anger in his voice. The lives I’d created for those Mercy loved were not lies, only alternative truths. Were it possible for their reality to be observed from the outside, the observer would perceive the still-healing cuts and grafts I had made. Sooner or later, though, all wounds would heal, and the history I had written for them, this chance for happiness I could afford them, would live on as the only story they had ever known. “For me, you leave nothing. Nothing but this void.” He pounded his chest with his fist.

“Mercy never did exist. Not really.”

“Mercy did exist.” His voice boomed with a desperate rage. “You did exist.” He trembled before me. “I know you existed, because I loved you.”

I reached for him, but stayed my hand, realizing its impalpable touch might bring him even greater distress. His eyes flashed first with anger, then dimmed with an utter lack of hope. He wiped away his tears.

I had forced Emmet to share my sacrifice. I didn’t have a choice. “The line must have its anchor. There wasn’t a single pure heart among my former anchors, and yours was the purest heart I knew.”

“And so”—his voice turned gravelly—“I am to be punished throughout eternity for my ‘pure’ heart.” He kept his eyes averted, focusing on the sandy gray soil at the base of the monument.

I had thought myself past the ability to feel pain. I guess I was wrong. At the end, I trusted Emmet more than anyone else on earth; that was why I had chosen him as the final anchor. He would never age, never die, as long as the line existed. He had wanted eternity with me; this was the closest to that I could give him. I had chosen Emmet as my anchor, for he had more than proven himself as my rock. Anchor might not have been the role he had wanted, but it was the only part I had left for any man to play. Words alone would never allow him to understand, but his heart would someday come to realize that in his own unlucky way, he
had
gotten the girl.

For a moment I thought he had settled, but suddenly he lunged at me. “No. I will not accept this,” he said, his face nearly wild, shining with newfound determination. “You ask me to understand. You ask me to accept.” He came so close to me, I could feel his hot breath on me. It was the closest thing I had experienced to a true physical sensation since remembering my true nature. “My answer is no. I will not accept. You are not simply the line, and Mercy was not just a trick Emily played on the world. I will not accept that you, Mercy, never existed. You may be the line, but you are also Mercy. Mercy Taylor. And I will not accept that you, Mercy, are gone.” He repeated the name like an invocation, as if mere repetition could bring her back. His passion was so great, so white hot, that for a moment I almost felt Mercy rise again in the physical world, but no, I knew that to be impossible.

He reached for me, tried to pull me into his embrace, but he tumbled forward as he passed right through me, his knees grinding into the gritty soil. He fell to his hands and knees, nearly howling from his sense of loss. I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t comfort him. I hovered near him, willing, praying, that his heart would heal and heal quickly.

Emmet forced himself up and, stumbling backward, returned to Corinne’s side. He sat some moments and quieted himself. When he could finally bring himself to look my way, his black eyes burned. “Somehow. Someday. I will find a way. I will bring you back. I will bring you back to this world. I will bring you back to your son. And I will bring you back to me.”

He spoke of the impossible, but his devotion touched my consciousness deeply, reaching all the way down to the sacred place that had once been Mercy. Reaching all the way down to the part of me that still believed it might again be possible to
be
Mercy. In that instant, and only for that instant, she managed to push through. I offered her no resistance. Far from it, I welcomed her. For one last brief moment, Mercy Taylor lived again. She wanted so badly to comfort Emmet, to touch him and to let him feel her touch, that somehow and against all probability, she did. Anyone watching might have thought a breeze off the river had blown in to tousle his lengthening curls, but Emmet, Mercy, and I, we all knew better. It hadn’t been the wind at all.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Two straight weeks of ninety-eight degrees and ninety-nine percent humidity. It was crazy-making weather, and the people of Savannah had begun to snap. Twelve assaults and three murders in forty-eight hours. Adam felt sure that the strain on the power grid that knocked out folks’ air-conditioning had been a conspirator in at least one of the deaths.

“We’re too soft, too spoiled,” he said to a uniformed officer as they left the site of that crime. “We lose a little bit of comfort, and we go off our heads and start killing people.” He felt a tad hypocritical as he cranked the patrol car’s air up to high.

“Maybe, but damn,” the officer replied, “it’s like walking in dog’s breath out there.”

Adam experienced a slight jolt, a memory almost rising but then falling away, lost just beyond his ability to recall. Someone he once knew used to say that, but he would be damned if he could remember who.
Sucks getting old
, he thought to himself. He checked his watch. Three thirty. He had time to file his report and make it over to the Taylors’ place in time. If Savannah’s citizens could manage not to kill each other for a few more hours, he might just be able to enjoy Jordan’s party.

Grace had originally wanted to hold the event at a fancy restaurant, but Jordan had stepped forward and said he wanted something much more simple. Adam’s wallet had given a sigh of relief. Things had taken a truly odd twist, though, when Iris volunteered to host the get-together, and Grace had agreed. Adam knew happy endings were at least in theory possible, but he had never even let himself begin to hope that Grace’s family and Oliver’s people would not only declare a truce, but start making nice. Of course, it helped that, truth be told, they were all really one big family. Right now, it looked like they might end up as one big happy family, but Adam didn’t feel it was safe to relax just yet. It was still early days, he reminded himself.

Precisely at five, he moved the marker next to his name to show he was off duty. Other municipalities had long since moved over to electronic sign-ins, but Adam appreciated the old name board. Savannah could be infuriatingly slow and resistant to change, but sometimes that reticence seemed like a good thing.

Outside the station, the sky had turned the color of polished steel. Rumbles from distant thunder suggested one hell of a boomer. An enormous streak of lightning ripped apart the sky. Adam’s sense of direction told him that it must have hit somewhere in the no-man’s-land off Randolph Street, near where Normandy Street petered out, north of the cemetery and west of the golf course. He braced himself for a massive clap of thunder, but none came. In fact the world seemed somehow hushed, lying silent in expectation. Another flash lit up the sky, and Adam would have sworn under oath that the bolt had hit in the exact same spot, but again no sound followed it. His skin tingled, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He reached up and wiped the odd sensation away, then bounded across the parking lot to his own car, diving in before he might witness a third strike.

On a nice day, he would have walked. The Taylor house was well within walking distance of the station, but he didn’t want to risk it in this weather. Yeah, it was the weather setting him on edge, not the deepening conviction that this silent lightning was somehow otherworldly in origin.

He pulled up to the house and parked in the street so the driveway would be clear for the other guests.
He killed the ignition and applied the emergency brake.
He scanned the horizon, and the look of the sky continued to disquiet him. It had turned darker, somehow shinier, like it had been carved from a huge chunk of hematite. Another flash. His internal barometer was telling him that the pressure building up out there had little if anything to do with the natural atmosphere.
He got out of the car and was instantly buffeted by a tingling current that filled the air.
Well, if this weirdness was due to magic, he was certainly at the right place to find out what was going on.

He took quick steps at first, but then his speed caused him to feel embarrassed and cowardly. He slowed his pace and circled around the house to the kitchen’s entrance. He didn’t bother to knock. He was past that point now; he was family.

He stepped over the threshold to find the usually inhabited room entirely empty. “Hello?” he called. Iris’s best china and polished silver sat on the counter. In spite of the weirdness he felt while on the other side of the door, Adam smiled. It made Adam feel good that Iris was offering the best she had to honor his son. The Taylor women had been busy; the table was covered with various delectable-looking baked goods. He grabbed a cookie on his way past the table, and pushed through the swinging door into the hall.

“Oliver?” he called out. “Iris?” The entire house shook, rattled by the thunder that had until that moment held its peace. It was like the sound of the strikes he had witnessed had held off commenting until that very moment, when they could do so as one. Adam jumped and dropped his cookie. “Damn,” he said and swiped the cookie off the floor. It wasn’t like him to be so jittery.

The rage of the thunder had left him momentarily deaf to any sound other than the ringing of his own ears, but soon another sound, a furious cry, broke through. Adam made his way down the hall to the foot of the stairs. He heard voices coming from above, the loudest of which was baby Colin’s. Another ear-piercing screech followed by the lower sounds of Iris’s and Ellen’s voices.

He shoved the cookie into his coat pocket and made his way upstairs. The nursery lay near the end of the long upper floor, toward the right. He followed the cacophony of the baby’s cries. As he neared, he heard the sound of Ellen’s attempts to console the little guy.

He came up to the door and stood in the threshold. Poor Maisie sat hunched over sobbing in the nursing chair. Iris knelt beside her trying to calm her as Ellen carried Colin around, patting his back and doing her best to console him.

“He teething?” Adam asked, causing the women to turn quickly toward him.

“No,” Iris said, her hand still resting on Maisie’s back. “We aren’t sure quite what’s wrong with him.”

“He isn’t sick,” Ellen said, just before the child let out another shriek.

“Mama,” Colin cried, and began trying to wrestle himself from Ellen’s arms. She clutched him more tightly, but the boy wanted his freedom. She returned him to his crib, where he pulled himself up. He regarded Adam with a red face and wet angry eyes.

Adam entered and placed his hand on Colin’s head. “What is it, little man?”

Maisie looked up, dark circles under her pained eyes. “He keeps calling for me, but every time I come near him, he starts screaming bloody murder. I don’t know what to do.”

Iris began rubbing large circles on her niece’s back. “There, there. We will figure out what is wrong.”

“Mama,” Colin said and reached up to tug Adam’s hand off his head.

“Do you think it may have something to do with this weather? I don’t know if y’all have been outside, but there is something really weird in the air out there.” As if it meant to punctuate his point, another flash of lightning lit up the window. Colin let loose with another wild shriek.

Ellen came and placed her hand on Adam’s forearm. “It isn’t the weather causing his distress,” she said and paused for a clap of thunder. “It’s his distress causing this weather.”

“Okay,” Adam heard himself saying. Every time he thought he had adjusted to all this witch stuff, every time he thought he had grown inured to the strangeness, the Taylors always managed to whip out one more little surprise. Adam’s phone rang, and he startled. He felt a flush of anger rush through himself. He hated showing his nerves, especially in front of women he had vowed to protect. He looked at the caller ID; it was the station.

He answered it on the second ring. “Cook.”

“Hey, Detective,” the voice on the other end said. It was Miriam, one of his favorite uniformed officers. “I am so sorry to disturb you, I know you are off duty, and this is a big night for you and your boy—”

“What is it, Miriam?” he asked, feeling for all the world like he had just had a lifeline to normality tossed to him. He clutched on to it like a drowning man.

“Can you meet me over at the hospital? We picked up a young woman a few minutes ago. She was wandering around naked and confused.”

“Drug-addled young people are hardly a novelty in Chatham County, Miriam.”

“Of course, Detective, I know that. Only I don’t think this girl is on anything. It’s more like she has been in an accident or something.”

He looked down at his watch. “No, my son’s party starts in less than an hour. I can’t make it right now.”
Something struck him as odd. The baby who had been screaming at the top of his lungs had now fallen silent, and was sitting in his crib paying what seemed like very close attention to his phone call. “Why are you calling me about this?”

“Well, when we picked her up over off Randolph—”

“I’m sorry, where?”

“Randolph,” the officer repeated. “Not too far from the Baptist Center. When we picked her up, she asked for you.”

“She asked for me?”

“Yes, sir,” Miriam said; then Adam could hear the sound of the officer conferring with either a doctor or nurse at the emergency room.

“Who is she? What’s her name?”

“She said her name is Mercy. She said you will know her.”

“I’ll be right there.” Adam hung up the phone, never taking his eyes off Colin, who now sat before him cooing happily and clapping his hands.

“Mama,” the child said and giggled.

“Something has come up,” he said. Conflicting sets of memories began to fight it out in Adam’s mind. Somehow, he did know this Mercy, but somehow he knew the world in which he had known her was a very different place from where he now stood. A sense of free fall, the sight of the ground rushing up beneath him gave way to a sense of being caught.
Mercy
, the name acted like a key, unlocking parts of him that had ceased to exist. He tore his eyes away from the baby and focused on the women. “Tell Jordan and Oliver I will be back as soon as possible.” He knew Grace would be furious with him, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. “This is an emergency. I’ve got to see to it,” he said, backing up. The sky beyond the window caught his eye. In a mere instant it had changed from steel to cerulean. No, that’s not the name he knew that color by. He knew it as “haint blue.”