The Void (Witching Savannah Book 3) (5 page)

Her eyes flashed open, and she looked up at me. I quivered when I saw the heat that burned in her lovely blue eyes. What was it I saw there? Shame? Grief? Anger? An odd blend of all three? I had achieved my goal of shaking her, and I hated myself for it.

“I know. He’s been calling out to me. Trying to get me to join him. Telling me to find a way to finish what I started.”

Abby gasped. “Sugar, you should have told me.”

Maisie’s eyes flicked to Abigail. “I’m telling you now. I’m telling you all, because I want you to know what you’re up against. You’ve been leading me to create these safe little worlds for myself, realities where I can work through my madness. But in the real world, none of us are safe,” she said, unfolding her lithe limbs without ever taking her eyes off me. She rocked up to her knees and stood. “And I am not crazy. I’m not.” She took a step toward me, almost as if she were challenging me to flee, as if she were testing me to see if I could move past my fear of her. I felt a bead of cold sweat break free and trace down my spine. I wanted to love her, but I wanted to run at the same time.

I held my ground, not so much from bravery, but as the intensity of her expression pinned me to the spot. “I know you aren’t
crazy
, but . . .”

“What then? Loony? Don’t try to lie to me.” She looked at me with one raised eyebrow. “You were a crap liar as a kid, and anchor or no, you still are.”

Iris moved past us and pretended to examine the books spread out on Maisie’s desk. I read the cautious look lurking in her eyes, and realized that she was putting herself into a better position to strike, should it be necessary to contain Maisie. Ellen, too, seemed to take note of Iris’s intention. She slid around behind me and mirrored her sister’s station on the opposite side of the room. She wasn’t capable of matching Iris’s nonchalance. She stood stock-still, small lines forming around her eyes, and she prepared herself to intervene at the first sign of trouble. Abby did not seem worried; she remained at my side, a calming force for all of us.

“No. I’m not lying to you. I don’t think you’re crazy. To me that word means a permanent state. I would say ‘unsettled’ rather than ‘crazy.’ Listen, I’m sorry. You may be ready for this, but I’m not. I thought I was, but . . .”

Maisie willed my eyes to meet hers, and a sly smile crossed her lips. “I tried to kill you, Mercy. If the shoe were on the other foot, I wouldn’t come near you again unless you were strapped tightly into a straightjacket and wearing one of those Hannibal faceplates. As a matter of fact, if one of us is crazy, it’s probably you.”

“I’m not crazy. Just hopeful.”

“Pretty much the same thing in this world,” Maisie said. “All the same, I need you to listen to me. I’ve been waiting for you to ask me how I could do what I did to you. Why I would even dream of letting a demon harm my little sister. You’re afraid to ask, but I need to tell you why, and you need to hear it.”

“I know why,” I said, the words coming out wrapped in razor-sharp barbs. My impulse to flee having been thwarted, the need to fight brought fire to my heart. “You wanted power, and you would do anything,
anything
to get it.” I heard the anger in my voice, and damn it, I wanted to make sure Maisie heard it too. “You wanted Peter.” I nearly spat my husband’s name at her. “And you weren’t going to let anyone stand in your way. Even me, your own sister.”

She went nearly limp, looking like a puppet on a slack string. She stepped back as tears fell from her eyes. “No. You’re wrong. At the time, I thought it was true, but I was split. There was the part of me that covered up Ginny’s murder. The part of me that plotted against you, but then there was another part. One that watched on in horror. That part did things to try to warn you. She . . . I tried to tell you in a thousand little ways. Tried to warn you not to trust me, but you never caught on.”

“Because I trusted you more than anyone else. You were my center.” I couldn’t bear to look at her; I had to look away.

“And I betrayed you in the most heinous way.” She stepped forward again, but this time I knew it was not a challenge. It was a plea for forgiveness. She took my hand, causing me to focus again on her face. I felt Iris tense on the periphery.

I drew a deep breath. “At the end. When you tried to stop. Was it because you realized you couldn’t kill me, or because you learned I was carrying Peter’s child?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It wasn’t for either of those reasons, even though”—her words rushed ahead—“it was for both.” She released me and pressed both hands against her temples. She gritted her teeth and whined as if she were in pain. She stopped and took a few breaths, lowering her hands. “It gets so confusing.” She tilted her head, a crease forming between her brows. “Hear me, Mercy. I’m not trying to excuse myself. I am not trying to rationalize my actions. I know what I did was monstrous.” I watche
d her face wash over with horror, her eyes widening and her lips trembling. I knew she was reliving the event in her mind. “When they got to the point where the anchor energy was to settle on me, I heard a voice.” Her eyes focused back on mine. “I couldn’t say if it was a man’s or a woman’s.”

“What did it say?” I leaned in and clasped both her hands in mine.

“That I’d done enough. I’d done everything it needed me to do. Then I was gone.”

“You believe there was a force compelling you to act as you did?”

She pulled her hands back and crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself. “No. It wasn’t like with Uncle Oliver. I hadn’t been forced to behave as I did. I did everything,
everything
”—she emphasized the word—“
willingly. Just not for the reasons everyone, including myself, thought I had. It was like I had been playing the role of the villain until that moment. Somehow doing wrong had been the right thing to do, like I was acting out a necessary part. When the line took me, it freed me. The real me was free.” Her eyes bored into me. “I can’t explain it, but I know.” Her hand balled into a fist and she pounded on her heart. “I know in here I never would have harmed you. I would never have gone all the way through with it. Never.”

Abby stepped between us and put her arms around Maisie. “I think that’s enough for tonight.”

“Yes,” Iris said. “I concur.” She took my arm and escorted me to the door. She began to speak, but then gave a curt nod toward Abby. Abby’s eyes closed, and she nodded in kind. I didn’t understand the silent conversation that had passed between them, but I struggled to stop Iris from dragging me through the door.

There had been forces working against my sister and me, trying to pull us apart even before we had been born. I freed myself from Iris’s grasp and rushed back to Maisie. I pulled her from Abby’s arms and into mine. She looked up at me in total surprise. “I believe you,” I said and placed a kiss on her cheek. “I don’t forgive you. Not really. Not yet. But I do believe you.” A sigh escaped her, and she leaned her head on my shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. Find a way to work through it.”

She lifted her head and looked at me with the first smile I’d seen on her in forever. Perhaps the first genuine smile of her life. “Yes,” she said. “I do believe we will.”

FIVE

I startled awake. In my nightmare, Old Rex had come to life and was chasing a woman as if she were a gazelle in the African savannah. Then that woman was me. He wore me down, circled me until he was ready to pounce. Ready to rip me limb from limb. It was just a dream, and a silly one at that, but I would have liked to find my husband by my side when I awoke. No such luck.

Enough
, I thought to myself. Enough of being a selfish little girl. Peter was up and out early for good reason. He had met a commercial real estate agent at the bar last night and had come home with a new scheme of opening up another Magh Meall over near the beach on Tybee. He and George, the agent, had an early appointment to scout out available properties. He hadn’t sprung his idea on his parents yet, but honestly, the way he explained it, it didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world. If he was willing to go into business with his parents, maybe he would extend the same courtesy to his wife and let me become an investor. Of course, Colin and Claire might have other ideas about it, but part of me really enjoyed the thought of Peter and me having a dream we could build together, just as his parents had.

The radio had nothing new to say about the torso found near the Cotton Exchange, but it did tell me our warm streak was going to continue. We were in for another hot one. I should have settled on one of Peter’s T-shirts and elastic-waisted shorts as I was bound to spend the day as Iris’s sous-chef, or scullery maid, depending on her mood and how well preparations for tomorrow were coming along. Yes, my good sense told me to dress casually, but for some reason I felt more of a need to feel pretty than I had for a while. Thumbing my nose at good sense, I chose another of Ellen’s purchases, a pretty blue floral V-neck cotton dress with a fitted empire line. I sat before my mirror and made a bit more of an effort this morning than I had of late with my hair. “There, you look nice,” I said to my plump-faced reflection. I nodded at myself to confirm the compliment. I was debating if I was really going to go all out and put on makeup when the doorbell rang.

I figured Iris would grab it, as she would probably be up and around early, especially since Sam hadn’t slept over last night. I found my favorite training shoes and laced them up. They didn’t really add to the outfit, but I had to balance pretty with practical. The bell sounded again. And again.

“I’ll get it,” I said to myself and hoisted myself from my chair, not an easy feat of late. I shuffled down the hall, and made my way cautiously down the stairs. The bell rang again.
I’m coming. The pregnant lady is moving as fast as she can.
I opened the door, and the sight of two well-dressed strangers led me to think I was about to be offered a copy of
The Watchtower
.

“Mercy.” The voice was familiar, but I was completely taken aback by the sight of Martell Burke, Jilo’s great-grandson.

Martell’s typical teenage swagger and dress had been replaced, at least for the moment, by a neat black suit and tie and a sense of duty. I think I surprised him when I pulled him over the threshold and into a tight embrace. “You clean up pretty nice, there. I didn’t even recognize you at first.” He flashed me a smile, the first I’d ever seen on his normally too-cool-to-care face. I took a step back to take him in. The light in his eyes as he smiled reminded me of Jilo, and I reached out again to squeeze his hand.

“Who is it?” Iris asked, and I turned to see her approaching, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. “Martell,” Iris squealed in obvious delight. “Look at how handsome you are.” Martell smiled as Iris fawned over him. Iris planted a kiss on his cheek.

Someone cleared their throat, and only then did I remember Martell’s companion. The smile slid from Martell’s lips. “This is my cousin, Jessamine,” he said and stepped aside. She waited just beyond the threshold. The tilt of her head, the illumination of the morning sun, and the way the doorway framed her colluded to make me think of an Andrew Wyeth painting. She was exquisite, breathtaking, a beauty so great it could only inspire devotion or the darkest of envy. Café au lait skin and cerulean eyes, auburn hair a shade nearly as vibrant as my own. She stood before me, her stance regal, her elegant neck bent so that her head rested at an inquisitive angle.

“Please come in,” Iris said. “Please.”

Jessamine entered our home like she was stepping into a carnival haunted house. She looked side to side, surveying the entry, the sitting room on its left, and the library that lay to its right as if she were expecting someone to jump out at her from the shadows at any moment.

She said nothing, and the situation grew awkward. “Pleased to meet you.” I held out my hand. She did not take it.

She remained silent, merely standing before me and looking me over. Finally she felt moved to speak. “So you’re the one Auntie Jilo was so mad for?” She watched me coolly for my reaction.

“The feeling was more than mutual. I was pretty crazy about her too.” I smiled, hoping to see a bit of warmth creep into her lovely eyes. Nothing. “I loved her, actually.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” Iris said and motioned toward the sitting room we really only used when we had guests. Guests Iris was not sure she wanted to welcome any farther into the house, that is. I wasn’t even sure Iris herself was aware she used the sitting room as a buffer. Jessamine took no notice of Iris’s directions, turning instead to the right and heading into the library. Martell shrugged and went to the sitting room, leaving my aunt and me to follow Jessamine.

We found her standing before my grandmother’s portrait that hung over the mantel. She examined it minutely, reaching up and holding her fingers a mere hair from the canvas.

“Adeline Taylor, my mother,” Iris said proudly.

Jessamine pulled her hand back quickly as if she’d touched a flame. “She was a beauty.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Iris. “You resemble her.”

“Thank you,” Iris said and smiled. “I’d like to think so, but she had a certain grace I fear I lack.”

Jessamine turned fully toward us. “Your father must have loved her very much.” She cast a look back at the portrait. “That face could cause a man to lose himself.”

Something in her words riled me, but Iris’s eyes crinkled in pleasure. “Well, I don’t think Daddy lost himself, but he did lose his heart.”

“Perhaps we should join Martell?” I found Jessamine’s overt fascination with my grandmother’s portrait a bit disconcerting.

“This was your father’s desk?” Jessamine disregarded me and swept her index finger over the desktop, as if she were checking for dust.

“Yes, and his father’s before that. It has very little value as an anti
que, but it holds a lot of sentimental value for his children.”

“His children,” Jessamine echoed.

It wasn’t quite a question, but Iris felt compelled to respond anyway. “Yes, of course. Ellen and myself. And our brother, Oliver, of course.” She hadn’t included my mother. I understood.

“Were you close to your grandparents?” she asked, addressing me.

“Close?” I considered her question. I didn’t like her demeanor, and she was getting a little too personal, a little too quickly. Still, she benefited in my sight from being related to Jilo, so I answered. “They seem so blurry to me. I do remember one time when I was playing outside on the porch, watching Grandma work in the flowerbeds, then turning and pressing my nose up against the window. Grandpa was smoking his pipe and reading a paper.” I could see my grandfather’s kind face looking out at me and smell the faint scent of cherry pipe tobacco.

“Darling, what are you talking about?” Iris looked at me like I was a natural born fool. “Your grandparents passed before you were even thought of.”

A wave of confusion washed over me. “Of course they did.” I knew that. I did. So how could I have been imprinted with such a clear memory?

“You must have heard our stories about them and imagined one as your own recollection.” That, or maybe as a child I’d somehow managed to shake loose memories of them that had been imprinted on our surroundings. But no, that type of experience felt more like watching a movie, a three-dimensional movie, but a movie all the same. My “memory” of my grandparents felt as real to me as anything else from my childhood.

I struggled with the odd sensation of recollecting something I couldn’t possibly have experienced, but Jessamine had already moved on. She crossed the room, her determined footsteps muffled by the same Persian rug where my grandmother had once stood. She picked up a photo of my grandfather, fishing pole in one hand, the other resting on an eight-year-old Oliver’s shoulder. Grandpa hadn’t faced the camera in this shot. Instead, he focused, his eyes full of pride and love, on his only son. I didn’t know who took the picture. I assumed my grandmother had. Probably, as Oliver was beaming, his eyes turned up at the photographer rather than the lens. The picture had captured a truly magical moment, and I had always adored it.

Jessamine scrutinized it, holding it out at arm’s length. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she looked down her nose at the picture, like she was viewing something distasteful. “They passed together, didn’t they?” She set the picture down carelessly, letting it fall over face-forward.

Iris smiled nervously at me and rushed over to right the photo. “Yes.” Iris angled the photo into its previous position. Jessamine watched her with an expectant expression. “An auto accident.”

Jessamine’s eyes widened and the corner of her mouth turned up. “Your family seems to be especially susceptible to auto
accidents
.” She trailed the back of her hand across the headrest of a wingback chair. She blinked slowly and turned her gaze to me. “Perhaps you should invest in a defensive driving course.”

“Perhaps you should tell us why you’ve come?” Ellen said, having entered the room with Martell in tow. Ellen’s face was flushed. She regarded our guest through partially closed lids. Everything on my grandfather’s desk shook and rattled. The table next to Jessamine began to vibrate and lurched an inch toward her. Jessamine cast a nervous glance at the table and stepped back. She had picked the wrong topic to make light of.

Ellen strode up to Jessamine, but Martell made a huffing sound and quickly insinuated himself between his cousin and my aunt. “Someone was messing around Gramma’s grave last night,” Martell said. The shaking stopped, and the room fell silent.

“What do you mean ‘messing around’?” Iris asked, her face blanching.

“Doing magic,” Martell responded. To him, I’m sure it seemed a complete answer, but he had no idea how imprecise a statement he had made. In response to our blank stares, he reached into his jacket and pulled out his cell. “Here, look,” he said and pulled up a photo of Jilo’s grave. I took it from his hand and expanded the picture, taking in the deserted talismans and sigils drawn on her stone and the surrounding plots. I held the phone out to my aunt, and Iris swiped it from me.

Jessamine pushed around Martell, even though she hadn’t fully regained her composure. Her shoulders slumped forward and a bead of sweat rode her upper lip. “Someone—” Her voice broke. “Someone has been attempting a resurrection spell.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Ellen said, and I turned to face her. “Jilo’s been gone too long.” She shook her head. “Resurrections are difficult enough, and by that I mean close to impossible, even when the body is young and healthy.” Her forehead creased. “And fresh. I’m sorry”—she looked to Martell and Jessamine—“but Jilo was too old, and she had taken on too much.” Ellen paused. I knew she was thinking about the toxic magic of blood and sex my mother had collected in Tillandsia. The poison Jilo had willingly taken into herself to save the people of the city she had loved. Ellen stopped just short of sharing this bit of information with Jilo’s family. “More than a matter of minutes is too long. The brain, the internal organs, they shut down,” she continued quickly, trying to cover the lost beat. “The body might be reanimated, but you could never achieve a true resurrection. Let me see that.” Iris handed the phone to her sister. Ellen moved her hand around the screen, examining the remnants of magic. “No. This is not any kind of resurrection spell.”

“No, it isn’t,” Iris concurred and crossed to the shelves that lined the room’s western wall. “But I’ve seen one of the sigils, the big one, before. Could you forward the pictures to me?” she asked Martell, but never waited for a reply. Instead she crossed the room and pulled a heavy leather-bound book from a shelf. Its weight caused her to struggle a bit as she carried it to the desk. She opened the book and held her left hand over the pages. “Show me,” she said, and the pages flipped forward. W
hen they stopped, Iris reached out to Ellen, who placed Martell’s phone onto her upturned palm. “Come,” sh
e said to Jessamine. “Look at this. It’s used as part of a possession spell.”

Jessamine went to the desk and bent over the dusty volume. “A possession spell?”

Iris nodded without looking away from the page. “Also known as a ‘berserker’ spell. It used to be fairly common, at least in connection with battles. Soldiers would use it to invite the spirits of the great warriors or even animal totems to possess them. The other signs, they don’t fit in, but I’m sure whoever disturbed Jilo’s grave was not trying to molest her.” Iris handed the phone to Jessamine, then pulled her hand quickly back like she’d been shocked. The women’s eyes locked—Iris’s widened while Jessamine’s flashed at first in surprise, then glinted with a trace of malice. Something had passed between the two women. Iris’s psychometry had betrayed something I didn’t think Jessamine had planned to divulge, but somehow this revelation had changed the balance of power between the two. Jessamine shook off any sign of insecurity, while Iris looked wounded.