The Line

She surveyed me up and down slowly then said, “So you wondering why Jilo brought you here. And I am sure you are wondering where ‘here’ even is, but I tell you these are the wrong things to be wondering. What you should be asking yourself is why your people never even taught you how to defend yo’self against being taken. Why you think that is, girl? Go on, you answer Jilo.”

“I guess they thought folk would have more sense than to mess with me.” The sound of my voice shocked me. I sounded angry…no, I sounded downright pissed. Jilo laughed, a deep and hearty sound that told me she really was amused.

“That’s okay, girl. You should be mad. But you shouldn’t be mad at Mother. You should be mad at that high and mighty family of yours. They the ones who left you defenseless. Not Jilo.” Shadows formed at the edge of the room and began to advance on me, bumping up against my legs and sniffing at me like wild dogs. My instincts told me not to move.

“Back!” Jilo screamed, and the shadows scurried away and cowered in the corner. The individual gray shadows merged together, forming a single black mass.

“What are those things?” I asked and then corrected myself. “That thing?”

“That none of your concern,” she responded. “Old Ginny in the ground now. That mean Jilo wins.” She laughed her laugh that sounded like something between amusement and a death rattle.

“Did you kill her?” I demanded.

Jilo stopped laughing and leaned in close to me. “Jilo told you the spell she workin’ for you took blood.” Her eyes widened, and she began to cackle. My knees turned to jelly at the old woman’s words. If Maisie hadn’t assured me that blood was never really used in love spells, I might have collapsed completely. She winded herself with her laughter, and it took her a few moments to catch her breath. “Maybe Jilo killed the old woman, and maybe she didn’t. What you willing to sacrifice to find out?” she asked, the cat on her lap stretching and licking its phantom limb. “I’ve seen you going around town, telling your lies for money. You charge for lies. Jilo gonna charge you for the truth.”

I was relieved that she wanted something from me. The fact that I had something to offer bettered my chances of not ending up being planted at her crossroads. “I don’t have any money. At least not now. I will after my birthday. If you let me live. Me and Detective Cook’s grandfather. You let us live, and I’ll let you have everything coming to me.”

“Girl, Jilo don’t need or want your dirty Taylor money,” she said, disgusted. “And Henry is well beyond any help you can offer him.”

“Then why do you want to hurt me?” I asked.

“Jilo got no need to hurt you. Jilo got better use for you. And that is for you to let her show you the ways. Let her teach you like Ginny oughta done.”

“And what if I don’t want that?”

“Then you ain’t as smart as Jilo gave you credit for.” She paused. “And you won’t be under her protection no more.” The shadow in the corner of the room moved a foot closer, but Jilo held up her hand to stop its progress. “I know your family,” she said. “I know they secrets, things they shouldn’t be keeping secret from you. Every time you come to Jilo, she send you away with one truth. We see how much truth you can take.”

“But why are you doing this? Why would you care if I can do magic or learn my family’s secrets?”

“ ’Cause, my girl, I want to hurt them. And I want to hurt them in a way that no killin’ can. I want them to see themselves reflected in the hate shining through yo’ pretty green eyes. Once you know them the way Jilo know them, you will understand why.” Hatred carved wrinkles in her forehead and around the edges of her mouth. Her lips curled back into a hiss.

“I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t care what they’ve done,” I said.

“You say that ’cause you don’t have any idea what they done. Not just what they done to Jilo, but what they done to you. You come to me, you come to me willingly next time, and Jilo tell you what happened to your precious Ginny. Not that Jilo understand why you care what happened to her. The old one sure didn’t care about you. You decide. You come to Jilo if you want to know.

“Now to show you Jilo acting in good faith, she give you one secret for free. You go ask that fairy uncle of yours why my grandbaby walked into the river and she never come back out.” With that, Jilo snapped her fingers and the room went black. I groped along the wall, feeling for the door, and my fingers brushed over a light switch. When I flicked it on, I nearly fell back in shock. The chair was gone, and the room was no longer cyan. I was in the room of shared secrets, the linen closet on the upper floor of the house where I’d been raised. Jilo had made her point. If she could reach into our home, into the heart of my childhood, she had all the power she needed, borrowed or not.

TEN

As I rushed to my bedroom, I heard voices coming up from the ground floor. I must have been gone for hours, but apparently the post-funeral potluck was still in full swing. I locked the door behind me; it wouldn’t stand a chance at keeping Jilo out, but it might at least encourage my cousins to respect my privacy. My glowing digital alarm clock caught my eye, and I gasped out loud. Only an hour had passed since I’d first laid eyes on Adam’s grandfather at the cemetery. I wondered if magic had bent time or if my perception had been twisted by fear.

I shed the clothes I had worn to the funeral, promising myself I would burn them, and sat on the edge of my bed, more tired than I had ever felt in my life. I wondered if Jilo had “borrowed” some of my own life force to put on her little magic show for me. The urge to lie down for a few minutes hit me, and I was too tired to hit back. I scooted up onto the bed and closed my eyes.

Seconds later I opened them. To my surprise, the clock next to me revealed that two hours had passed. My skin was tingling slightly, and I felt disoriented and a little nauseated. The objects in my field of vision seemed to exist in more than one spot at a time, as if several versions of the same thing were slightly overlapping each other. Jilo had definitely stretched time a bit; my exhaustion and disorientation were signs that it was snapping itself back into shape around me. From what my family had always said, this kind of manipulation was above Jilo’s pay grade, but she had managed to get the juice from somewhere. Maybe she’d done it so that my absence from the house would go unnoticed, but more likely she’d just wanted to show me what she could do. Sometimes I really hated magic, especially since I was always on the receiving end.

I could still hear a large group of people conversing on the ground floor. Most of the nonrelated mourners would undoubtedly have made their excuses by now and headed home, but the cousins weren’t going anywhere until Ginny’s replacement, the new anchor, was selected tonight. I felt desperate for an escape, and seeing as Jilo could reach directly into my house, I figured I’d be as safe on the streets of Savannah as I was in my own room. The thought of visiting Peter flitted through my mind, but he wouldn’t be done with work for a few hours, and I didn’t want to get him in trouble with his boss.

I wanted more than anything to turn this into as normal a day as possible. It was a bit after two, plenty of time for me to get out for a while and still be back for the drawing of the lots that would determine who took over for Ginny. I’d use my window escape route to avoid the family gathering.