“But why would he have wanted to trap all this pain at Candler?”
“To keep it from wandering the streets of our fair city,” Jilo said and smiled like a cobra, her lips pulled back tightly, her eyes hard, dark, and hypnotic. “Oh, don’t you worry, missy. His motives were pure. After they closed the hospital, folk around town up and started disappearing. Little ones who’d be in they beds at sundown would be gone come sunrise. Your granddaddy tracked the things down to their home in Candler. When they closed the place, the shadows had gotten hungry and started hunting farther afield than they ever had before. Yo’ grandfather, he wove his net and walked away, never considering that he had built a pressure cooker without a safety valve. And Jilo tell you that it gonna blow, and it gonna blow soon. We be doing this town a favor by releasing the pressure little by little. Keep it from exploding and ripping the whole of Savannah clean apart.”
“Why do you need me? Why don’t you take all the energy for yourself?”
“They others who have tried, and Jilo learned from their mistakes. You think it by chance that the big tower built no more than a couple of blocks from Candler? They set up the tower where it is so that Candler’s energies could be broadcast throughout the whole damn world. But they still couldn’t get to the power, ’cause it locked by Taylor magic. It gonna take a real witch to unlock it. After all, Jilo ain’t no witch. I thought we done covered that.”
I remembered the spanking I had received after just thinking about undoing the spell. “I already tried,” I said, and Jilo’s face turned into a mask of pure panic.
“You what, you stupid girl?”
“I wanted to free the spirits trapped there, but I couldn’t. The magic is booby-trapped or something.”
Jilo calmed herself. “They no way you, armed with yo’ day pass to magic could even knock a chink into your grandfather’s wall. But your sister, when she get home, you get her to unlock it, just a little. You show her that keeping it locked up tight is dangerous, that it need to blow out a little of its steam. You get her to create the valve, and Jilo handle the rest. She will show you how to tap into the energy like a tree setting its roots into the ground. They will be plenty of power for the both of us. Jilo and you both set for life.”
I had come here to force her to break the spell she had placed on me, but now I had a bargaining tool. Of course I’d never let the old woman profit from the misery of the trapped souls inside Candler. I’d talk to Maisie all right, but only to get her to rectify the situation our grandfather had inadvertently created. Jilo didn’t have to know that.
“Break the spell. The one you placed on me, and I’ll talk to Maisie when she gets back.”
“Oh, my girl, breaking a love spell is no easy thing,” she said. “It better if we wait until Jilo has full access to her power again before she try.”
“You’re lying,” I said. “I could break it myself if I took a bit of your blood and mixed it with mine.”
Jilo rose up like an injured lioness, her head held high, her teeth exposed. “Take Jilo blood? You think you can just take Jilo blood?” She stepped away from her throne, spanning the distance between us until we stood practically nose to nose. “Oh, you is a Taylor all right. The second you get tanked up on yo’ uncle’s sweet juice you come pushing your way in, threatening Jilo. But you remember one thing, my girl. Tomorrow, this power of yours will be gone, and Jilo will be in charge again. So you stop and you consider real good before you start talking about taking anything off of Jilo.”
Deep down, I knew she was right. I had come here with the intention of using Oliver’s power to force my way if Jilo refused to cooperate. The real Mercy, the one I would have to wake up to tomorrow, knew it was wrong. I looked deep into Jilo’s eyes and said, “I’m sorry. And not because you’re going to have the upper hand again tomorrow. I’m sorry for threatening you, for even thinking about making you to do something against your will, just because for the moment I have the power to do so.”
Jilo looked back at me as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She took a few backward steps away from me. “God help this old woman, but Jilo do like you far more than she know she ought to.” She held her right hand up in the air, and a knife with a long and menacingly sharp blade appeared in front of it. “You understand what Jilo doing, she doin’ for your own good.” She swung the knife down quickly yet deftly, making a gash in her left palm. Then she pointed the knife, handle first, at me. “Go on, it your turn now.”
I reached out for the handle, bringing the blade against my own left palm. It hovered there; I was unable to bring its sharp edge to my skin. “You said you needed to mix yo’ blood with Jilo’s. You brave enough to face Jilo, you shouldn’t be scared of a little cut. I lowered the blade, slicing it into my palm. The pain was fiery and fierce, causing me to wince, but it soon faded, and I held out my palm out to Jilo. She grasped it tightly in her own, and our blood mingled, falling in heavy droplets to the earth. “Go on then, break the spell.”
I looked down at my heart, where I could still see the mottled green and red aura. I willed the spell to end, but nothing changed. The colors continued to envelop my heart—if anything, they seemed to glow even brighter. I pulled her hand nearer, placing our conjoined hands against my chest, staining my shirt and moistening the pendant with our combined blood.
Trust my instincts, Ellen had told me. And I was trusting them. I held our hands over my heart and visualized the colors fading, the spell losing its hold and evaporating. But though I sensed that I was doing the right thing, the colors stayed as vibrant as ever. I wondered if there were words I should say, a verbal spell to enhance my efforts. Jilo stood patiently still, not saying a word. My shirt was irrevocably stained, and I sensed that the cuts on our hands were coagulating, closing off.
“I don’t understand,” I finally said. “I sense that this should work. I should have been able to break the spell by mixing the blood of the one who set the spell with the blood of the one who requested it.”
Jilo calmly removed her hand from mine, and made a soft fist. When she opened it again, the wound was gone. “And that why Jilo let you try, ’cause she knew you never gonna believe her unless you try yo’self.”
“Believe what?” I asked, still feeling the pulse of pain in my own hand.
“Weeks before you showed up at Jilo’s crossroad, they was another who came to her in Colonial. That redheaded boy of yours.”
“Peter?” I asked.
“Yes. He came to Jilo. He said he was losing his pretty miss, and he was willing to do anything it took to keep that from happening. The spell was done before you ever set foot on Normandy Street, before you ever even had the idea of coming to Jilo.”
I stood there, feeling like the knife had gone straight through my heart instead of into crease of my palm. Jilo moved closer and placed her hand over my heart and closed her eyes, her lips moving wordlessly, as if in some silent prayer. As I looked on, the colors flooded away from me and into her hand. She closed her fingers around them, and when she opened her hand the spell was gone just as surely as the cut on her hand had vanished. “There, it revoked,” she said and moved heavily back toward her haint blue throne.
