Although I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the creature, I gladly lifted them and focused on its face instead. It was beautiful, and I recognized it instantly—it was the spitting image of Bernini’s David. Dark eyebrows had taken shape on the thing’s well-formed skull, and its scalp was filling in with curly black hair. After some indeterminate point in the transformation, I found myself thinking of the creature as a “he” rather than an “it.” All the same, I didn’t like the idea of being too close to him. After a few more moments had passed, he fixed his gaze on me and took a few confident steps right up to me. The cousins who had been entranced by his metamorphosis crowded in on us.
“You are Emily’s child,” he said, and it sounded as if many voices were speaking at once. Baritone and tenor, soprano and bass mixed into an unnatural wave of sound.
“One of them,” I responded, pushing my back closer to the wall. “But you are probably looking for my sister.”
He drew nearer, and I noticed that the amber in his eyes had begun to recede, whites forming around them. The cat’s eye swirl had coalesced into a large but fairly normal looking pupil. Those eyes took me in from head to toe. “Do you consider your outfit appropriate mourning attire?” The multilayered voice asked.
At that moment all my fear dissipated, and I wanted nothing more in the world than to kick him in his newly formed testicles. “Do you consider your outfit appropriate mourning attire?” I parroted, poking him in the chest with my finger. He was warm to the touch. Very warm. I pulled my hand back quickly.
“No, you are correct,” he replied, and the air around him began to shimmer. A well-tailored, single-breasted dark suit wrapped around him. Under it, a crisp white shirt and an expertly knotted tie. He had gone from Georgia dust to male model in mere minutes. “Please change into something better suited to the occasion. Something that shows respect for Ginny’s memory and for the role you will be playing in selecting her replacement. We will wait for you inside.”
“How about you go straight to hell?” I put my hands on my hips and dug my heels in.
Although the golem stood stock still, the voices burst from the golem, this time not in chorus, but like an angry debate. For a moment I thought the golem might be coming undone. Then the voices paused. “You are angry because we frightened you,” he said—they said—in a unified and reasonable baritone. “It was not our intention. It was unfortunate that you witnessed our arrival without warning.”
“And this is the point where you apologize for your bad attitude, young lady,” commanded Connor, who had drawn up near us.
I realized what the families had said through their mouthpiece was as close to an apology as I’d ever get. I wasn’t sorry, but I knew my life would be easier if I gave them what they wanted. “You’re right. I apologize,” I said, mentally adding for being scared out of my wits twice today and thinking there was a rule of one person per body. Without another word to acknowledge my apology, the golem turned from me and headed toward the front door.
“Do as he says—change into something appropriate,” Connor barked as he pushed past me. “And then meet us in the kitchen.”
ELEVEN
I ignored the request for a wardrobe change. I was not about to be bossed around by a mud pie with an attitude. When I entered the kitchen, the creature and my family were sitting around the table with a bunch of tiles spread out between them. They were the size of dominoes and all but one were white. The odd one out had been stained red. Maisie was gingerly running her finger over the red lot, fascinated but cautious, as if she expected it to deliver a shock. None of the cousins had joined us, and Jackson was nowhere to be seen. He would undoubtedly be glued to Maisie’s side if he hadn’t been purposely excluded. I wondered who had done the excluding, the rest of the family or Maisie herself.
The creature scanned me with emotionless eyes. “She is an insolent creature,” he said as I sat in the last empty chair. His voice modulated between a few different tones at first, but then seemed to settle on one.
“She sure as hell is,” Connor said.
“And that is why we love her,” Oliver said, pulling me close and planting a kiss on my cheek. “Quite a day we’re having here, huh?” he asked me.
“And you don’t know the half of it,” I responded, wondering when or even if I should ask him Jilo’s question. I turned toward the visitor. “What are we supposed to call you anyway?”
“The body does not have a name,” he responded. “The body is only a shell.” He looked at me as if he were considering a grave problem. “The child is ignorant of our ways,” the creature said, speaking about me as if I weren’t in the room. “Why have you not taught her?” My heart beat faster as I heard him echo Jilo’s words.
“She’s got no power,” Connor stated as if that explained everything.
“It is what Ginny wanted,” Iris added, a heaviness in her voice. “I always questioned the wisdom in it, but Ginny had her mind set. And I never questioned my aunt’s commitment to maintaining the line.”
I looked at Maisie, whose expression was inscrutable. With a sinking heart, I realized that she had been as much a part of Ginny’s conspiracy as the rest. “Ginny taught me,” she began. “She told me that I’d gotten all the power, and because of that, all the burden.” She looked up at me. “She told me it would be unfair to burden you with knowledge that you would never be able to use.”
“By leaving her in the dark, you have left her open to danger,” the golem said. I wondered if he were making a blanket statement or if he knew something about my dealings with Jilo.
“It’s true,” Oliver said. “But Ginny demanded that Mercy wouldn’t be taught our secrets because she wasn’t born of the power. She worried that what Mercy knew, Mercy could be forced to betray.”
“Or choose to betray,” Connor said.
“I’d never willingly betray the family,” I started to say, but the golem interrupted me.
“So you chose to leave her defenseless?” he asked.
“No, not defenseless,” Ellen said, looking around the room at everyone, even me, for corroboration. “Ginny set up protection charms for her.”
“But Ginny is gone, and with her, her charms,” the creature replied. “Which of you has renewed them?” An embarrassed silence fell over the table. Ellen grasped my hand. A tear plopped down Iris’s cheek.
Oliver gave me a guilty look. “I am so sorry, Gingersnap.”
“I’m not sure what good these charms are anyway,” I responded. “They sure didn’t help Ginny.”
“Ginny had no such charms for herself,” Iris said. “She thought she could take on any comers without them.”
“We will renew and strengthen the charms,” the golem said.
Maisie turned to address the golem. “I’ve spent my entire life training with Ginny to take over for her when the time came. I am ready to take over as anchor, and I will always protect my sister.”
“You may have chosen the power,” the creature responded, “but we will not know until tonight if the power has chosen you.” Maisie’s face betrayed her surprise—it was clear that she hadn’t seriously considered the possibility that anyone else would be chosen. He turned to Ellen. “You will see to it that Ginny’s folly is rectified. You will teach her.”