“Schrödinger,” it said, and then wound back off into the darkness. I was puzzled at first by the one-word message, but then I understood. Like the cat in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, Maisie was frozen in a place where the possibilities were limitless. The line had locked her in a state of flux, like some kind of sleeping beauty awaiting rescue. I felt my sister’s presence. The line had encased her in a sense of awe, a sense of wonder—she was lost in a sense of ecstasy very much like what I had felt when the power of the line first settled on me. The ringing lessened. The sphere began to dim, and then it unfolded, circle by circle, line by line. I stood again in Jilo’s chamber, the Tree of Life now nothing more than a chalk drawing beneath my feet. Oliver was knocking back scotch straight from the bottle.
“You did it,” he said, his face flushed. “You opened the Akashic records, kid. The universal knowledge of every event that ever has occurred and ever will occur in all of its squiggly and mutable glory. You got a peek into God’s very own diary.” Another swig. “I’d always heard the right witch could.”
“Wait,” I said, trying to clear my head. “You’ve never done anything like this before?”
“Of course not,” he said with a sad smile curling his lips. “The records won’t open for just anyone. I’ve never met a witch for whom they would. I knew it, though. I knew if anyone could access them, it would be you.” We had used the rest of Maisie’s flames in this experiment. What if it hadn’t paid off? I halfway wanted to throttle him, and I more than halfway expected Jilo to beat me to the punch, but when I turned to look at her, what I saw surprised me.
She was trembling, her eyes focused on something far away. I crossed over to her and took her hand. She jerked awake from her reverie, her eyes full of panic and sorrow. “I have seen it now,” she said, her voice soft. “I have done wrong. I have worked evil in this world,” her words called out to ears other than mine, begging for absolution. “You have to go. You both have to go,” she said, waving her arms, shooing us away like noisome children. Haint blue burst like a bubble around us, and in an instant Jilo and her world had gone, leaving Oliver and me standing in our own garden. Oliver was still clutching the bottle of scotch. As he took another swig, the empty Ball jar fell from nowhere and shattered at his feet.
NINE
Iris knelt beside the flowerbed closest to the sundial, making a great show of deadheading flowers that in truth had not even begun to fade and pulling out the sparse weeds that had managed to take root under her vigilant care. The sunhat she wore had belonged to my grandmother, and, combined with the soiled floral-print gardening gloves she had on, it enhanced the more than casual resemblance that old photographs showed she bore to her. My aunt had not been the least surprised by our sudden arrival. “How did it go?” she asked as if we had just returned from a trip to the grocery store. “You can speak freely,” she said, pointing to a large crystal, the biggest rose quartz I’d ever laid eyes on, that had been placed in the flowerbed, apparently as decoration. As she spoke, the quartz gave off a faint glow.
“What’s that?” I asked, drawing cautiously toward it.
“That, my dear,” Oliver said, “is a little charm your Aunt Ellen came up with for us.”
“Okay, but what does it do?”
“It keeps the families from being able to listen in on us, or spy on us with remote viewing. She’s planting one in every room in the house. She’ll join us when she has finished.” We had no definitive proof that we were under surveillance, but when the families convened to discuss managing me and my access to power, they seemed very certain of details none of us had discussed with them. Even conversations to which Emmet, whom Oliver openly suspected of being a spy, hadn’t been privy. “Before you share anything with one of us that you wouldn’t want the families to know, make sure one of the crystals is present and glowing.”
“But won’t the families know we’re blocking them?”
“Of course, Gingersnap, but they sure as hell can’t complain about it, now, can they? They have no right to spy on us, and they sure as hell don’t have the right to spy on you. You are after all an anchor now, aren’t you?”
“Go on, tell me what you have learned,” Iris said.
I looked deeply into her eyes. I knew she was capable of lying. She and Ellen had lied to me about my father with a naturalness and ease that worried me. When you’re lying to protect someone, there’s a certain sense of nobility to it—you know, or think you know, that you’re freeing your loved one from the weight of knowing. I myself understood this from having lied to Peter about Maisie. But I felt a little less noble about it with every other falsehood that had followed.
Lying didn’t come easily to me, which surprised people given the way I’d made my pocket money up until recently. I used to lead tourists around Savannah on the Liar’s Tour, making up lies about famous people and places. The fun of the tour came from the fact that everyone knew I was making the stories up. True deception was a different matter. My aunts had much more talent in that arena. They had lied both actively and through omission about knowing the identity of my father. They claimed to have done this to protect Maisie and me. And together, with or without Ginny’s coaching, they had concocted the story of how my mother had died at my birth after begging Ellen to use all her power to save me rather than herself. I deeply wanted to believe that their horrible lie about my mother had come from a place of goodwill. Remembering that my mother had seduced both their husbands, I felt a pang. I wanted to believe that Ginny hadn’t left them with a choice, but when my aunts had helped drive my mother away, piety may not have come into play at all.
“She did it,” Oliver said, the glint in his eye showing the great pride he took in my accomplishment.
Frankly I had no idea why what I had done was so special. “I did nothing. I just stood there,” I said.
“Well, just by standing there, you did something most witches could never dream of doing. The Akashic records don’t reveal their secrets to just anyone.” Iris removed her gloves and hat. “Where is she?” she asked under her breath.
The smile fell from Oliver’s face. “She’s nowhere.” I knew then he must have seen what I had seen, felt what I had felt.
“I see,” Iris responded, her voice catching. “I guess it was too much to hope that she could have survived the blast that took her.”
“No,” I said, and helped Iris to rise. “She isn’t dead . . . not yet, anyway. She’s kind of ‘on hold.’?”
Iris looked at me blankly and then turned to Oliver for clarification. “I guess you could say she’s frozen among a number of possible outcomes. It’s like the line tucked her safely away until it could figure out what to do with her.”
“Is she in pain?” Iris asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m sure of that.” I wasn’t just telling her this to ease her mind. The line hadn’t chosen to punish my sister; it had chosen to protect her. “Listen, I know how crazy it sounds”—I hesitated, and the two drew closer to me—“but while I was near Maisie, Jilo’s cat appeared. It spoke to me.”