Iris and Oliver stared at each other for a moment, their expressions inscrutable. “Okay, I missed that part. What did puss have to say for itself?” Oliver asked.
“?‘Schrödinger.’ That’s all it said.”
“Let’s not take the cat thing too literally. The spell took you to a place where language is less effectual than symbol. I think we all get what message the symbol tried to convey to you.”
“Yes,” I said. “Schrödinger’s cat. It’s like Oliver said: Maisie’s been locked in a state of flux.”
“Perhaps you can spell it out for the kids at the back of the class?” Ellen asked as she approached us, carrying a tray filled with glasses and a pitcher of sweet tea. Over her shoulder I could see Emmet staring at us through the kitchen window. “Quietly?” She set the tray down on the table near us and began to pour. We joined her. Ellen glowed with vitality. She sported a fresh bob haircut and had been experimenting with new makeup. Her face was relaxed, her eyes glimmering. My aunt had finally pulled herself together and was beginning to overcome the double tragedy of losing her son and husband on the same day. She had decided to reopen her flower shop, and had even begun scouting around the City Market for an open space. And she had put alcohol behind her, although I noticed that Oliver had surreptitiously whisked away the bottle of scotch he’d been clutching. If only she could put Tucker in her rearview mirror once and for all . . . She beamed at me. The love she held for me was real, even though I was her husband Erik’s daughter by her own sister. All the same, as badly as I wanted to believe in her, I knew that sweet Ellen was just as capable of deceit as the rest of my relatives. “So?” she raised her eyebrows and asked, an impatient shake of the head punctuating her request.
“Cat in box. Neither dead nor alive, but in a state somewhere between the two possibilities, until an observer opens the box. The observer plays a role in determining the fate of the cat,” Oliver summed it up and took a glass of tea.
“Maybe I am a touch too blonde,” Ellen said, “but I don’t see what this cat has to do with our Maisie.”
I smiled. It felt good to hear her refer to Maisie as ours. “Whoever gets to Maisie first will free her from her limbo. Right now she is nowhere. No when. Just a point among possibilities. The observer won’t merely free her, he or she will determine from the many possible outcomes what happens next for her.”
“But how do we make sure we get to Maisie first? With all this talk of nowhere and no when, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t know. What I saw seemed purely symbolic,” I said. “I mean, talking cats and a black-and-red door hanging in thin—”
“Black-and-red door?” Ellen interrupted me, her voice carrying louder than she’d intended. She hushed herself, glancing back toward the kitchen. “What did it look like?”
“It looked like any other regular panel door. It had red panels, but the rest of it was black.”
“Why?” Oliver asked. “Does that mean something to you?”
Ellen looked from one of us to the other, finally settling on Oliver. “Yes,” she said. “Tillandsia.” She lowered her eyes. “Tucker and some of the others recently purchased a large house out in the country to use for gatherings. It’s just past Richmond Hill. That’s where we were heading when we passed you in Colonial.”
I said nothing, but she looked directly at me and started defending herself. “I’m no longer part of Tillandsia. It’s only . . .”
“It’s only what?” Iris asked, her voice steely.
“It was just a ride. A chance to get out of Savannah for a few blessed minutes, to go somewhere no one’s watching me, expecting me to hit the hooch or go whoring.” She spat out the words, but then calmed herself. “I’m sorry, but Tucker never judges me. Nor does he hide his whiskey the second I appear,” she said with a glare at her brother.
“Okay, fair enough,” Oliver said. “It was a platonic, lily-white outing . . . So why do you think this has anything to do with Tillandsia?
“The house. It’s huge, badly in need of a lot of repair and renovation. The single thing that’s in decent shape is the front door. It was freshly painted. Red panels set against a black background. It’s hideous. I told Tucker it would have to be the first thing to go, but he just laughed. He said he kind of liked it and would probably keep it that way.” I tucked away the realization that this new Tillandsia house was Peter’s project until I would have time to process it.
Oliver shook his head. “Could be coincidental.”
“It could be,” I responded as the truth hit me, “but we all know it isn’t. Maisie and I came into this world as a result of Tillandsia’s ‘activities.’ Tucker himself told me that my mother was the one to introduce him to Tillandsia. She inducted Uncle Erik”—I still found myself calling him that—“into the group as well. Didn’t she?”
“Sweetie—” Ellen began.
“Yes,” Iris interrupted her. “But not for sex. Emily had a different agenda.” Iris turned on her siblings, anticipating that they’d protest. “The girls are somehow linked to Tillandsia. If we are ever to get Maisie back, Mercy must know what Emily was attempting.”
“You’re right,” Oliver said. Ellen nodded her assent, but pulled her arms around herself. She went and took a seat in the sunlight, nearly turning her back on the rest of us. Oliver followed her with his eyes, but when he spoke, he was addressing me. “Your little ‘incident’ the other day. With the old fellow,” he added, as if there were any chance that accidently burning a man’s heart out wouldn’t be the first thing to leap to mind. “It took a bit of power to deliver that jolt. When you drew that power, we all felt it. Any witch around here would have. Kind of like an electrical brownout.”
“That means,” Iris said, “that whenever you do something that draws a lot of power off the line, other witches will know you are up to something. If you want to do something big without setting off a magical blow horn, you have to find another way of harnessing the energy.”
“Okay, how would you do that?” I prompted when the two fell silent.
“Well, Gingersnap, it depends on the size of the thing you are attempting.”
Iris put her hand on my forearm. “If you can’t draw off the line, you are basically left to resort to your friend Jilo’s tactics. Using sympathetic magic, drawing like to like. That’s fine for tricks. In reality, though, there are only two ways outside the line to get your hands on real, big power: blood magic and Tantra, sacrifice and sex.”
“So she used Tillandsia to build up a battery of power,” I said.
“Yes. I believe that you and Maisie represent an unexpected by-product of Emily’s use of sex to amass magical energy.”
“But why? What was she trying to do with it?”
“We don’t know for sure. I guess we never will,” Iris said and shook her head sadly. “She died before we could get it out of her.”
“Oh.” My breath failed me, and the word stuck in my throat. Iris sure was doing a fine job of sticking to her story. “Not even any guesses?” I asked, and winced at the sound of my own pathetic laugh.