Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(31)
“Jilo,” May called, but it was too late. The child had already bounded, arms flung wide open, to where the Beekeeper sat.
The creature reached over and scooped the child up into her embrace. “This one,” she said, “she isn’t afraid of magic.” She chuckled as Jilo reached out with her wet fingers and pulled the veil high. “She ain’t afraid of nothing.”
THIRTEEN
The Savannah Morning Star
July 13, 1936
Page A1
Local Luminary Leads Delegation to Berlin Olympics
Distinguished Savannah businessman Sterling Maguire (shown center in above photograph) will lead a group of seven Georgia state dignitaries to the Games of the XI Olympiad that are to be held next month in Berlin. “Before his death, my father grew to be a great admirer of the German chancellor,” Maguire said. “I share my father’s enthusiasm for this dynamic new leader of the German nation. By combining the best thinking of our own American industry with the subversion and removal of the undesirable and decadent elements of society that led to his country’s decline, Chancellor Hitler has single-handedly pulled the German people out of the morass they found themselves in following the Great War. As the German people have learned from great Americans like Henry Ford, so is there much we Americans can learn from great Germans like Adolph Hitler.” When asked about earlier pressures from certain fringe elements to boycott the Berlin Olympic Games, Mr. Maguire stated, “Consider the source. Why would those who would reject the Messiah Himself be any more kindly inclined toward Chancellor Hitler?” The delegation is scheduled to arrive in Berlin a week prior to the commencement of the games to allow for an official tour of the city and the new 100,000-seat stadium. The highlight of the visit will be an opportunity for the delegation to meet with both the chancellor and Minister Hermann G?ring.” (Story continues on page A10.)
May took her time cutting the piece from the newspaper, making sure to hold the scissors firmly in hand and to cut precisely along the straight-edge lines she’d drawn as guides. She flipped through the pages to find the article’s conclusion, then repeated the process, although that bit didn’t really have much to add about Maguire. It went on about some new thing called television that was gonna let people miles away from the games watch them just like they were sitting there. Kind of like radio, the article explained, just with moving pictures, too.
She dabbed a bit of paste on the back of each portion of the article and added it to the scrapbook with the other news pieces she’d collected about the Maguires since the last time she’d laid eyes on them, there in the basement of the Pinnacle. Maguire had kept plenty quiet; he must’ve received the Beekeeper’s message loud and clear. May had been watching for news of him in the papers, and she always had an ear open for any talk on the streets. Kids still went missing, but at least none had turned up butchered like the boy she’d buried out back. All the same, May was taking no chances. Sure, she was using her magic on a regular basis now, for the benefit of others as well as herself, but she wasn’t going to accept silence as surrender. May was determined to know her enemy, track his doings, and try to figure out when he might make his next move against her.
“Fletcher Maguire, Industrialist, Humanitarian, Dead at 62” was the first headline to have caught her eye. It had been front-page news only six weeks after she’d helped the father steal his own son’s body. The article alluded to the stroke Fletcher had suffered the night of her mama’s passing. From the way the elder Maguire’s body had looked, May had thought him much older. Maybe it had been a result of her mama’s final attempt to rid the world of him, or maybe it was the hate burning in his soul that had aged him so. She wondered how long it would take his foul spirit to burn through the son’s young flesh.
Some days after the grand obituary stained the front page, a single paragraph, buried toward the back of the Star’s section C—too far back to be of much interest to the whites and not part of section D, which carried most of the colored news—announced that Mrs. Sterling Maguire had traveled to Arizona with the goal of divorcing her estranged husband. Six weeks and one day later, the society page announced Sterling Maguire’s engagement to a blonde Birmingham debutante with a foreign-looking last name.
These more personal items glinted like gold among a pile of other mentions about Sterling Maguire fulfilling some civic duty or other, or mentions of the various businesses in which he owned an interest, a lot of them with names as foreign as his new wife’s.
May examined the man’s fine young features once more before closing the book and sliding it back under her mattress.
FOURTEEN
September 1936
For the first time in months, really since the first night she’d used magic, May dreamed about her mother. In the dream, she was walking behind her mama—recognizable only by the curve of her shoulders and the way she carried herself—but her mama wouldn’t turn back to look at her no matter how she pleaded.
May awoke to a scent of cigar smoke, something she hadn’t smelled in her house since her mother’s passing. She sat up in bed, suddenly alert, fearful that one of the girls had caught something alight. But no, she realized the next moment, this odor could be nothing other than a foul-smelling cheroot. She figured the scent was nothing more than a remnant of the dream.