Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(53)

She pulled herself together as quickly as she could manage, although she had trouble locating a shoe that had somehow been kicked under a step stool on the far side of the room. She crossed to him and placed her hand on his forearm. He looked down at her, his eyes cautious. He cleared his throat. “We’ll speak of this matter at a later time.”

She couldn’t find words to respond. She only nodded and went to the door. She hesitated for a moment, hoping he’d call her back. Hoping he’d take her into his arms and speak more words of love.

There was only silence.





FOUR


Jilo didn’t know what possessed her, but she found herself walking a mile and a half away from home, toward the red brick walls and stained-glass windows of Five Points Baptist.

It wasn’t a desire to confess to her sin. She couldn’t bring herself to see what she had done as a sin. She loved Professor Ward. Lionel. She believed he loved her, too. He had told her so. Many times. The first back in June, shortly after the last day of the term, right before he left for a month in New York. His revelation had come as a surprise. An even a greater shock was the realization that her own feelings for Lionel went beyond those of student and mentor.

And she had no intent of claiming him, of flouncing their love in Mrs. Ward’s face. Jilo’s love for Lionel, and his for her, was a different kind of love. Spiritual. It didn’t need the bonds or trappings of traditional marriage to make it holy.

They had spoken of it often. Their love didn’t need the approval of society or the God it had fabricated to keep the fearful in check. Their love was modern. Unbound by law and tradition. So it didn’t matter that another woman shared Lionel’s name, even if he regretted ever forging that bond. His love for Jilo was somehow more real, more pure, free as it was from any claims of ownership.

Lionel had married too young by his own admission, and though he’d made his vows in good faith, he was no longer the young man who’d pledged himself body and soul to his wife. Besides, his wife was a completely different woman than she’d led him to believe. Now, as a mature man, Lionel dreamed of casting off the bondage of conventionality. Fleeing the proper world that had him trapped and heading out into the world of the liberated mind. And yes, he wanted to take Jilo with him. According to him, it was only Mrs. Ward’s fragile health that kept him bound to her.

They had danced around the act for months. A touch of the hands. A brush of his lips against hers. She hadn’t expected it to happen the way it had, so quickly. But after so many months of holding back, his hands had suddenly been all over her. His need had flared up with a shocking intensity. And while she’d imagined it differently, he seemed to have planned the whole thing from start to finish—his wife was with her sister on a train to Tuskegee, and there had been a supply of prophylactics at hand. He had chosen, she realized, to take advantage of his temporary freedom. She only wished he would have discussed it with her first. Perhaps then the experience wouldn’t have felt so—she searched her heart for the right word—sordid.

And then there was the way he had acted afterward . . . She’d given him what he wanted. Willingly. But the way his eyes had failed to meet hers after the fact had left her feeling . . . well, if not sinful, soiled. Damaged. Was he disappointed? Had she disappointed him?

After leaving his house, she had set out walking, and something had brought her here, to Five Points Baptist. She nearly turned toward home, but the same thing that had brought her this far tugged at her again. Without precisely meaning to, she climbed up the concrete steps, nearly stumbling in her hurry.

She reached for the door’s large brass pull, her hand feeling small and cold as she grasped ahold of it and opened the door. The scent of worn hymnals and an overabundance of furniture polish administered lovingly by the ladies’ council nearly overwhelmed her.

Not for the first time, it struck her that the interior of the church somewhat resembled a theater. The pulpit and choir loft shared a raised stage, with a curved apron that Pastor Jones would strut back and forth over when he got himself worked up in his preaching. A set of stairs ran down each side of the stage, and the altar was situated between the rise of the apron and the first row of pews. Jilo walked down the aisle and took a seat in the third row.

The church only had a single stained-glass window, set into its eastern wall. From her schooling, Jilo understood the chemistry behind the glass’s rich colors. Nickel or perhaps copper oxide would have been used to create the blues of the sky. Beams of silver nitrate light touched the white cross made of tin oxide and arsenic—strange that something so deadly could create such beauty. Iron and chromium combined for the green grass in which the cross was planted. A white dove hovered above. Across the arms of the cross was draped a cloth, stained brilliant red with selenium and cadmium rather than the messiah’s blood.

Still, even though she understood the chemistry behind the vivid colors, whenever the sun lit up the window, its beauty touched her. The pastor would say the sight was touching her soul. But no, she reminded herself, the voice in her head sounding more like Lionel’s than her own, it was chemistry that created the hues, and biological chemistry that created her emotional reaction to them.

Normally she prided herself on her ability to see beyond superstition and emotionality, but today, she felt empty and alone. Though she wished she could allow herself to take comfort from patently absurd beliefs, she’d seen too many folk come to her nana out of desperation and a desire for magic. Nana had never come right out and admitted it, but she would always give a knowing smile whenever Jilo asked if any of it were real. No, Jilo didn’t want to build her world on superstitions. She cared only for what she could touch. What she could measure.