Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(95)
Maguire’s face flushed red when she didn’t obey him. “I said move it, girl, or I will come and take that knife from you and use it to carve up that nappy-headed boy of yours.” He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. I got him. Right out front. With his daddy and that little frill boy of yours. So you’d better come. Fast.”
The knife dropped from her hand, and she took quick, stomping strides past her ruined table, out the door, down the steps. Maguire was already disappearing around the side of her house, moving toward its front. Picking up her heavy feet, she hurried to catch up to the man.
“Toss him down,” she heard Maguire’s voice call, “then get the hell out of here.” She came around the side in time to see two men clambering into the back of a green-and-white pickup truck. They bent over and hoisted up another man. They flung him over the side, and the man rolled to the ground, coming to a rest on his back. Jilo dashed to his side, looking down in horror and disbelief. His clothes were ripped and bloody. His face beaten beyond recognition. Still she knew him. She would know him, if by nothing else, by his fine artist’s hands.
“Guy,” she screamed, and fell to her knees by his side.
TEN
Guy’s nose was crushed. His eyes purple and swollen shut. His mouth gaped open, his chest heaving and rattling as he struggled for breath. “I have to get him to the hospital,” Jilo cried out, though her rational mind had already examined him in minute detail, had already done the calculations. Guy, this part of her mind stated plainly, was in his death throes. It was too late for hospitals. His lungs were filling with fluid. His abdomen had swollen, and he was most likely bleeding internally.
“He don’t need no hospital, girl,” Maguire said as the truck that had brought Guy tore off, spraying sandy soil over Guy’s supine form. “What he needs is what your friend the Beekeeper has to share with him. You take her magic into you, girl. She’ll give you what you need to fix that boy up.”
“Magic?” she felt the word roll off her tongue, a bitter pill she could neither spit out nor bring herself to swallow. “Are you mad? Why have you done this?” Another thought hit her, causing her heart to feel like it would explode from her chest. “Where is my son? You haven’t hurt him.” Her last words came out as a statement, a warning. No matter who this man was in the world, no matter what he owned or how much influence he held, she would take him apart, bit by bit, with her bare hands if he’d hurt her baby.
Maguire strode toward her, grinning down at her. He stuck out a foot and rested it against Guy’s side, using it to roll his battered body back and forth. “Not yet,” he said, then pulled back his leg and delivered a hard kick to Guy’s ribs. Jilo heard something snap. She leaped on top of Guy, using her own body to shield him from further harm. “But,” he continued, “if this fellow don’t mean enough to you for you to welcome the Beekeeper, we’ll start in on that little pansy friend of yours next. And if that don’t work, I’ll go fetch that knife of yours and start carving me up some of your little one’s tender dark meat.” Cupping his hand around his mouth, he looked up and called. “Bring ’em around, Thomas, so she can get a good look at them.”
Willy came around from the far side of the house, clutching Robinson for dear life. A young fellow, a near carbon copy of Maguire, followed behind them, training a revolver on Willy’s back.
“Jilo,” Willy cried. “Those men ran Mr. Poole’s car off the road. Mr. Poole, I think he’s dead. His head was bleeding, and he wouldn’t move. Not even when I shook him.”
The terror in the child’s eyes crushed her. Robinson began wailing, reaching out for her. She wanted to cry out, too. Howl. Tinker dead. Guy as good as. What chance did she and her boys have?
“Shut that thing up,” Maguire shouted, and the younger man reached forward and gave Willy a rough shove between the shoulder blades, causing him to lunge forward and almost stumble. “And while you’re at it, shut your own trap, too, boy.”
“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” Jilo called out, though she wasn’t sure if she meant the words for Robinson or Willy. Both of them, she realized. No help was coming. Jilo would have to do whatever it took to protect those she loved. “What do you want from me?” She looked up at Maguire, shaken to the core. “I’ll do anything. Just tell me what you want. I’ll do it. Please just leave us be.”
“I done told you what I want,” he squatted down next to her. “I’ve even gone to the trouble of summoning her. Now all you got to do is take her in.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” Jilo shook her head.
Maguire lifted up from his haunches and bent over her. Grabbing her wrist, he yanked her off Guy, the force of his effort lifting her several inches off the ground. He dropped her down onto her own two feet. “It’s always the same with you Wills women. Your grandmother. Her mother. Even her mother before that. The Beekeeper, she follows you around, attaching herself to you, though I’ll be damned if I can figure out why. She pours her magic out at your feet, and all you do is turn your noses up at it. You, my girl, you’re gonna accept her gift, and then you’re going to do me a little service.”
He spat on the ground, right next to Jilo’s foot. “I need her help. This body, should’ve known it was a weak one. Forty-two years old, and already it’s failing. Cancer.” He said the word as though it were an insult to his stature, to his manhood, even, as if it were a disease meant for those who were weaker, perhaps even less well-placed in society. “You and my son Thomas, here. You two are going to stop it from eating me alive. You two are going to help heal me. And as an incentive, if you move fast enough, you might just have enough time to fix what’s ailing him”—he nodded over at Guy—“too.”