The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(10)

I leaned my bike against the live oak that wasn’t yet big enough to completely shade Ginny’s front porch. I was surprised to see that the door was cracked open, and that Ginny hadn’t pulled the shades against heat. Ginny wouldn’t allow air-conditioning in the house, preferring to keep things somewhat bearable, though gloomy, by blocking out the morning light. She had finally capitulated and accepted an oscillating fan into her house a few summers back, but that was only because Maisie had insisted.

I climbed the steps and knocked on the doorframe. “Aunt Ginny,” I called out, but there was no reply. I opened the door fully and stepped inside. “Aunt Ginny, it’s me, Mercy. I’m here. I even got here a little early,” I called out from the narrow foyer.

I had spent a lot of time in this barren entryway. When Maisie and I were children, Ginny had insisted on taking advantage of the yearly break in our formal schooling to teach my sister a witch’s ways. Other than a few family outings like our Fourth of July picnic, she had refused to let Maisie out of sight for very long from Memorial Day until Labor Day. When I’d come over to play with Maisie, Ginny would make me wait in a chair in the hallway until my sister’s lessons were done. That same chair still sat sentinel in the hall, directly across from a blank spot on the wall. I swear Ginny kept that area undecorated with the sole intention of making my wait more painful.

I tried bringing books a few times, but Ginny would always take away the ones she didn’t approve of, which was basically all of them. I tried bringing paper and pencils to draw. “You have no talent, don’t waste the paper,” Ginny would say, tearing my drawings in two. So I’d sit there in that straight-back, wicker bottomed chair with nothing but my imagination to keep me company. It was there that I started making up many of the outrageous stories I now shared on my tours.

I took a couple steps farther in. To the right was Ginny’s rarely used dining room. To the left, a room whose furnishings were so antiquated I could only bring myself to think of it as a parlor. There was absolute silence in the house.

Except for the buzzing of a horsefly. And Great-Aunt Ginny’s discount store clock striking off the seconds louder than a jackhammer striking concrete.

An unexpected odor enveloped my senses. Metallic and alkaline, it was unmistakable, yet impossibly out of place. I registered it as the smell of blood, and then everything slowed way down. I followed the coppery scent into the parlor. There were splatters on the wall. Still red, just turning brown.

Ginny’s body was on the floor, her head cracked clean open. I didn’t feel for a pulse. There was no need. Ginny was still and silent and horrible. I knew she was dead. The top of her skull was lying six inches away from the rest of her. God knows I hated the old biddy, but seeing her here like this…I obviously didn’t know what the word “hate” meant. This here, this picture stretched out before me was hate. There are a lot of gentler ways to take someone out. Whoever did this enjoyed the doing.

The room began to move in and out in waves, and I wished the blackness would just suck me under. More than that, I wished—oh, how I wished—that Ginny’s death would be sucked back into the sea of the things that might happen, but never would. Someone was screaming. I realized it was me, and I let myself continue.

The rational part of my mind told me to stop carrying on. To call for help. I told it to f*ck off, and continued screaming until I was good and satisfied that the heavens had heard me. Then, and only then, did I reach for my phone.





FOUR


“You did the right thing calling us, sugar,” Aunt Iris said pulling me into her overly perfumed bosom. “You did the right thing calling us before the police. We’d never been able to get a fix on the energy in this room if the sheriff and his bunch of dimwits had been traipsing all over the house, contaminating the scene with their thoughts.”

“She’s done messed up things here enough herself,” Connor muttered. Iris released me and gave him a look that would wither concrete.

“What’s done is done. Right now, we need to put up a concealment around this place to keep people from nosing around until we are done here.” A concealment didn’t make objects invisible or render sounds silent; it just made folks ignore whatever it was you wanted to hide from them. The two set about silently working the concealment spell, although to me their efforts just looked like they were trying to finger paint the air.

“Who could have done this?” I whispered. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could have harmed Ginny. And I don’t mean that in the “who could harm a defenseless old lady” kind of way. I mean it in the “who the hell could have busted through her defenses and slayed the dragon” kind of way. I felt the blood freeze in my veins. Could this be the sacrifice Jilo had promised to make on my behalf?

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, my girl,” Connor said. “But you aren’t helping us any by hanging out here and projecting your thoughts so loudly. Now get the hell outta here while we work.” His right hand adjusted the belt straining over his paunch while the pendulum in his left began to swing in spurts and stops.

“Connor!” Iris exclaimed. “The poor girl is already shaken up enough.”

“And her vibrations are shaking this room apart. Go on, girl. Get out of here before you make it impossible for us to suss out what the hell happened,” he said, returning his attention to the swinging arc of his pendulum. The pendulum was Connor’s connection to power, even if it was a weak one. Most true witches have a few gifts in common—with focus, just about all of them can read the thoughts of non-witches, and most can move things without having to touch them. But witches tend to be particularly skilled in one or two specific areas. Connor was weak as water in most things, but he could use his pendulum to track down just about anything, from a missing pair of glasses to a missing child. I knew without asking that he was looking for the murder weapon.