The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(27)

“But why are you doing this? Why would you care if I can do magic or learn my family’s secrets?”

“?’Cause, my girl, I want to hurt them. And I want to hurt them in a way that no killin’ can. I want them to see themselves reflected in the hate shining through yo’ pretty green eyes. Once you know them the way Jilo know them, you will understand why.” Hatred carved wrinkles in her forehead and around the edges of her mouth. Her lips curled back into a hiss.

“I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t care what they’ve done,” I said.

“You say that ’cause you don’t have any idea what they done. Not just what they done to Jilo, but what they done to you. You come to me, you come to me willingly next time, and Jilo tell you what happened to your precious Ginny. Not that Jilo understand why you care what happened to her. The old one sure didn’t care about you. You decide. You come to Jilo if you want to know.

“Now to show you Jilo acting in good faith, she give you one secret for free. You go ask that fairy uncle of yours why my grandbaby walked into the river and she never come back out.” With that, Jilo snapped her fingers and the room went black. I groped along the wall, feeling for the door, and my fingers brushed over a light switch. When I flicked it on, I nearly fell back in shock. The chair was gone, and the room was no longer cyan. I was in the room of shared secrets, the linen closet on the upper floor of the house where I’d been raised. Jilo had made her point. If she could reach into our home, into the heart of my childhood, she had all the power she needed, borrowed or not.





TEN


As I rushed to my bedroom, I heard voices coming up from the ground floor. I must have been gone for hours, but apparently the post-funeral potluck was still in full swing. I locked the door behind me; it wouldn’t stand a chance at keeping Jilo out, but it might at least encourage my cousins to respect my privacy. My glowing digital alarm clock caught my eye, and I gasped out loud. Only an hour had passed since I’d first laid eyes on Adam’s grandfather at the cemetery. I wondered if magic had bent time or if my perception had been twisted by fear.

I shed the clothes I had worn to the funeral, promising myself I would burn them, and sat on the edge of my bed, more tired than I had ever felt in my life. I wondered if Jilo had “borrowed” some of my own life force to put on her little magic show for me. The urge to lie down for a few minutes hit me, and I was too tired to hit back. I scooted up onto the bed and closed my eyes.

Seconds later I opened them. To my surprise, the clock next to me revealed that two hours had passed. My skin was tingling slightly, and I felt disoriented and a little nauseated. The objects in my field of vision seemed to exist in more than one spot at a time, as if several versions of the same thing were slightly overlapping each other. Jilo had definitely stretched time a bit; my exhaustion and disorientation were signs that it was snapping itself back into shape around me. From what my family had always said, this kind of manipulation was above Jilo’s pay grade, but she had managed to get the juice from somewhere. Maybe she’d done it so that my absence from the house would go unnoticed, but more likely she’d just wanted to show me what she could do. Sometimes I really hated magic, especially since I was always on the receiving end.

I could still hear a large group of people conversing on the ground floor. Most of the nonrelated mourners would undoubtedly have made their excuses by now and headed home, but the cousins weren’t going anywhere until Ginny’s replacement, the new anchor, was selected tonight. I felt desperate for an escape, and seeing as Jilo could reach directly into my house, I figured I’d be as safe on the streets of Savannah as I was in my own room. The thought of visiting Peter flitted through my mind, but he wouldn’t be done with work for a few hours, and I didn’t want to get him in trouble with his boss.

I wanted more than anything to turn this into as normal a day as possible. It was a bit after two, plenty of time for me to get out for a while and still be back for the drawing of the lots that would determine who took over for Ginny. I’d use my window escape route to avoid the family gathering.

I rolled off the bed and went to my mirror. My hair had turned into a tangled mess as I slept, so I did my best to work through the worst bits, tugging it back into a ponytail. I’d have to make more of an effort for tonight’s ceremony, but for now, I pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of comfortable cutoffs.

The heat roiled into the room the moment I opened the window. I took a deep breath and plunged into it headfirst, feeling like I was climbing into an oven. I grabbed hold of the trellis with my right hand and swung my right leg out. Once I had my feet safely in position, I leaned back and used my left hand to slide the window mostly closed, leaving just enough of an opening for my fingers so that I could go back in the same way I had come out. The bougainvillea scraped against my exposed skin, but all of the practice from my teenage years served me well. I made it to the ground without a single scratch. I heard a few people talking out front, so I scanned the yard to make sure none of the guests were lingering between me and the garage. No one was in sight, so I crept over to it to retrieve my bike.

The heat was so intense that visible waves rose up not only from the paved area, but from the sandy soil beyond the reach of our lawn sprinklers. I was about to grab my bike and head out when I sensed something strange in my field of vision. I returned my attention to the gray and gritty dirt and realized that my first impression had been off. The ground wasn’t reflecting heat—it was actually pulsating. Before common sense could trump curiosity, my feet led me over for a closer look.