The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(45)

“Dear God, no!” Ellen said.

“Then you know who my father is?”

“I’m sorry, darling. I don’t. I really don’t.”

“Were there too many men to guess which?”

“I’m sorry. It’s true that Emily was a part of Tillandsia. And it’s true that she had many men in her life.” She bit her lip, then looked with narrowed eyes. “When were you talking to Tucker anyway?”

“He’s kind of been following me around lately,” I responded, searching Ellen’s eyes to see if Tucker’s stalking ways made her angry or jealous.

“I’m sorry he’s bothered you,” Ellen said. She looked away in shame. “I’ve told him that you and Maisie are strictly off limits unless he wants to end up like Wesley Espy and wear his genitalia for a boutonniere.” Wesley was a judge’s son who’d had an unfortunate taste for gangsters’ girlfriends. The fathers of Savannah’s daughters have been offering up his story as a cautionary tale to prom dates for going on eighty years. “I’ll see him tonight and set the record straight once and for all.”

“I think Peter plans to pay him a visit as well,” I said.

“That’s good, but the bastard needs to hear it from me too.”

“How can you bear to let him touch you?” The words came out of my mouth before my brain could censor them.

Ellen didn’t appear shocked or offended. “Since I’ve stopped drinking, I’ve been asking myself that very same question. And now that I know he’s been soliciting you, I can guarantee that he’ll never touch me again.” She was quiet for a moment, and the animation fell from her face. “After Erik and Paul died, I stopped caring about what was right or wrong. I didn’t give a damn what happened to me. Tucker was so attentive, and he was fun. He distracted me from the pain a little.”

“I am so sorry to have brought this up,” I said.

“No, don’t be. It’s good to get it out. I’ve been thinking about them a lot after what happened to Ginny.” Ellen looked me in the eyes. “Mercy, I know this is a terrible thing to say, but I hope that if they find this Martell Burke guy, they give him a medal. And Jilo too, if she sent him to do the deed.” I was shocked by her words, but the floodgates had opened, and Ellen wasn’t through. “Erik died at the scene of the accident, but my boy was still alive. Barely alive, but there was enough of a spark left in him for me to save him. I could have done it, I know it. But she stopped me.”

“How?” I asked. “Why?”

“You were young, but you probably remember. The week before Erik and Paul died, a young man was hit by a car outside my old flower shop.”

“Yes, I do remember—” I replied, but she wasn’t listening.

“The car went right over him. He was mangled. I didn’t think. I just reacted,” she said. “I went to him and held him in this world.” She looked up at me with wonder in her eyes. “He was so close to death that I saw it, Mercy, I saw that tunnel they talk about and the light. I could hear voices coming from that light, but then he opened his eyes and asked me to please save him.” She shook her head, and closed her eyes, the memory taking her someplace else. “Somehow I did it. I pulled enough juice to heal his worst injuries. By the time the ambulance arrived, all he had left as a couple of broken legs and a cracked rib. Ginny was furious. She said I had damaged the balance of nature by saving that boy.”

“But how could she have stopped you from saving your own son?” I asked.

“She was an anchor, but sometimes she confused being an anchor with being God. She used her control to dampen my powers that day. It was kind of like she put a kink in my hose. Truth is, my ability has been waning ever since.”

“No, I mean how could she have just let Paul die?”

“Honestly, I think she was afraid of him,” Ellen said. “You know the ten main families, the ones who are linked together and maintain the line. But there are three other families that we don’t talk about much.”

“The three who helped create the line but then regretted it.”

“Oh it’s more than regret. They’ve tried to break the line more than once. Bring the whole system down.”

“But why would they do that? Why would they want to turn the world back over to demons?”

Ellen leaned over and picked up a framed picture of her son and husband from the nightstand. She placed it in my hands. “Because when our reality was controlled by the demons, the thirteen families held a special place in the hierarchy of things. The demons were the kings, but the thirteen families were the lords. Revolution led to democratization. When we shifted our reality out from under the demons’ control, we wiped out a social hierarchy that had existed since the first humans. And although the three families were happy to be free from their bosses, they didn’t like losing control of those below them.” She paused. “Erik was from one of those families.”

“Uncle Erik?” I asked, having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I nearly dropped the photograph.

She took the picture from my hands and returned it to her nightstand. “Yes, but he was nothing like his family. He had broken allegiance with them and joined the ten families long before the two of us met.”