The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(61)

Anger flashed through Jilo’s eyes, but then she nearly doubled over with laughter. “Jilo lied about where the power from,” she gasped out. “But she done told you the truth when she said it almost spent. You go ahead and dig. You ain’t gonna find much there anymore. That why Jilo brought you here, ’cause she got a proposition for you.”

“I have no desire to make deals with you.”

“You just wait and hear Jilo out.” The old woman leaned forward on her seat and waved a warning finger at me. “You got power today. You feel it. You taste it. But we both know tomorrow it gonna be gone. You help Jilo, though, and she can set us both up with a source of power that will last longer than either of us will in this world.”

I knew I should stop her—I had come to break the deal I’d made with this devil, not to go into business with her. But I held back, I listened. The allure of having unlimited access to power was too hard to resist.

“Old Candler, here,” Jilo said, “it full of energy. You touched it, Jilo know. Jilo can smell it on you.”

“It’s full of misery. Someone should do something.”

“Someone done did something. Yo’ grandfather hisself the one who made the spell holding the energies in here.”

“But why would he have wanted to trap all this pain at Candler?”

“To keep it from wandering the streets of our fair city,” Jilo said and smiled like a cobra, her lips pulled back tightly, her eyes hard, dark, and hypnotic. “Oh, don’t you worry, missy. His motives were pure. After they closed the hospital, folk around town up and started disappearing. Little ones who’d be in they beds at sundown would be gone come sunrise. Your granddaddy tracked the things down to their home in Candler. When they closed the place, the shadows had gotten hungry and started hunting farther afield than they ever had before. Yo’ grandfather, he wove his net and walked away, never considering that he had built a pressure cooker without a safety valve. And Jilo tell you that it gonna blow, and it gonna blow soon. We be doing this town a favor by releasing the pressure little by little. Keep it from exploding and ripping the whole of Savannah clean apart.”

“Why do you need me? Why don’t you take all the energy for yourself?”

“They others who have tried, and Jilo learned from their mistakes. You think it by chance that the big tower built no more than a couple of blocks from Candler? They set up the tower where it is so that Candler’s energies could be broadcast throughout the whole damn world. But they still couldn’t get to the power, ’cause it locked by Taylor magic. It gonna take a real witch to unlock it. After all, Jilo ain’t no witch. I thought we done covered that.”

I remembered the spanking I had received after just thinking about undoing the spell. “I already tried,” I said, and Jilo’s face turned into a mask of pure panic.

“You what, you stupid girl?”

“I wanted to free the spirits trapped there, but I couldn’t. The magic is booby-trapped or something.”

Jilo calmed herself. “They no way you, armed with yo’ day pass to magic could even knock a chink into your grandfather’s wall. But your sister, when she get home, you get her to unlock it, just a little. You show her that keeping it locked up tight is dangerous, that it need to blow out a little of its steam. You get her to create the valve, and Jilo handle the rest. She will show you how to tap into the energy like a tree setting its roots into the ground. They will be plenty of power for the both of us. Jilo and you both set for life.”

I had come here to force her to break the spell she had placed on me, but now I had a bargaining tool. Of course I’d never let the old woman profit from the misery of the trapped souls inside Candler. I’d talk to Maisie all right, but only to get her to rectify the situation our grandfather had inadvertently created. Jilo didn’t have to know that.

“Break the spell. The one you placed on me, and I’ll talk to Maisie when she gets back.”

“Oh, my girl, breaking a love spell is no easy thing,” she said. “It better if we wait until Jilo has full access to her power again before she try.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “I could break it myself if I took a bit of your blood and mixed it with mine.”

Jilo rose up like an injured lioness, her head held high, her teeth exposed. “Take Jilo blood? You think you can just take Jilo blood?” She stepped away from her throne, spanning the distance between us until we stood practically nose to nose. “Oh, you is a Taylor all right. The second you get tanked up on yo’ uncle’s sweet juice you come pushing your way in, threatening Jilo. But you remember one thing, my girl. Tomorrow, this power of yours will be gone, and Jilo will be in charge again. So you stop and you consider real good before you start talking about taking anything off of Jilo.”

Deep down, I knew she was right. I had come here with the intention of using Oliver’s power to force my way if Jilo refused to cooperate. The real Mercy, the one I would have to wake up to tomorrow, knew it was wrong. I looked deep into Jilo’s eyes and said, “I’m sorry. And not because you’re going to have the upper hand again tomorrow. I’m sorry for threatening you, for even thinking about making you to do something against your will, just because for the moment I have the power to do so.”

Jilo looked back at me as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She took a few backward steps away from me. “God help this old woman, but Jilo do like you far more than she know she ought to.” She held her right hand up in the air, and a knife with a long and menacingly sharp blade appeared in front of it. “You understand what Jilo doing, she doin’ for your own good.” She swung the knife down quickly yet deftly, making a gash in her left palm. Then she pointed the knife, handle first, at me. “Go on, it your turn now.”