The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(63)

“You hurt yourself?” he asked, his eyes appraising the blood on my shirt. I almost tore into him for stalking me, but there was real concern in his voice, a genuine caring that my human ears had never been able to pick up on. I looked at him for the first time through a witch’s eyes. Instead of the bloviating and disapproving dictator I had always known him to be, I just saw a man. A man who’d been quite handsome in his youth—I’d seen the pictures—and had cut a dashing figure sixty or so pounds ago. A man who looked tired and defeated. A man who had never quite been able to achieve what he wanted most.

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing from here,” he said and reached out to take the injured hand. I pulled it violently away from him, but I was a touch too slow. He caught hold of my hand and turned it palm up so that he could assess the wound. “Well, I’m not Ellen,” he said, sighing, “but I think I can handle this.”

He traced the length of the wound with more gentleness than I’d though him capable of, and I watched as the cut healed beneath his touch. I was impressed. I was excruciatingly familiar with the tracking tricks he did with his pendulum, and he was pretty good with moving small items with telekinesis, but I’d never seen him do anything like this before. The effort seemed to have tired him. He was sweating and looked a little gray. “There, now. Care to tell me what you’ve been up to?”

“No, not really,” I said, but with none of the rancor that my heart usually held for him. “Thank you for healing my hand.”

“You probably could have done it yourself today,” he said. “The golem told me that you’re all juiced up on Oliver’s magic.” He paused and looked at me, weighing his words.

“You’ve obviously got something to say, so out with it.”

He grimaced. “I do. I have something very important to say. Actually a lot of important things to say, but I’m trying to figure out how to say them without pissing you off.” He started to speak again, but hesitated. His shoulders drooped forward, and he shook his head. “You always see me as the enemy, Mercy, but I’m not your enemy. So hear me out for a few minutes, okay?”

Part of me would have preferred spending more time with the living shadows in the tunnel than listening to my uncle’s lectures, but I nodded anyway.

“Good,” he said, adding “thank you” in an uncharacteristic show of good manners. “Regular hospitals aren’t equipped to handle witch births. You two were born at home, and you came early. Only Iris and Ellen were home when your mama started labor. I wasn’t there when you girls were born,” he said. “I was out of town. But Iris told me that Maisie came out shining with life and power. We all thought your mama was only carrying one child. You weren’t even expected. Emily picked the name Maisie out for your sister as soon as she was sure the baby was a girl.” Connor stopped speaking for a moment and chuckled to himself. “She said there were too many damned witches named Sarah and Dianna in the world. You were a surprise to us all. When you came out, you were scrawny and blue—you’d practically starved to death in your mother’s womb.

“Your mama, she was dying,” he said, and a large tear dropped down his cheek. He brushed it away without seeming to notice that he had shed it. “Ellen was a gifted witch back before Ginny docked her powers, but even she had her limits. Nature only lets her get away with so much. A choice had to be made, and your mama made it. She refused Ellen’s help, using the last of her strength to beg Ellen to save her baby. To save you.”

Tears formed in my own eyes, tears too large and numerous to ignore. Connor waved his hand like a stage magician and produced a handkerchief. He held it out to me, and I took it.

“Ellen held you tightly in her arms and breathed her own breath into your little lungs. It took a while, but she got your body to warm up. By the time you had some color in your cheeks, your mama had already passed on. Ellen named you Mercy then and there, ’cause she thought a poor child like you was going to need some mercy. I, on the other hand, took a different tack. Once we determined for sure that you were powerless, I took it upon myself to personally knock you down every time the opportunity presented itself. I bullied you. I said bad things about you. I rubbed your nose in your failures every chance I got. And I did it all because I love you. I wanted you to be tough enough to face the rest of the witches who were saying much worse about you behind your back. I wanted you to be tough enough to face—”

“To face Ginny,” I interrupted him. He nodded his head yes, and to my surprise tried to pull me into a hug. I resisted, and even used a bit of the witch power I’d borrowed from Oliver to escape his grasp. I wasn’t ready to forgive a lifetime of hurt, at least not yet. I saw the pain of my rejection flicker through his eyes.

“She had it out for you from the beginning,” he said. “She blamed you for your mama’s death. And then, when she realized you had no powers, she started calling you ‘The Disappointment’ behind your back.” The words cut through my heart. “So I started calling you the same thing to your face to make you stronger. But you gotta know, Mercy, you were never a disappointment to me. Not to any of us, other than Ginny.”

He circled around me to block me from leaving. It was only then that I realized I had been moving away, trying to evade the pain his candor was causing me. “Listen,” he said. “I kind of know what it’s like. Ginny looked down on me too. She thought that Iris had made a mistake in marrying me, and that I didn’t carry enough power to be a good match. The old bag cut me off at the knees and embarrassed me about my limits every chance she got. I know that she joked about me with the extended family. But you,” he said, and the expression on his face told me that he had never fully understood what he was about to relate, “she hated you, Mercy. I’m sorry to say it, but we all knew it was true.”