The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(7)

I said nothing, as I knew she was right. My family, especially my great-aunt Ginny, did look down on the old woman of the crossroads. Jilo stayed silent too, coiled up as if she were waiting for me to argue with her.

The silence grew too much for me. “Ginny says your kind of magic is dangerous. That it weakens the line.”

“Oh, Jilo heard your Ginny going on about her precious line,” she said, her tension fading. “How it’s what keeps the monsters from crawling up out from under Jilo’s bed and eating her.” She chuckled. “But Jilo ain’t no little girl to scare with talk of demons.”

“They’re real—you know that, right?” I asked, modulating my voice so that she wouldn’t think I was talking down to her.

“Course they real,” Jilo shot back at me. “Jilo know that. But keeping them out of our world, that yo’ people’s problem, not Jilo’s.”

I wondered how much the old woman knew about what the line was, or how it was created. Probably not a whole lot more than I did. The details about the creation of the line were a tightly kept secret from those of us who weren’t born of the power. We only got the story in broad strokes, if we ever learned about it at all. All I knew was that it was the witches, people like my family, who saved our reality from the monsters who had once ruled it. Religion calls these beings “demons”; science might call them “interdimensional entities.” But whatever you call them, they came to our world. They made us their slaves. They fed on us like cattle. They meddled in the evolution of humans, and even more so in the evolution of witches. But they underestimated their own creations. Eventually we rebelled.

Witches used their magic to change the frequency we live on. Kind of like when you switch the station on the radio to tune out a song you don’t want to hear, they swung our world just out of the demons’ reach. They modulated the energy of our world just enough so that the scary things don’t get picked up. Of course the witches who moved us out of harm’s way couldn’t pick and choose which magical beings to allow into our reality. In order to get rid of the demons, we lost the unicorn. Most magical creatures didn’t make it through the great energy shift with us. Given the demons’ taste for human newborns, though, I figured it was a fair trade-off.

Once our world was out of harm’s way, the witches raised the line, a safety net of energy that prevented our former masters from burrowing their way back in. The witches who maintained the line were called anchors, and only these anchors know how the line was created or how it might be destroyed. Originally there were thirteen anchors at a time, one from each of the witch families, but three of the families came to regret their part in the rebellion. Now the line was maintained by anchors from the remaining ten united families.

Ginny was the only anchor I had ever met. I didn’t really know what being an anchor entailed, but I knew that it had left Ginny bitter and alone, even though she was surrounded by family.

“The world lost a lot of its magic when they shifted us,” Jilo said. “The witches, like yo’ family. They try and act like they did some noble thing for the rest of us. But all they did was take every last bit of the magic left in this world for themselves. They built a kingdom where they the kings, and they can do whatever the hell they want with the rest of us. And Jilo s’posed to act like they doin’ her a favor.”

I disagreed with her interpretation, but Jilo didn’t give me the chance to respond. She had already shifted gears anyway. “Jilo sure love to see that Ginny’s face right now. The look she get when she see you standing here before Mother Jilo asking her for help to steal yo’ sister’s man.” She cackled and spat on the ground.

“You don’t understand. I don’t want to take Jackson from Maisie,” I said. “There’s another boy. His name is Peter. He’s my…I’m not sure what he is. Outside of Maisie he’s the best friend I ever had. He’s wonderful. He’s perfect. He should be my boyfriend. He loves me, and I want you to make me fall in love with him.”

Jilo tore the night apart with her amused screech. The night birds stopped their calls, and even the insects fell silent in wonder. Although we stood in the moon’s low light, I could still see the tears streaming from her eyes. It took some moments for her to pull herself back together. I felt the blood rush to my face, the heat of embarrassment changing into anger. “You want Mother to work a love spell on you?” She shook her head incredulously. “You ain’t got no idea how magic work, do you?” she asked, but the sharpness in her tone had given way to something like sympathy.

Her softness got to me in a way her derision had not. “I’m sorry,” I said backing away hastily. “I shouldn’t have wasted your time. I didn’t realize you couldn’t work the spell.”

“Not so fast, missy. Jilo never said she couldn’t work this spell you wantin’. She just say you don’t understand what it would take.”

“I said I can pay you,” I replied tersely.

“Lord help, girl. Jilo ain’t talkin’ about money. She talking about mojo.” She looked at me as if she were being asked to explain green to grass. “When people come to Jilo for a love spell, they come with a fire inside them. They burnin’ for the person they want, and Jilo use they fire to work the spell. You come to Jilo lovin’ the one man and wanting her to make you love another. They nothing but guilt in you. Guilt for lovin’ the one. Guilt for not lovin’ t’other. Jilo, she can use guilt for laying down revenge, but she sure can’t use it for love.”