The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(70)

“I told you, Mercy,” she began. “I told you how Ginny prevented me from saving Paul, because of the prophecy that foretold that the bloodlines that gave birth to him would give rise to a great witch who would reunite all thirteen families.”

“Yes, and you said that Ginny was dead set against that reunion,” I said.

“We had Paul before Ginny discovered the prophecy. Afterward, she prevented us from having any more children. Just as she limited my healing powers, she tampered with my ability to conceive another child. She didn’t let me save Paul because she didn’t want him to grow up and father children. I honestly think she might have killed him outright herself if the witch in the prophecy hadn’t been female.”

“Maisie,” I said, the pieces coming together.

“I knew that she was Erik’s girl the second I laid hands on her. That you both were,” Iris said. I wondered why it had never occurred to me that her psychometric powers would have told her who our father was, even if my mother hadn’t.

“Yes,” Ellen said. “My husband Erik fathered you and Maisie. We couldn’t let Ginny find out. We just couldn’t.”

“My God, you must hate us,” I said in amazement.

“Oh, no, my darling girl,” Ellen said, beaming at me with nothing but love in her eyes. Her expression was tender as she said, “I could never hate you. You are the daughters Ginny denied me.”

“And the daughters I could never have,” Iris added, approaching us almost shyly. She and Ellen joined together and took me into their arms.

“We forgave your mother years ago,” Ellen said. “She was a weak and willful woman. She went after both of our husbands, if only to show us she could take them away. But in the end, she gave us you and Maisie.” It hurt me terribly to realize again all the harm my mother had done, and I promised myself then and there that I would never be like her.

“And now,” Iris said, her voice catching, “you girls are all I have left.” She hesistated a moment and looked at me through eyes that were filled with tears. “I am sorry Connor died the way he did.” The wind began to creep up around her again, lifting the three of us who’d embraced an inch or so off the ground. “Because I wish I could have killed the son of a bitch myself.”

She let go of Ellen and me, and we landed lightly on our feet. She held up her hand, and a piece of paper flitted into it from the desk. Letters and lines began to fill the once empty page, and as soon as it was full, she turned it to face us. I couldn’t make out the words, but I recognized Connor’s sprawling signature at the bottom. Iris had written him a suicide note.

“Oliver,” Iris said, “you should call Detective Cook. I just found a letter from Connor. He said he couldn’t live a moment longer with the guilt of what he did to Ginny.”

“And now we need to deal with Wren,” Ellen said, the resolve in her voice a sure sign that all of the fondness she’d felt for the charming illusion had faded forever.

“Let’s slow down a bit and unwind all of this first,” Emmet said, appearing from nowhere. “Your family always falls victim to its passions. You act on the spur of the moment without thinking.”

Without thinking, I crossed over and slapped the smug look right off his face. “You show up when you think it’s time to criticize, but where the hell were you when I needed you?” All nine parts of him were taken aback. “Shut up!” I warned him when he started to move his lips again.

Iris’s face was set as hard as concrete. “Call Cook,” she repeated to Oliver.





TWENTY-EIGHT


I was sent upstairs to wash off the smell of smoke before the police could arrive. Emmet stood guard for me outside the bathroom door in case Wren showed up. I blow-dried my hair so that Cook wouldn’t have any reason to notice that I’d been busy washing away what he would have deemed as evidence. While I showered, Oliver and Ellen searched the house and garden, but neither of them could pick up an impression of Wren. He had gone into hiding.

It was a little after midnight when Detective Cook left our house, Connor’s suicide note carefully preserved in a plastic evidence bag. The tears Iris had shed before the detective were real, although she was grieving the death of her good impression of Connor rather than the man himself. When Cook passed me on his way out, his eyes locked with mine, and his expression shifted in a blink from an “I told you so” to an “I’m sorry for your loss” without ever pressing the clutch.

With Cook gone, it was time to deal with Wren. Iris, Oliver, Ellen, and I gathered in the library, waiting wordlessly for Emmet to corner Wren and bring him to us. It was odd because until tonight I had never suspected that Wren was capable of existing apart from our family. It had never occurred to me that he could leave our house and go out into the world at large.

Ellen sat next to Iris and wrapped her arm around her elder sister’s shoulders. Iris stared straight ahead, her expression revealing her determination to be strong no matter what. Ellen’s face was a jumble of emotions: guilt, sadness, anger, and then more guilt.

Oliver broke the silence. “Mercy, honey, I know it has been one hell of a night,” he said, “but is there any chance that you remember anything about the dissolution spell? It’s just that I’m not sure what we should do. Wren came from my six-year-old psyche. I can barely even remember being six, let alone what I was feeling when he was created.”