I took a few steps toward the hospital, and the net of energy that surrounded it clung to me like a spider’s web. I could feel Jilo nearby, but the closer I got to the building, the farther away she felt. I found myself zigzagging back and forth in the parking lot. After a few minutes of wandering around, a glimmer caught my eye—a wave of aquamarine reflecting off the hospital’s exterior wall. I rushed over to it, hoping to find its source before it faded.
The glow intensified as I came closer, and I sensed that it was intended as a beacon to guide me to Jilo. I looked down and realized that the light was emanating from the entrance to a set of steps that led beneath the parking lot. The heavy sheet of metal that usually sealed the opening had been moved aside. I realized that Jilo must be hiding out in one of the yellow fever tunnels that had been dug under Savannah to hide the extent of the epidemic from the populace. As a child I had spent days exploring the hospital’s grounds and the cool tunnel that went under Drayton Street and into Forsyth Park. Somehow I had never noticed this entrance before. I took one last hungry look at the light of day and descended into Jilo’s magical gloaming.
The tunnel was impossibly long and lit in a way that made it seem less like a tunnel and more like a bridge through an eternal darkness. But that darkness was not empty; it was woven from the animated shadows that I’d first witnessed in Jilo’s haint blue chamber. I could sense an endless number of them. They appeared to be seamlessly united, but each had a hunger all its own. Instinct told me that their realm fell outside the boundary of protection created by spell that had been engraved on the Candler Oak. It was somehow both deeper and farther away. The darkness watched me with its black and countless eyes as I carried on, putting one foot before the other, wondering if Jilo’s magic was the only thing protecting me from a quick death.
There was no sense of having crossed a boundary or stepped through a doorway, but I suddenly found myself in Jilo’s haint blue room. With one step, I was in the tunnel, with the next, I was standing before her. My rational, non-magical mind protested that this room couldn’t be anywhere near Forsyth Park. After all, Cook’s grandfather had driven me up dirt roads to get to this room when Jilo had influenced him to abduct me. My witch knowledge explained that the room was not only a room; it was a hub that could open up onto any number of places.
“Took you long enough,” Jilo’s voice carried from the center of the room—a space that was at once as large as a football field and as small as our walk-in linen closet. “I guess you too busy for Jilo. How is yo’ love life anyway?” She chuckled. She sat there on her aquamarine throne, dressed in a color I might have called crimson if it had been a tad less vibrant. “Come closer, little girl,” she commanded. I stepped forward, but not because I had been compelled. Despite her show of power, I could sense that that the force within me was greater. I would never have this advantage again, so until sunrise tomorrow, Mother Jilo would have to answer to me for a change. “Pretty necklace you wearing, girl. Any chance you could get Jilo one like it?” She laughed.
“I don’t think so,” I responded.
She reached out and took the amulet into her hand to examine it, but a surge of electricity shot through her, leaving her gasping. “Damn, girl, Jilo wasn’t gonna try and take it; she just wanted to see. Jilo ain’t no fool. She ain’t never stole no witch’s power, and she sure ain’t going to start by stealing from a Taylor. The penalty for stealing power is lot steeper than Jilo willing to pay for a half-day token.” I stayed silent because I didn’t want her to realize I was not completely in control of the power. After a moment, Jilo composed herself and leaned back on her throne. “So, they done made you queen for a day. Whose idea was that?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “But the power is Oliver’s.”
Jilo smiled knowingly. “So he still with us then?”
“You did know about Grace,” I said. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Warn you? Warn you against my own blood? Jilo tried to protect you. She gave you what you needed to protect yourself. But Jilo ain’t doin’ a damn thing for the rest of yo’ family. That uncle of yours, my Grace’s blood is on his hands. Anything she done to him, he deserve. I wish to God she had killed that prissy little bastard,” she said and spat on the ground without a lick of self-consciousness. “And Grace just the beginning of what yo’ family done to Jilo’s. Our families got history, my girl. Real history. Jilo shouldn’t even waste her time on you. But you different from the rest of ’em, that why Jilo willing to help you. Fact is Jilo like you, more than she ever thought she could care for a Taylor. But don’t you never think Jilo loyalty don’t lie with her own blood.”
“Except when it’s to your own benefit to betray them. Oliver told me what happened after Grace died. I know you lied about your sister, and that Ginny gave you the source for the power you’ve been using. You took advantage of the situation with Grace to get something for yourself.”
Jilo’s face lit up with amusement. “You done caught Jilo, ain’t you,” she said, but then her smile flitted away. “ ’Sides, my Grace was gone. There nothing Jilo could do about it.”
“But you didn’t kill your sister. She isn’t buried at your crossroads.”
“Jilo got three sisters. Two alive and one who died in Detroit five years back. Jilo wouldn’t harm a hair on they heads.”
“But you encouraged me to kill my sister!”
“Jilo just wanted to see if you capable of it. And for a short spell, you considered it. That why you got all sick and stumbled away from Jilo.”
I considered her words. I searched my heart, disgusted by the thought that she might be right. No, I realized, this was another one of her games; she was trying to throw me off. “No, Jilo. We both know that the thought never crossed my mind. But here’s something you should consider. What if I left here and went out to your crossroads? Dug up the crystal Ginny gave you and crushed it into dust?”
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.”
