As this thought registered, it made me feel a twinge of guilt. Peter was trying so hard to step up and be a good father and provider. In addition to his regular job, he’d gone back to working nights at his parents’ tavern, and he was doing his best to start up his own construction business, taking on smaller jobs that he could do on weekends with a couple of buddies from his regular crew. I had reminded him that money was not a problem—ever since I had turned twenty-one, I’d been receiving a monthly stipend from the family trust—but he would have none of it.
“No,” he had told me, holding up his palms toward me. “I can’t take money from you. I don’t want to take money from you. I want to know that I can take care of my wife, or soon-to-be wife, and my child. Without your money and without your magic.”
It was a display of arguably antiquated male pride, but instinct and intuition told me not to challenge him on it. I simply nodded and smiled. “All right. I respect that,” I said at the time, even though I was only humoring him. After taking some weeks to reflect on it, though, I had come to realize how much respect I did have for him. “You are one lucky boy to have a daddy like that,” I told Colin, running my hand over the small bulge beneath my shirt.
I leaned into the enormous door, intent on opening it under my own steam. The seven-by-four-foot slab of steel cracked open with great difficulty. When I was a little girl, someone had managed to steal the massive door, taking it right off its hinges. That’s about as far as they got, though, its weight causing them to abandon it by the side of a dirt road, leaving the city of Savannah with the task of rehanging it.
I considered using my magic to open the door, as Jilo had done, but while I might manage to swing the door open, I might just blow it off its hinges and into the next county. I decided to use my hands. I leaned into the steel, and was nearly blinded by the light that rushed in to fill the dark space behind and around me.
The day was a fabric woven from heat and humidity, the noises of nature, and the drone of traffic on Ogeechee Road. My bike was where I’d left it, propped up against the building. I could have used my magic to bring myself to the magazine, but had decided against it. The one “spell,” for lack of a better term, I had managed to master so far was teleporting short distances. Not all witches could do it, but I could, and I could do it well. All the same, I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Each time, there was an odd sensation that the person I’d been at Point A wasn’t necessarily the same as the one who’d ended up at Point B.
“Mama needs her practice, but she also needs her exercise,” I rationalized aloud to my son. A thrill ran through me as I sensed for the first time an intelligence on the other end of the conversation. Colin was there, connected to me. A feeling of love, unequal to any I had ever known, flooded through me. I realized that I would do anything to keep my baby safe. Anything. Then I wondered whether “anything” included giving up the search for Maisie. I decided to leave that an open question for now, but determined that I would find a cleaner and safer place to meet Jilo from now on.
I started for my bike, but then a noise came from behind me. Something close. I turned. A lonely clump of Georgia pines stood a few feet ahead on my right, and an older—no, incredibly old—man stumbled through them. He staggered and almost tripped, but then righted himself. He turned around in a circle, seemingly intent on finding his bearings. The air felt way too hot and sticky for the overcoat he was wearing, especially since the garment was several sizes too large. The hem nearly brushed the ground. In spite of his diminutive size, I began to feel uneasy. Something wasn’t right.
This fear of strangers had only come upon me recently; I was no longer protected by any charms. When the line chose me, its power blended with my own, unraveling the protections that Emmet and my family had woven for me. Regular witches can’t charm the line’s anchors for good or bad. Now I had to stand on my own.
“Good morning,” I called out to the man, but he didn’t seem to hear me.
“Ta me ar strae. Ta me ar strae,” he repeated, circling once more before finally registering my presence. He made a rush toward me, and my breath quickened as adrenaline urged me to a fight-or-flight response. In his hurry, he nearly fell forward but managed to right himself at the last instant. He stopped and looked up at me. He had the most innocent face I had ever seen, his eyes wide and trusting. He was balding, and what tufts of hair remained around his temples were snow white. Deep wrinkles covered his face, but the folds there were laugh lines.
“Hello,” I said again. “Do you need some help?” I asked, hoping he understood English.
“You must be the angel,” he said, a thick Irish accent lending a lilt to his words. “They told me you would come for me at the end.” He held his arms out to me in a gesture of welcome.
Any fear I had of this stranger dissipated. I took a few steps toward him. “Sorry,” I said, “no angel here.” Was that disappointment I saw in his eyes?
“That’s just as well,” he said, snagging his coat on some brush and nearly tottering over.
“Listen, are you all right? Can I help you somehow?” He looked up at me again with his sweet face. Something about him seemed to be touched by magic. He radiated a faint white light, a luminescence I wasn’t sure I could have seen if I weren’t a witch. I found myself wondering if he were indeed a man, or some kind of elemental masquerading as one. After recent experiences, I had grown much less inclined to accept things at face value.
He tugged at his coat, freeing it from the brush, and took another step toward me. He began rubbing his left arm with his right hand. “It’s only that I am not quite sure where I am,” he said.
“You are off Ogeechee Road,” I replied. “Do you live around here?”
His answer came in the form of a short, sharp laugh. The laughter died as quickly as it had come. “I don’t know.” His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground. I ran to him, nearly tripping over my own feet, and knelt by his side. I gave him a gentle shake. He did not respond. I rolled him over with some difficulty. His skin was blue, and the radiance I had noticed only moments before had disappeared. Whatever magic had clung to him had deserted him.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I said and opened his coat, surprised to discover how slight his body was beneath it. I loosened his collar. He smiled up at me, but then his eyes glazed over. I felt for a pulse. There was none. I had taken a CPR certification course a couple of years before, and I did my best to remember the steps. Placing my right hand over his chest and my left hand over my right, I began compressions. Two inches deep, one hundred compressions per minute.
“Help!” I screamed, hoping that someone in one of the nearby businesses might hear. “Call an ambulance.” I kept counting compressions as I listened for any response. There was none. I called out again. I had picked this place for my work with Jilo because the noise of a busy road drowned out most other sounds, and even though there were businesses in the area, large trees hid the powder magazine entirely. Now I cursed the noise and camouflage. He only had six minutes even with CPR. How long had I been pressing into his chest? Maybe only thirty seconds, but it seemed like forever. Should I stop CPR and call for an ambulance myself?
