by Horn, J. D.
Ellen and Oliver had walked away from us, crossing over to examine what remained of Birdy’s body. “I’m afraid, sweetie,” Ellen said, tears welling up in her eyes, “that there was a baby. This Birdy of yours was pregnant.”
NINETEEN
I retreated to my room the second we returned home. I was morally drained and physically exhausted. In spite of the horrors of the day, I slept like a stone. I didn’t make it up and out until after noon the next day, but as soon as I did rouse my sorry self, I made a beeline to Colonial Cemetery. I needed to find Jilo and talk all of this through with her. She’d had far more experience with conjured demons, borrowed power, and misdirected love than anyone else I knew. She’d enjoy chiding me about a “mud pie” falling in love with me, and I could sure use the laugh her wicked comments would bring us both. Besides, I hadn’t seen her since the Tree of Life ceremony, and I missed her.
Nearer the opposite end of the park, where the paths intersect in a V and become one, sat her battered green lawn chair, her red cooler balanced on top of it. The top of the cooler leaned against the side of the chair, leaving its contents exposed. I could make out a sheet of yellow paper that had been taped to the cooler’s side. The writing was too distant for me to make it out. I kept an eye on the horizon, scanning for Jilo as I drew near her ersatz office, but I couldn’t catch even a glimmer of her, visually or otherwise. It startled me when my eyes registered the rolls of cash stuffed into the open cooler. I’d never seen that much money in one place before. I reached out for a roll of hundred-dollar bills. A shot of energy stung my hand and burned my fingers. I looked at the note. “Out of business. Take what you gave me and not a penny more.”
“It looks like Mother Jilo has closed up shop.” A deep voice came from behind me. I turned to see Adam towering head-and-shoulders over me. He worked out of the police station on the other side of the cemetery’s wall, so I wasn’t surprised to meet him in Colonial. “I saw you at the gate. Thought I’d follow you in and see if you knew anything about this, seeing as you and Mother have grown so close over the last few months.”
How or why he kept tabs on me and Jilo didn’t seem as important to me as what was up with her. “I don’t know,” I said, more to myself than to the detective. “The other day, she wasn’t quite herself, but I never expected her to pull something like this.”
“She was upset? Maybe someone’s been threatening the old lady?”
At this I burst out laughing. “Have you ever known Jilo to run from a fight?”
Adam smiled. “I reckon as not.” He held a hand out toward the cooler, but I swept it away.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said, “unless some of that money belongs to you.”
“No, no. I never came to Mother for ‘professional’ services. I just like to keep an eye on her to make sure she’s getting along all right. She was nearly family after all.”
“I kind of feel like she’s family myself,” I said, amused to see he was somewhat taken aback by this.
“The Taylors joining forces with Mother Jilo? Lord help us all.” He shifted uncomfortably and shrugged his shoulders, turning his torso a bit away from me. His posture told me that he would be happier if what he perceived as the traditional balance of power was kept in place. “Well, if you talk to Mother, you tell her I asked after her. Let me know if she’s doing okay, right?”
“Sure.” I could do that. I was worried about Jilo’s sudden abdication, but I kept telling myself that steel doesn’t dent easily.
Adam raised his right hand in a brief wave. “Okay, I will catch you later,” he said and started down the V’s right fork, which ran parallel to the wall of tombstones. I sighed quietly. It wouldn’t be long before what was left of Birdy was found, and then Adam would be paying us yet another official visit. To my surprise he stopped in his tracks, turned, and took a few quick steps back toward me. “Oh,” he said in that innocent tone that I had come to learn meant he was about to spring something big on me to try to get a reaction. I am hiding things from him, and he is dropping bombs on me. So much for our newfound friendship. “The old man we found. Peter’s great-uncle.” I said nothing, forcing my face into a question mark. “We’ve pretty much finished looking into the items sewn up in his coat lining.”
“I don’t understand.” I pretended Jilo hadn’t already told me about the small fortune that Peadar carried on himself. “What was in it?”
“Uh, just a few personal belongings,” Cook said. “We’ll pass them on to the Tierneys soon. You take care, okay?”
I nodded, and he took off again. I was happy that the Tierneys would receive the treasure Peadar had left behind. I fought off the wave of guilt that blamed me for being the agency by which he had left the world. I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing right now. I glanced around the cemetery, miraculously free of tourists at the moment, then closed my eyes and envisioned home. The sliding sensation made me feel giddy and a little light-headed, but when I opened my eyes, I stood near the garage. Easy enough, but so far I had only attempted sliding short distances, and to places I knew well. I had never before attempted to find a person, and even as close as Jilo and I had grown, I still had no idea where the old woman kept her residence.
I focused on her, envisioning her face’s tight lines and the way they crisscrossed one another, the ebony beads of her eyes. I got the impression of a room, not her magnificent haint-blue chamber, but a sitting room, the shades pulled tight. I sensed cool and shadow, the hum of a box fan, a shade being blown open by the outside breeze, an inch of sunlight piercing and then disappearing from the room. A voice, Jilo’s voice, humming a tune I did not recognize. A heavy book resting on her lap. The sensations sharpened.
“You leave me alone, girl,” Jilo said. “I don’t want none of you today.” She waved her hand, and the room warped before my eyes, nearly fading. I was in no mood to be dismissed, and I felt no small sense of pride when I managed to hold my focus. Jilo and I arm wrestled for a few moments; she tried to force me away, but I insisted that she allow me to draw near. Her world floated up like a bubble, popping open and spreading around me as the sense of sliding fell away. I’d won the fight, but Jilo had managed to hold me off well enough that instead of appearing before her in her room, I found myself standing outside an old farmhouse that could have been situated anywhere between Valdosta and Florence for all my eyes could tell. A rusting red tin roof. A wide wraparound porch, shimmers of fading haint blue on the overhang, and the same shade peeling from the frame of the front door and window casings.
Four of my five standard senses told me that I recognized the place, though, recognized the crunch of the gravel beneath my feet as I took a few steps toward the house, the spring of the steps as I climbed to the porch. I realized this was the house where Jilo had brought me the day of Ginny’s funeral, when she’d had me blindfolded, kidnapped, and driven here by the ghost of Detective Cook’s grandfather. I had been so terrified of Jilo and her magic then. Now, instead of being afraid of her, I feared for her. Funny how quickly your world can change. I reached for the screen door, but the front door opened before my hand could make contact.
A very tall young man, a much younger and somewhat more masculine version of Jilo, stood in the doorway, blocking my entrance. He was dressed plainly in a tight white tank top and too-loose jeans. A wide leather belt held the pants in place, a full two inches below the top of his boxers and only an inch or so above indecency. “She says that she doesn’t want to see you.” His accent struck me, bereft as it was of the Southern softness my ears had become accustomed to.
“And who are you?” I asked, trying to make it sound as if I really had the right to ask any questions.
He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s right, you wouldn’t recognize me, would you?” He stepped out of the house, closing the door firmly behind him. “Truth be told, I barely recognize you. You were such a frightened little mouse the last time you came here. No
w look at you, all full of the magic and not in the least little bit scared.” He stepped closer, standing only a few inches from me, trying to use his height to intimidate me.
The house’s front door flung itself open. “Martell,” Jilo’s voice thundered.
The young man deflated at the sound of her voice. “Ah, I was just messing with her a bit, Gramma.”
“Martell.” I spoke his name, realizing that this was the great-grandson Jilo had helped escape from jail after he’d been arrested on suspicion of having murdered Ginny. To help him break out, she’d bent light around him, making him invisible, but then she had trouble mustering enough power to unbend the light. She had confessed to me that her first use for the power I’d given her was to make Martell visible once more, but I hadn’t given him much thought. “Nice to finally see you. Now back off and let me talk to Jilo.”
He hesitated, but Jilo called out. “Let ’er in. She a Taylor, and Taylors don’t understand the word ‘no.’ ” My eyes locked with Martell’s. One last challenge, a warning that told me he loved his great-grandmother, and then he stepped aside.
I opened the screen door and stepped into the darkened room. All the shades were closed, and the lights were off. The way Jilo had banished light seemed less an attempt to keep out the day’s building heat, and more as if she were in mourning. “Now what the hell you want?” The question came to me from the room’s darkest corner. The hum of the box fan was silenced as Jilo’s knobby fingers slid out of the shadow and switched it off.
“I want to see you. Make sure you are all right.” I took a couple of steps toward her, but stopped, shocked at the sight. She seemed to have shrunk somewhat, crumpled in on herself. Her hair had turned a confrontation of steel and snow, without even a memory of the jet it had been only a few days before. It appeared that the years she had managed to forestall had caught up with her overnight.
“You ain’t got to worry none about Jilo. She just tired. She tired of silly people and they silly desires. The way they so lazy that they come to Jilo for magic, rather than tryin’ honesty and hard work to get what they want. She tired of the diggin’ and she tired of the Hoodoo. She don’t want the power no more. She tired of the magic, and she sure enough tired of the Taylors,” Jilo said, and then stopped herself. “Jilo don’t mean you, girl.” Her voice softened. “Jilo will never get tired of her Mercy.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I rushed over to her, sitting cross-legged at her feet. Her hand, cold and nearly leathery, reached forward and began to stroke my hair.
“Tell me what happened, Jilo. What really happened,” I said.
Silence settled between us for what seemed like several minutes. “That damned uncle of yours” was all she said.
“Oliver?” I asked, confused.
“You got any others?” she asked, causing me to realize that with Connor and Erik gone, the list had indeed been whittled down to one.
“What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” she said, “and then again, everything.” She began humming again, stroking my hair. “Jilo saw it,” she said finally. “She saw the whole damn thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh,” she said shifting stiffly in her chair, “he ain’t meant to do nothin’ to Jilo, but he had Jilo stand there next to you in that tree of his. Jilo didn’t see anything at first. She just did what yo’ uncle told her to. She sprayed the perfume. She put the dirt in yo’ hand and poured the whiskey over it. But she didn’t see nothing. Not until she look in yo’ eyes. And then she saw the whole thing. Jilo’s entire life, it done flashed before her, just like she was dyin’. And Jilo saw. She saw every single choice she made. How every single action tied into every other single action. Every single wrong. Every single harm. Jilo done saw herself from the outside in, and what she saw was wrong. Jilo saw the beast there waitin’ for her. Just waitin’ there with it sharp teeth to gobble up her sinful heart. It too late for Jilo, my girl. She done the harm she done. She know she gonna have to face up to that. But she ain’t diggin’ herself no deeper. Jilo’s done with magic.”
I should have never waited so long to check in on Jilo, but I’d always thought of the old woman as being carved from granite and dipped in steel. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might need me. I sat up straight, seeing her more clearly now that my eyes had adjusted to the shade. She looked fragile, if not already broken. I had to choose between coddling and tough love. I decided on a delicate balance of both, starting with the latter. “So you are planning to hole up here between now and death?”
She gave a sad cackle. “That comin’ for Jilo sooner than you think, girl.”
“No,” I said as I stood and glared down at her. “You aren’t deserting me like this. I have no doubt you’ve done some things you should be ashamed of. But it seems to me that rather than sitting on your butt and moaning—”
“Now you watch how you talkin’ to Jilo—”
“And feeling sorry for yourself,” I continued even more forcefully. “It seems that while there’s still some breath in you, you should get out and try to mend some of that damage you’ve done.”
“Jilo . . .” She fumbled with a button on her dress as her lower lip poked forward. “She too old. Too tired. What’s done is done.”
“But what isn’t done isn’t,” I said sharply. My voice caught in my throat. “I need you, Mother. I need you.”
She looked up at me, a moistness forming around her eyes. “And what do you need a broken-down old thing like Jilo for?”
I reached forward and took both her hands. They were oh so cold, as if life had already begun to desert them. “Because you are the only one I am sure I can trust. Completely.”
Her eyes looked me up and down. “You so sure about that?”
“Yes,” I responded without hesitation.
“Well maybe you shouldn’t be,” she confessed, pulling her hands out of mine.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, ’cause we both know they is outright lyin’, and then again, they is not tellin’ the whole truth. Jilo know something about you. About yo’ family. That little bastard, the one you called Wren. Don’t forget, he was keepin’ an eye on yo’ family for Jilo long before you born. If Jilo told you what she been keepin’ from you, that trust of yours might up and disappear.”
I fixed her with my stare, causing the old woman to squirm for perhaps the first time in her life. “Tell me.” My heart beat a wild tattoo, but I forced my voice to remain level, calm.
Her eyes darted around me, then fell to her lap. “Those pretty aunts of yours been lying to you, girl. Not like Jilo been by holdin’ back, but outright lyin’. Jilo think maybe Ginny figured it out too, but she not sure about it. Iris and Ellen, though, they know. They had to know all along.”
“They know what?” I asked, growing impatient. My magic reached out to her as I fought the urge to break in and read her thoughts. Deep down, even without rummaging through her memories, I knew what she would say, but still, I had to hear her say it.
Her eyes fluttered up to meet mine. “Your mama, Emily. She didn’t die having you. She ain’t dead at all.”
I never thought I’d be happy that Jilo had used Wren to spy on my family, but finally I had the opportunity to learn the truth from a somewhat objective witness. I sat back down at her feet. “Tell me everything.”
TWENTY
Jilo licked her dry lips and readied herself to speak. “You know Wren was keeping an eye on yo’ family for me.”
I nodded, noticing that she had repeated herself but not pointing it out.
“Well, he the one that told Jilo. He saw yo’ mama wandering around this house the day she was s’posed to be getting planted in the ground. Said she was goin’ through the place lookin’ for something.” Under its own volition, my hand flew up to touch the chain of my mother’s locket.
<
br /> Jilo started to say something more, but before she could, Martell barreled through the door. “Gramma, you gotta come see this.” He ran back to the porch. “Damn,” his voice carried to us through the screen door. Our eyes locked, and I scrambled up to my feet. I stopped to help Jilo hoist up her light and brittle body.
I let Jilo come under her own steam as I hurried outside. I didn’t see anything unusual from the porch, nothing that would get Martell going like he was. I walked out into the yard after him and followed his eyes to the sky. A dark arc, like a rainbow drained of its colors, had stretched across the western horizon. In the few moments I stood watching it, its color changed from steel to granite to coal.
Jilo had found her way to the porch and was leaning out to examine the phenomenon. The arc began to unfurl, forming a curtain of dusk, not so much hiding everything on the other side as draining the color, fading it to black and white . . . and then all light disappeared, leaving only darkness. “You two come up here. Get out of the yard.” Jilo’s voice quivered. “Go on,” she commanded when we didn’t move. Martell stood where he was, entranced, frozen in place like a statue. I grabbed his hand, my own fright giving me the strength to drag him across the gravel, up the steps, and into the house behind Jilo.
We watched through the window as the veil against the sky began to close in on us. It grew in both proximity and length, the edges curling up toward each other, encircling us. “Gramma, what is it?” Martell asked, his face trembling, fear stripping him of the contrived swagger, revealing the innocent little boy behind it. In spite of my own fear, my heart went out to him.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him, and then found myself looking to Jilo for confirmation. She said nothing. She went from window to window, opening the blinds. Each window framed a growing shadow. The band of darkness had changed, becoming a devourer of light. I shuddered, realizing that it had stopped growing and had begun contracting, like a serpent squeezing tighter. The world beyond its grasp had ceased to exist for us. On its inner edge, the side that grew ever nearer, the last bit of bright blue summer sky was being drained of color and light. The sky began to press down on us, its heaviness palpable, and the ground beneath our feet trembled. Like a bubble rising to the surface, the world around us lifted up, forming an ever-contracting sphere. It was like a black hole sucking everything into it.