Jilo (Witching Savannah 4)

Ginny drew her into her arms. “Tell me.”

“His name was Robert Jones,” she said, whispering the words in Ginny’s ear. “He used to be a pastor. I lived with him and his wife in Atlanta while I went to school. And I think . . . I think . . .” She swallowed hard. “I think he may have been my father.” She pushed back, freeing herself from Ginny’s embrace, astounded to hear herself give voice to those words. “He talked such nonsense. About being taken up by angels. Being showed visions of the disasters about to befall us. He disappeared. And then just before the Beekeeper came to me, he appeared here in my house. In the front room. He told me he’d been wrong all along—they weren’t angels who took him. They were devils. And he told me these devils took my mama, too, and used the two of them to make me. It’s nonsense. It has to be.”

“I wish it were, but I’m afraid it isn’t. That night at the club, I sensed there was something different about you. Your ability to tap into my magic makes sense to me now. It seems you weren’t so much born, as engineered. You were created as a weapon.”

“I’m no kind of weapon,” Jilo said, sure that at least one of them had lost her sense of reason. “I’m only a woman. A mother.” Her voice nearly broke, but she forced herself to remain strong.

“Oh, you are indeed a weapon, even more potent than that H-bomb these mad scientists have

blown out their balls. But you are also a woman. And I believe you are an honorable woman,” Ginny said. “A trustworthy woman. That’s why I’m about to bet my life on my faith in you. If the others even dreamed that I might share this with you, they would kill me. No, worse than kill me, they would bind me, leave me in a permanent coma, no more than a seat for the power that has joined itself to me.” Her face hardened. She lifted her chin and pierced Jilo with a sharp gaze. “I once said to you that I hoped someday we’d be friends. I meant it then. I mean it now. I trust you, Jilo Wills, I trust you with my very life. Will you trust me?”

Jilo stared into the eyes of this woman, so complex in the way she seamlessly combined admirable attributes and detestable ones. Still, when Jilo delved to the root of her soul, asking if she could trust Ginny Taylor, her heart said yes.

Jilo nodded, and Ginny reached out and placed her fingertips on Jilo’s temples.

Images rose before Jilo’s eyes. Places, structures, some seeming to reach back in antiquity, others gleaming towers of polished glass. She saw them laid out together on a single plane, like the time separating them meant nothing at all. “We witches”—Jilo heard Ginny’s voice sound all around her, as if she had fallen deep into a well—“we built the machine, like the outsiders commanded.” Jilo could see strands of light, the exact shade of haint blue she’d grown up around, surge up from the different points of the field. They rose up, converging on a single point. She’d seen this point in many pictures. It was the Great Pyramid.

“But we were clever, rebellious monkeys, we witches. We made a plan. A plan to chase away the outsiders.”

“But what was this machine meant to do?”

“It was meant to strip this world of all life, of all magic, to beam its energy across the stars, through the dimensions, leaving Earth nothing more than a dead rock. And once we’d delivered them this planet’s very life force, we were to spread out among the stars, like some kind of virus, to find other worlds to devour. But we tricked them. Took advantage of their own technology to cast them out. We shifted our world, our whole reality, to a slightly different frequency, then wove a net of magic—what we call the line—to keep them out.”

Jilo looked on as the collected energies joined together in a large pool arranged before a large and monstrous statue. It was familiar to her, yet she couldn’t place it. After a moment, it dawned on her that this was the Sphinx, though its head was a jackal’s head rather than that of a man in headdress. This head, Jilo suspected the original, was much larger than the one she’d seen in pictures. It seemed to suit the body much better, both in size and in composition. Jilo realized the familiar human face must have been hewn from this canine head.

“I suspect that you,” Ginny said as Jilo watched the energy drain from the pool and coil up through the Great Pyramid, “are part of a planned assault against the safety net of magic we’ve woven. You have been created as part of the outsiders’ attempt to collapse the line.” The power shot up through the pyramid’s golden apex, but then turned, spinning in on itself, weaving a net of energy that stretched out in less than a blink of an eye to surround the entire globe. Then the light faded from sight.

“Not all were shut out by the barrier we raised. There were a few outsiders, functionaries and bureaucrats, here to see to the final stages of the operation. They were trapped within the boundary of the line. Most were captured. Executed. But a few escaped, and those few began working to create a new kind of witch, one to whom they could give magic—or take it away—however it suited their cause. I fear you might be one of their creations, no more to them than an appliance waiting to be connected to the power supply of their choice. Within each race, on each corner of the globe, throughout time, they have placed a weapon such as yourself in preparation to put their plan in motion. They intend to turn you all on when it suits them, cause the line to falter, and finish the job they set out to do when the witches first rebelled. I have no idea how this might connect to the Beekeeper, but I’m sure it’s why you caught her attention. It would seem that even among your peers, there’s something special about you. That you might have a pivotal role to play.”

“But that’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t help them. And if you witches still exist, certainly you must be capable of maintaining the protections you created.”

“Not all the witches want to keep the line. They resent that we’re not so special anymore, that we’re no longer the masters of this world the way we were when we served the outsiders. Some witches want to bring the line down, strip this world, and flee into the sky to join their masters. Help them spread the contamination of colonialism from world to world, star to star.”

“Well, they can’t make me help them. I won’t help them.”

“You must never practice magic,” Ginny said, her words a warning, “not even the charlatan tricks Mother Jilo has been peddling. Now that you’re connected to the Beekeeper, you’ll find her magic may just rise up in you even if you’re only attempting a ruse. And if that happens, you’ll begin to draw attention, unfriendly attention, to yourself.”

“Or maybe,” Jilo said, her ire stirring at being told what she was and was not to do, “if this Beekeeper is on my side, I should start practicing magic in a grand way. If you witches are so afraid of her, sounds to me like I can handle any ‘attention’ you all care to throw my way.”

Ginny stiffened. “Of course, that would be your choice. But it might cause far more harm than you could even guess.”

“I,” Jilo straightened her spine, “will worry about the harm I do after I know my own family is safe.” She raised her hand, shaking it in anger. “You’re telling me to hide. To keep my head low. To pray that no one takes notice. Well, I’ve had enough of living that way, Miss Almighty Taylor. Maybe you should try it for a change.” The two women stood facing each other for several moments, their eyes locked together.

Ginny flinched first. “Don’t ever let me off easy,” she said, and Jilo was surprised to see a smile building on her face. “Stand up to me. I’ll need that more from you now than ever.” Her smile pulled into a tight, straight line, and her gaze sharpened. “There’s one more thing, though. Something I think you should know about your Beekeeper. Then, if you choose to use the magic she’s offering, so be it.”

Jilo nodded. “All right, I’m listening.”

Ginny’s gaze fell to the floor, giving Jilo the impression that the other woman felt ashamed by what she was about to relate. “The Maguire family has been influential in this state for generations now, and my family has long been aware of Maguire and his activities.” She paused, her gaze drifting up to meet Jilo’s, an unspoken request for forgiveness. “But we did nothing, as . . .”

“As his crimes didn’t touch you.”

Ginny didn’t try to defend herself or her family. She nodded. “But that isn’t all. You see, after the war, we thought he’d lost all access to magic, but up until just before the war, Maguire was a collector, a practitioner of blood magic.” She paused. “A servant of the Red King, and by extension, of the Beekeeper herself.” She gave Jilo a moment to drink in her words. “Your magic,” she continued, “his magic, are of the same source.”

Jilo’s mind flashed to the wreck that had taken Guy’s life only days after she and Tinker had made a deal with the Red King to save him. She had no doubt the report had it right when it said drugs and alcohol had played a role in the crash. But the paper got it wrong when they called the wreck an accident. Jilo felt certain that in some fiery hell, the Red King and his mother were laughing at her gullibility. Laughing at the bargain price she’d placed not only on her own soul, but on Tinker’s as well.

“My nana,” Jilo said, growing ice-cold in an instant, “kept a scrapbook on Maguire.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Ginny said, again casting her glance downward. “It seems Maguire’s relationship with your family goes back several generations.” She halted, seeming to feel it was unnecessary to say more, but Jilo needed to hear the whole story. She needed to hear it spoken aloud.