“But how could you know that the fire elementals wouldn’t harm me?” I asked.

“The protective charms the golem set for you included protection from fire, natural or magical. But in my opinion, the charm was unnecessary. If anyone, including you, had the slightest idea of who you really are, or what you’re really made of, they would have realized there was no need to protect you from flames. Suffice it to say, the fire recognized you as its own. From the looks of things, it healed you up nicer than even Ellen could have. The way you were laid out on that floor, I figured your walking days were over.”

“I can’t believe she’s doing this.” I was talking to myself, but he answered me all the same.

“Oh, believe it,” he said. “But don’t you worry, she isn’t going to get quite the outcome she’s expecting, so you’ll get the last laugh in the end. Well, on second thought, you won’t, ’cause I’ll have to kill you before you can have that laugh, but you’ve been such a good girl, and I’m feeling generous.

“When it comes right down to it, lies are pretty simple. It’s the truth that’s complicated. It’s like an onion, and there’s always another layer if you keep peeling.” He chuckled to himself as he continued making marks on my body. He stopped suddenly. “Well what have we here?” he asked after a moment. “Looks like I’m going to get two for one this time.”

I knew he had sensed Colin, and I felt a deep sense of mourning for my child, who’d never even be born. Tears started streaming down my face, and Jackson wiped them away with his bloody fingers.

“Oh, there, there,” Jackson said. “You won’t live to give birth to this one, but through your death, you’ll become the mother of thousands. You’ve seen your children, Mercy—my brothers and sisters—when you passed through their world on your way to visit Jilo.”

“You’re…you’re one of the shadows,” I managed through my tears.

“Yes,” he said, then placed a gentle kiss on my lips. “Imagine how it felt to almost be destroyed by my own kind. The sweet blood you wiped on me. It excited them, confused them. If they hadn’t been so starved and I so well fed, they might have ripped me apart before they knew what they were doing. See, you are much smarter than that sister of yours. She never even questioned that I might be something other than a little fellow your uncle dreamed up.” He gave me a thumbs-up and a beaming smile that revealed his straight white teeth. “I have to tell you, we’ve been waiting for this day for millennia. Your birth, Ginny’s intervention. It was nothing less than miraculous. We want so badly to live in your world, Mercy. But there’s only enough power for a few of us to get out at a time. When the witches activated the line, we got trapped between worlds, neither entirely in the world the witches created, nor wholly in the one they left behind. When the tunnels near Candler Hospital were dug, they filled up with such sweet despair and misery that we were drawn to them, but even feeding off all of that exquisite agony didn’t allow us to draw a fraction of the power we needed to pierce the veil. There were too many of us, and the line was too strong.

“So we’ve bided our time. Only a few of us could break free at once, and even then only for a little while. We learned that we could draw strength from the dreams of sleeping humans, and eventually we began to meet magic workers who would assist us in return for performing small favors for them. They’d give us skins that we could use to walk in your world, but the skins never lasted for long.”

“The shadows are boo hags?” I asked, every bit as surprised as if he’d told me they were leprechauns.

“Yes, that’s what we’ve come to be called in the low country, but we’ve had a lot of different names. Heck, you couldn’t even pronounce our real name if I told you. There, finished,” he said, then stuck his finger back into the blood and licked it. He tossed the container to the ground. “I got real lucky one day when I met an up-and-coming root doctor named Mother Jilo Wills. She promised me that if I kept an eye on you Taylors and reported back to her, she’d teach me how to weave my own flesh. She’d find a way to feed me enough energy so that I’d never have to go back to the world between.

“Her plan started with tricking the Taylor child named Oliver into believing that I was his special friend. After that, his desire to keep me around would be enough to hold me in your world. Oh, how proud your grandparents were of Wren. They took me as proof positive that their Oliver was the brightest and most powerful little witch ever. I could draw enough energy off the little bastard to live quite well for a while,” he said, standing back to admire the drawings he had made on my body.

“But all little ones must grow up, and soon Oliver lost interest in me. With Jilo’s help, I managed to hang on through the dry spell, but it was like living off grass after years of feeding on cow. Things started looking up when your cousin Paul was born, and then when your mother gave birth to you. Ginny did her best to ground your energy here, but she did a rather sloppy job of it, leaving a bit leaking off here, a little leaking off there. Feeding off your power, I was able to grow strong. You see, ever since you came into the world, you’re the one who has made my existence possible. You should be proud, for I am every bit as much as your child as that clot in your womb. Soon your other children are going to burst free from their prison too. And it is truly all thanks to you and your fantastically screwed up family.”

He held up a dagger before my eyes. “This is the blade that will end your life. Don’t worry, it’s sharp, and I promise to make it as quick and painless as I can. Your death is the grand finale to your sister’s plan, you see. As soon as the investment ceremony takes place and the anchor energy settles into her, she will signal me, and I will drive this blade into your heart. At that very moment she’ll free your magic, and it will unite itself with the closest match to your living blood. In the end, it always comes down to blood, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“Maisie thinks that she’ll be the closest match, but…well, now we’ve reached the part of my plan that is probably going to be the most unpleasant for you.” He took the dagger and sunk the tip of its blade just above my breast. I screamed out from pain, and then from revulsion, as he pressed his lips to the wound, sucking the blood from my flesh.

“I need to do this at each one of these points,” he said, touching a few of the places he had marked on my body. Then he made a quick swipe of the blade at each of them, pressing his mouth to the wounds and drawing in deeply. He moaned in pleasure. “Oh, girl, you do taste good,” he said, his teeth red behind his bloody lips. “Your blood burns in me,” he said, growing intoxicated. His lips sought out the wounds over and over again, and my vision began to blur from the pain and blood loss. And then he suddenly pulled away.

The sounds I could hear from the other dimension weren’t fully audible and were out of sync with the visual images I could perceive, but even though my strength was sapped and my senses were weakened, I could tell that the investment ceremony had started. I felt the sharp blade of Jackson’s dagger poise itself directly above my heart.

I heard Maisie’s voice scream the word “stop” once, twice, and then a third time. Then everything turned to fire.