“And they still pissed you shared a little with Jilo.”

“Yeah, they didn’t seem too happy when they figured that one out.” The other witch families had staged a kind of trial to determine if I was ready to assume the full use of my powers. The fact that I’d given Jilo just enough to keep her in business had actually been used as Exhibit A in the case against me, but I wasn’t going to burden her with that fact. It was my power to give, and I’d done it of my own free will. “They say they’re doing it to protect me from myself, that I don’t know how to handle the power, that I’m not mature enough for it,” I said, mentally ticking off their list of complaints, “and that I think too much with my heart instead of my head, putting my own desires before the greater good.”

“Who the hell are they to judge you?” she asked, angry as a mother hen protecting her chick. “The line, it chose you, even without yo’ magic. It knew you. It picked you.”

“They said that letting me have access to my full power would be like letting a six-year-old play with an atomic bomb. I’ve got to ease into it, like I would have if I’d been able to access it since birth.”

“What about the line? How you gonna anchor that damned thing if you don’t have you full power?”

“I’m not anchoring right now. I’m connected to its power. I have to be, ’cause it chose me to help anchor it, but the nine other anchors are sharing my allotment of its energy and my portion of the burden of maintaining it. I’m sure if they could remove me as an anchor without bringing down the line, they probably would.”

“Oh, they a way. They could kill you, just like yo’ Ginny got killed.”

My mind flashed back on the scene I’d walked into that summer. My Great-Aunt Ginny lying dead in a pool of blood. Bludgeoned with a tire iron. “They wouldn’t do that,” I said, praying that I was right.

“You sure about that?” Jilo asked. I said nothing, knowing that she’d read through any lie I tried to float. I wasn’t sure. Ginny’s murder had triggered the events that had led to the line’s selection of me as an anchor. It had crossed my mind more than once that I ought to take care until I had my footing. Killing me would be the easiest way to create another vacancy.

Deep down I suspected that if I proved too inconvenient, too much of a handful, the families might decide to remove me from the scene entirely, and then congratulate themselves on being able to make the hard calls. I knew my aunts and uncle would go down trying to protect me, but some members of my extended family might even put their seal of approval on the decision. That’s why I’d been agreeing to everything the families had asked of me, everything other than giving up on Maisie.

“Jilo, she don’t get it,” she continued, pulling me from my dark thoughts. “How is what they doin’ any different from what old Ginny pulled on you? They stealin’ what rightfully yo’s. They know they a price for stealing a witch’s power.”

“They aren’t really stealing . . .”

“They taking it from you without yo’ permission,” she said, but then read my silence. “Ah, Jilo see. You gave them permission, didn’t you?”

“I did what I had to do. Maybe they’re right. I don’t know what I’m doing. I never had the chance to learn. I’ve got to catch up.”

“The hell you say. Don’t you see, girl? The line, it thought you ready. These other anchors, the families, they scared you into givin’ over yo’ power.”

I knew she was right, but the truth was that I was afraid. I was terrified not only of the families, but of myself. I doubted I could control my magic at half power, leave alone full. I had missed out on my formative years as a witch, and now I was toddling along, taking baby steps. A magical infant who kept falling on her magical butt. The families had tasked Emmet with my education. Emmet had begun life as a golem, intended to house the consciousnesses of the families’ representatives. But the same energy that had knocked Maisie into whatever place she’d landed had also fused the consciousnesses lent to Emmet’s form into a single, brooding, pain-in-the-ass personality.

Happily, the energy donors were pretty much unharmed—they didn’t seem to be diminished in the least by what they’d lost to their golem. Emmet still shared much of their knowledge and had retained a portion of their powers too. Since he possessed both wisdom and magic, the families had decided that he would be my teacher, and that he would show me how to harness my own power. Even though Emmet could be grating, I still felt sympathy for him. We had a bit in common. The families stomped all over him too, never even asking him if he had his own ideas about what he wanted to do with his life. They simply pointed him in my direction and told him to go to it. But even with Emmet as my capable tutor, I had only gained imperfect control over what little magic they’d allowed me. I shrugged.

“Fine. We keep lookin’ for yo’ crazy-ass sister together, then. Tomorrow,” Jilo said, picking up the red cooler she always carried with her to Colonial Cemetery, where she met with her regular clientele. She slipped the Ball jar into the cooler. I had asked her to keep custody of it, to make sure no one intent on punishing Maisie could make use of its contents. “You better be puttin’ some thought into what you gonna do with her if we do find yo’ Maisie, ’cause Jilo ain’t gonna be babysitting her.” A sharp beam of sunlight found its way through one of the square, foot-long openings in the wall. The old woman of the crossroads stood there in silhouette, her features obscured by the bright light engulfing her. “I know you determined to do this—that why Jilo helpin’. But you don’t owe yo’ sister nothing. It that baby you carryin’ you need to be worrying about.” She opened the heavy door with a wave of her hand. “You ain’t gonna be able to keep flittin’ around on that bike of yours for much longer. If we gonna keep on with this, Jilo say you find us some place cleaner and closer to home.” She let the door slam behind her, punctuating her point with the sound of metal slapping metal.

I looked around this forgotten room in the abandoned powder magazine where we’d been meeting. The gunpowder had long since been removed, but pointed and rusted objects still lay strewn everywhere, coated in decades of dust. Outside the redbrick fortress, heaps of garbage negated the medieval, almost fairy-tale glamour of the magazine’s crenellated roofline. I would have been hard-pressed to find a more septic situation for my unborn child. “Maybe she’s right, Colin,” I said, addressing the child. I knew the baby was a boy; there had been no need for an ultrasound, since my Aunt Ellen always hit it dead on in these matters. I also knew I would name him Colin, after his father’s father.

Aunt Iris was pressing me to go ahead and marry Peter Tierney, making it official before the baby was born. I had every intention of marrying him. I’d even accepted his ring, but I didn’t wear it yet. Like the heart of a Russian nesting doll, I kept it stowed in its blue velveteen box in the jewelry case on my makeup table. I loved Peter, but every time I envisioned myself standing there before God and the world to say “I do,” I remembered how he had gone to Jilo and paid her to place a love spell on me. He’d been desperate, terrified that I would leave him for Jackson. It bothered me more than a little that I’d actually considered doing as much. I’d forgiven Jilo, and on the surface, I’d forgiven Peter, but the betrayal had been so deep, so unexpected, that part of me wondered how far Peter would go in any situation where he felt hard-pressed.