“But what could you have done to threaten Ginny so? I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t,” she said and tapped once on the window that separated us from the driver. “And I’m sorry, but it isn’t safe for me to linger. I’ll explain everything when we see each other next. For now, promise me that you will keep this to yourself, for your own sake. For my grandson’s sake.” She smiled as she mentioned Colin. “Promise me.” She placed her smooth, cool hand under my chin and tilted my face so that my eyes met hers. I heard the car’s trunk being opened, then closed. That was when I realized we were no longer moving.

I found it impossible to refuse her. “I promise,” I said, and she leaned in to kiss my forehead. “But how do you know what’s happened to Maisie?”

“I have . . . friends who have kept me informed about my two daughters,” she said. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t prevent it all.”

“Okay, but can you help me find her?”

She smiled at me one last time. “I already am, my girl.” The door next to me opened, revealing the chauffeur. He stepped aside. I knew he expected me to exit, but I couldn’t tear myself away. My mother touched my cheek and then moved her hands to her neck. She unhooked the necklace she’d been wearing and fixed it around my own neck. Something about wearing her locket made me feel so safe, so loved. She gave me a gentle push. “Go on now. You’ll see me again very soon. This I promise you.” I climbed out of the car to find we had stopped not far from the southern edge of Forsyth Park. My bike, which had been in the trunk of the car, was waiting patiently on the curb. Suddenly a thought hit me, and I reached out to stop the driver’s hand before he could close the door.

“The man, the old guy,” I said, remembering that we had left the poor man’s body lying in the weeds.

My mother leaned slightly forward. “It’s already been taken care of,” she said, and the driver closed the door. I watched the limo as it pulled away, leaning on my bike for support, putting all my strength into not letting my legs give way. The blare of a siren yanked me out of my fugue, and an ambulance and police car flew past me, heading, I knew, toward the old powder magazine. A second police car followed them a minute or so behind. This one had its lights and siren working too, but it moved at a less frenetic pace. As it passed, a passenger inside turned to look at me, and a flash of recognition crossed Detective Adam Cook’s face.

THREE

As I walked my bike up our drive, it struck me that the house I’d grown up in had been really nothing more than a stage set. A theater of lies. The set may have been made of actual wood and brick, but nothing else was real. My mother’s perfume still clung to me. She was alive. Alive! That was real. That was the truth. Everything I’d ever believed about her, about my family, about my life rang false now. A darkness squeezed my heart as a newfound hatred for Ginny took root. I had been working on letting go of my anger toward my great-aunt, but now any thought of forgiveness evaporated. Forgiveness, hell. I would go tomorrow and dance on her grave. She had stolen my power from me. I could overlook that. But taking my mother from me, from Maisie? That I could never forgive. I prayed that wherever Ginny’s essence had landed, eternity would find her without one moment’s peace.

How could Ginny have justified keeping my mother from me? But then what could she have hoped to accomplish by separating me from my birthright of power? She would have claimed she was doing her duty as anchor. Protecting the line. Protecting it from my mother. Protecting it from me. But the line had chosen me. It didn’t fear me; it welcomed me. Ginny must have been wrong about my mother too. She must have been.

I touched the locket my mother had placed around my neck. The feel of its precious metal confirmed it wasn’t merely a figment of my imagination. I leaned my bike against the garage and fumbled with the locket’s clasp. It sprung open to reveal two tiny photos, one of Maisie and the other of me. We seemed such little things—there was barely enough hair on our heads to support the ribbons someone had put on us. How had she gotten these pictures? Had Ellen or Iris sent them to her to assuage their own guilt?

That my aunts had been lying to me yet again was obvious. My mother was still very much in this world, and they had spent the last twenty-one years reminding me to take flowers to her grave. My mother had told me point-blank that Iris and Ellen had colluded with each other and Ginny to keep the truth from Maisie and me, but I knew these women, and my heart would not let me believe that they had been anything other than Ginny’s victims. The truth I needed to uncover was why they’d decided to lie to me. There had to be a reason—a good, strong, forgivable one—and once I got to the bottom of it, I would find a way to bring my family back together. We couldn’t recapture the lost years, but we could recover and build a future. Together we would deal with the families. Together we would bring Maisie home.

I turned toward the house, but stopped dead in my tracks as another thought hit me. Had I been the only one kept in the dark? Up until a few months ago, they’d thought me powerless. Had Maisie known the truth this entire time?

A year ago, even a few months ago, I would have never entertained my mother’s accusations. I would have rushed home and confessed everything to Iris in a single breath. But that was before I learned that my aunts had hidden the fact that Ellen’s late husband, Erik, was my father; before Iris’s husband, Connor, left me to burn in Ginny’s house; and before my own beloved sister had turned me over to the hands of a demon. Now that the line had selected me as an anchor, I was on everyone’s radar. I felt it in my bones that there were any number of witches, including members of my own extended family, who would jump at any excuse to remove me as anchor. I would keep my promise to my mother. I would remain silent about her return to Savannah. But I would do so only until I could get a better grasp on the slippery truth.

It took every bit of my self-control not to burst into the house screaming, demanding answers. I slipped the locket beneath my shirt and took a deep breath. I prayed that I would have the strength and the good sense to keep my fool mouth closed. My hand trembled as it opened the door leading into the kitchen.

“You’re late,” Emmet said without even turning to look at me. He sat at the table, staring intently at an apple that hung suspended in midair. The apple spun slowly, its peel coming off in one thin, clean strand.

“Yeah, sorry. Got distracted,” I replied. I circled around and took the seat opposite him, unable to resist the pull of his gravity. Emmet was so dark, so intense. So lost. A mere few months ago, the man sitting before me had been nothing more than dirt in our driveway. As a golem, he had been well groomed, perhaps overly groomed, certainly overly self-confident. After a few months as a man, he had taken on a more feral look. The shadow on his cheeks pointed well past five o’clock, and his once closely cropped black hair had grown much longer, falling in thick, careless curls. He pushed them back from his forehead, and I noticed from the sorry state of his hands that he had picked up the habit of biting his fingernails.

“You are easily distracted,” he said, and the apple stopped spinning and flew directly at my face. I held up my hand to repel it, and in a mere blink, it combusted and fell as ashes. Emmet looked at me, unimpressed. “Now was that really necessary? You used too much force to dispel such a tiny threat.”