I found my feet and turned toward the sea. The source of the light floated out above the ocean, thirty, maybe forty yards from shore, but I would have known Jilo from a thousand yards away. She had drawn the energy of Tillandsia into herself and was doing her best to single-handedly drive the storm away. Even though she knew the power had been poisoned, she had chosen to take it into herself anyway. She had put the well-being of others before her own. She must have known that, even with the power of Tillandsia, it would take a real witch to turn the hurricane away, especially when it would require taking on both the storm and the anchors of the line. She had sacrificed everything just to buy us a little time. To buy me a little time.

“There’s a price for stealing power,” I said softly, calmly. “And you all are stealing my power. Return it to me. Return it.” A searing pain ripped through me, making me cry out. I tried to block out the pain by turning my mind to the power of the line. It had recognized me once before. It had chosen me. If, as I’d sensed at times, it was something more than a tool, more than a mechanism for controlling others, it would hear me. I called out to the line, wrapping my plea in the single grain of hope that hadn’t yet deserted me. I was answered by a pain worse than any other I had felt, a sensation like my solar plexus being ripped wide open, the pain so great that my vision failed and everything around me was swallowed by blackness. During that dark moment, I let myself collapse on the wet earth. It was over. I had been defeated. The line had deserted me; the other anchors had won. For a moment I felt sure my heart would stop beating, but then around me flashed another world, green and cool and lovely. Music trumpeted from every direction, then faded away. The pain in my solar plexus cooled, and my own thundering reality gelled back around me. I felt the line reenergize itself, regain its ground, reinforce its walls, and then I felt a change, a shift, an explosion that felt like joy bursting out of me. Colin had reached out and filled my heart with his own power, one that fell outside any witch’s ability to control. Fae magic, which the anchors could never touch.

With that added ammunition, I stopped the world. Everything around me slowed. Raindrops stopped in their descent. Trees that had been bent by the wind held their tortured poses, even though the wind itself had lost its power to blow. All motion and sound ceased. With my son’s help, I ripped my magic from the hands of the other anchors, pitiful fear-filled souls, and their consciousnesses scurried away from me like Emily’s rats. I broke the binds placed on Rivkah and my family. Then I looked out at Jilo, and with a thought brought her to my side, disconnecting her from the lethal force she had taken into herself. There, frozen in its path, loomed the storm I had feared so. I looked at the suspended hurricane and laughed. I claimed its towering energy as my own, turning its force to my purposes. I sent my awareness out to the line, and it zoomed in every direction around the earth at once. Breathtaking. Beautiful. Strong. Stronger, perhaps, than it had ever before been. Silently, I asked its permission to free my sister, and the line acquiesced. I reached out, like a comet burning not through common space but through fluctuating dimensions, and caught hold of Maisie. Then I brought her home.

THIRTY-NINE

“How’s she doing?” Oliver whispered as he slipped into Maisie’s room. Though she had been home with us for more than a day, she had only opened her eyes once. She hadn’t spoken at all.

“The same,” I said. I hadn’t left Maisie’s side for more than a few minutes at a time. I could barely stand to take my eyes off her for fear she’d disappear. I was afraid the other anchors would do something to steal her from me.

“Any news from Adam?”

Oliver’s face darkened. “Physically he’s fine. He’s shut me out though. He’s shut all of us out.” He tried to muster his patented smile of confidence, but couldn’t quite pull it off. “I think Adam and I are through. I don’t think he’s going to be able to get past whatever it was Emily showed him.”

I would have liked to find some words of encouragement to offer, but I didn’t want to lie. Adam had been so angry, so frightened. So over us Taylors and our magic. He had said that he knew what we were now. I wasn’t sure if he meant the magic, or if he had somehow seen deeper into our true nature. Either way, I couldn’t lie to my uncle. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I think you may be right about that.”

Oliver kissed the top of my head. “You should take a break. Get some sleep. Your aunts and I will stay with her.”

I shook my head. “No. I can’t. I can’t give them a chance to take her away.”

“No one is going to do that. I promise you.” He stood at the foot of Maisie’s bed and watched her sleeping.

“Did you know Maisie and I have a half brother?” I asked. Oliver’s head bounced like a bobblehead doll in surprise. His jaw dropped, but he said nothing. He had been struck speechless for the first time in his life. “I don’t know the details, but Erik had a son. His name is Joe . . . Josef. He’s been helping Emily.”

“I guess we should tell Ellen, but . . .”

“Yeah, but . . .” How much more could Ellen take? Tucker’s body remained with the county coroner. We hadn’t even had the opportunity to hold a memorial for him yet, leave alone a proper burial. She needed to mourn her fiancé, and hitting her over the head by pointing out another of Erik’s infidelities would not help.

Oliver shifted from one foot to the other, and then sat down on the foot of Maisie’s bed.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

“You’re getting pretty good at that . . . reading me, I mean,” he said.

“It isn’t magic; you are just terrible at hiding things from me.”

He smiled and took Maisie’s hand, caressing it as he searched her face for signs of life. “Emmet has returned.” His eyes traveled from Maisie’s face to my own.

“I asked Emmet to stay away from Savannah.”

“The families sent him here to negotiate with you.”

“Negotiate?”

“To sue for peace if you will.”

“But I am not the one who declared war.”

“You, Gingersnap, have scared the holy hell out of them. I don’t understand what you did, but you single-handedly changed the line.”

“No. The line changed itself. It simply used me to do it.” I paused, trying to collect my thoughts. “I know it sounds nuts, but I think the line is alive. It’s self-aware. I think it wants to evolve, but it can’t while the anchors hold on to it so tightly. I think that’s why it chose me. I’ve been an outsider to magic my whole life, powerless and overlooked. The other anchors didn’t think I could possibly threaten the way things stand.”

“The other anchors will view any attempt to change the status quo as a sign that you have aligned yourself with Emily. That you, too, want to end the line.”

“That couldn’t be further from the truth,” I said and stood. My limbs had gone stiff from inactivity. I stretched, and felt the blood begin to pump more freely through them. “I’ve seen what it protects us from. Still I don’t think we should fear change. My gut tells me that the line wants to form a partnership with us rather than acting as our master or our slave.” I went to the window and looked out at the gray autumn sky. “Emily’s wrong about pretty much everything . . . except one thing. The anchors maintain a power structure that’s based on secrecy and misdirection, if not out-and-out lies.” I turned back to Oliver so that I could witness his reaction. “To begin with, witches don’t get their power from the line. The line gets its power from us.”