by Horn, J. D.
“I know things you aren’t going to find in those books, Aunt Iris.”
Iris turned back and acknowledged Maisie with a nod. She signaled her acquiescence by holding her hands up toward us, palms forward, then sitting in one of the wingback chairs. Abby took the other, and I lowered myself onto the ottoman. “We’re all listening,” I assured Maisie.
She took a moment to compose herself. She drew a breath and spoke to us all, although she looked only at me. “You know Ginny taught me things only an anchor, like you, should know. Things about the line and its limitations. She stopped just short of telling me how it was created. You have the right to know everything, but the other anchors, they don’t trust you. They’ve decided to keep you ignorant of these truths.”
“Gehenna, baby,” Ellen prompted. She was not going to sit through the unexpurgated version while her mother suffered through endless torment.
“Gehenna,” Maisie echoed. “I’m getting to that, but you have to know the whole story.”
“Okay.” Ellen acknowledged the need for patience. She reached up and ran her fingers through Maisie’s hair.
Maisie seemed oblivious to this sign of affection. A small line formed between her brows as she concentrated. She tugged at the collar of her T-shirt. “The line has limitations. Witches created it to protect this reality, our mortal world, from the old ones.” She peered deeply into my eyes. “Like I said, I don’t know how they did it, but I think deep down you do. I think the line has been trying to tell you. I know you’ve had the dream.”
As she spoke the words, memory of the dream I’d been having on and off, sometimes remembering I’d had it, sometimes not, reached up to my conscious level. The sight of pyramids and obelisks being struck by lightning, silence giving way to the whirring sound of energy rushing around stone circles, a filament of energy racing along a magnificent stone wall. A faceless man, slithering away. Yes, I’d been having the dream, but I still had no idea what it had to do with the line. These places, these monuments, at least the ones I recognized, were built at different periods in history, epochs separated by millennia. It made no rational sense to me that Giza, Monks Mound, and Teotihuacan could have all played a role in the line’s creation.
“The anchors would be furious I’ve told you about Gehenna,” Maisie said. “I’m sure the only reason I am still breathing is because they believe y’all think I am crazier than a bedbug.” She paused and examined each of our faces. “They will kill me if they learn I’ve shared what I know. They’ll kill you if they realize you have listened. Except Mercy, of course. They won’t kill her. They’ll bind her. Y’all need to decide if you really want to hear this before I go on.”
My heart sank as it acknowledged the truth behind her words. The other anchors should be my allies, not my enemies, but they seemed to have it in for me as much as my declared enemies. Maybe even more so.
Iris and Ellen looked at each other. Ellen placed her hand on Maisie’s knee, and Iris relaxed back in her chair.
“Well, I sure as hell ain’t going nowhere,” Abby said. “Let’s have it.” She had been shaken by her experience, but she was determined not to show it. Still, her hands trembled, and the static electricity that had built up around her caused a slight pop as she tugged the last curler from her hair. Her eyes remained as wide as saucers.
Maisie licked her lips. “Gehenna lies beyond the line’s reach, not even a hair’s breadth beyond this physical dimension, but it isn’t a place. Gehenna is a machine, a power plant. The old ones created Gehenna. Before Gehenna, when a person died, their essence could freely return to its source. The old ones realized if they could trap a person’s essence, it could be converted to power. When it comes to magic, if the power of blood is like oil, then soul magic, the magic of Gehenna, is nuclear. Our world’s is not the sole Gehenna. There are multiple ones, surrounding multiple worlds. Our souls, and the souls of sentient beings from a million different planets, a billion different realities, provide the power for much of the old ones’ magic.”
“If this is true, if Gehenna is a dynamo of some sort, why would Mama be trapped there?” Ellen’s guileless eyes moved past my sister to me, carrying the wordless question of whether I believed any of this. I answered with a slight shrug. My brain was telling me it sounded pretty far-fetched, but my gut told me it felt all too true.
“When a person dies, the vibration of their essence speeds up, kind of like a jet engine coming to life before takeoff. If the essence doesn’t reach the right frequency, it doesn’t ascend. It was in this in-between frequency the old ones built the Gehenna machine. It is voracious. We all felt its gravity. People wonder why Savannah is so haunted? It’s because in the same way the line’s power is anchored by witches, Gehenna is anchored to this world at certain places. Savannah is one of those places. Gehenna may fail to capture a soul, but its pull may still keep a spirit from reaching the vibrational wave it needs to achieve to transcend our realm.”
“What would stop a soul from ascending?” My lower back began to hurt from sitting on the ottoman. I leaned back against my hands to relieve some pressure.
“A sense of guilt. A soul ends up in Gehenna not because of what she did in life, but because of the shame she feels for her choices, her failures.” She looked up at me. “Most of these people aren’t evil. They aren’t even bad. There’s a story of a man whose soul spent years in Gehenna because he felt guilty over having his badly injured dog put to sleep rather than putting it through a painful surgery that offered only a slight chance of saving its life. The dog’s spirit waited for him, just beyond Gehenna’s gates, until it got tired of waiting and went in to pull his master out.”
Abby held up her hands. “Wait. So where do the truly evil—the ones with no sense of remorse—go?”
Maisie shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. But they don’t end up in Gehenna.” She lowered her eyes and bit her lip. I knew she was weighing her words. “The crimes of those in Gehenna may be real or imagined, but Gehenna is full of people like us. Like Grandma. Like you.” She looked at Ellen. A sudden sob escaped Ellen. She pulled her arms tightly around herself, and she averted her gaze. We knew the guilt she carried with her for not saving her son. “Like Oliver, who, despite what he says even now, carries the shame of what happened with Grace.” She turned to me. “Like Peter, who knows deep down he raped you.”
I nearly jumped off the ottoman. “Peter did not rape me.”
“He had a spell, a magical roofie, put on you, then took you to bed. You may have managed to rationalize what he did, but I can see the shame in him even if he can’t.”
I struggled up from the ottoman and went to the window. I stared out at the garden. I had never allowed myself to look at Peter’s actions in this light. But today was not the day to do so. At the moment, I could not even begin to consider the feelings her words had stirred up. I’d file them away and look at them another day. After all, what was one more item on the list of things I’d queued up on my “to be processed” list? I kept my eye on the greenery on the other side of the glass.
“The dog.” Iris’s calm voice came from behind me, leading me to turn back to face her. “Is that just a sweet story, or is there actually a way to get Mama out of there?”
I could feel Maisie watching me. Her thoughts telegraphed her regret for having gone too far about Peter. Her unspoken apology caused the tension to leave my shoulders. The breath I’d been holding escaped.
“Some souls eventually let go of their pain and find their own way out,” she said, slowly turning her attention from me to Aunt Iris. “Others stay trapped. The demonic faces you saw there—they aren’t demons. They are humans who have been in Gehenna too long. Gehenna has twisted them. Squeezed every last drop of humanity out of them. They grow so dense, so dark, so heavy that sometimes one will drop out of Gehenna and back into our reality. Their perversion causes them to te
mpt others into doing things that may land them in Gehenna too.” Maisie shuddered. “You’ve seen them,” she said addressing Abby. “The shadow people who always seem to be flitting at the corner of your eye. They crave the light you carry.” Abby shifted in her seat, pulling her robe more tightly closed.
“Your grandmother?” Iris tried to rein Maisie’s thoughts back in.
“Grandma,” Maisie said and nodded. “I’m afraid the only way to help her is to go in after her.”
“How?” Ellen tensed and leaned in toward Maisie.
“Getting into Gehenna is easy. To get into Gehenna all you have to do is die.” Maisie waited for us to absorb this.
“We can do this,” Iris said. “We can stop my heart, and I will go to her.” She focused on Ellen. “Once I have her out of there, you’ll bring me back.”
A crease formed between Ellen’s eyes. “No. It’s too risky. I won’t risk losing you. Not even for Mama.”
Iris stood and stepped quickly across the room. She knelt before Ellen. “We have to. I cannot live with myself knowing we never tried.” She reached up and grasped Ellen’s shoulders. “I’ll never make it past Gehenna myself if we don’t try.”
“It’s more complicated than you think.” Maisie leaned toward Ellen and Iris. “Anyone can enter Gehenna, but only someone who has no sense of shame can leave.” She focused on Iris. “You wear your guilt like an overcoat, and I am afraid most of it is about me.”
“Who doesn’t feel guilty about something?” Abby gave voice to the question nagging at my own mind. “Only babies and sociopaths, and chances are the sociopaths ain’t gonna be lining up to help us.”
“It’s true,” Iris said, sounding defeated. “Anyone who’s lived long enough has some regrets, no matter how hard they have tried to do the right thing.”
Anyone who’s lived long enough . . . The words bounced around my mind. I knew someone who was constitutionally incapable of causing others pain. Someone who truly was an innocent. Someone who had only been in this world a matter of months. “Call Rivkah. Emmet has to come back to Savannah. He has to come home.”
EIGHT
“Your grandparents were never legally married. Big deal. It doesn’t change who you are.” Peter held me tightly to his smooth chest. It was a big deal. Especially to Iris. She had always taken great pride in our family’s history, pride in her pedigree. And it was a big deal to me that my grandfather had been such a moral failure that he could have deserted his first family.
Still, I didn’t protest. Peter was only trying to make me feel better, and it felt so good to lie with him. I pressed my cheek against his skin and breathed in his scent. I was still struggling with Maisie’s assertion Peter had used magic against me as a kind of date rape drug. I had long known he had gone to Jilo for a spell. Heck, I myself had gone to Jilo for a spell that would ignite my passion for Peter, only Peter had placed his order first. Still, Maisie’s interpretation of events showed Peter’s actions in a different light. It was just another one of those horrible gray areas I would have to navigate. One day, soon, Peter and I would have to discuss it, but today was not that day. I filed the thought away for safekeeping.
“Your grandfather’s other family.” Peter’s words pulled me back. “Where are they now?”
“At least one of them is here. Jessamine. The rest I don’t know. I mean, I don’t even know how large my new family is.” A pain twisted in my heart. “I don’t even know if they’d consider me family.”
“Oh, baby.” He nuzzled my hair. “They would be fools not to want to count you as kin.”
“I don’t know about that. If the shoe were on the other foot . . .”
“If the shoe were on the other foot, you’d be making plans for a family reunion. Or would it only be a ‘union’ since y’all haven’t met yet?” He laughed, but his humor didn’t really help.
“How it must have hurt them, to be deserted like that.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it hurt like hell, but it wasn’t you who did the hurting. Don’t you take any of that on.”
“I think Iris has claimed all that guilt for herself.”
“She’s been thrown for a loop by all this.” His large hand ran down my arm, slid to my stomach. “Learning about your grandpa’s lies has made her feel like she isn’t who she always believed herself to be. I think I understand how she feels.”
I stiffened as my heart jumped to my throat. “What are you talking about?”
He sighed. “I’ve been trying to find a way to talk to you about something.”
I could feel his heart beat against my cheek. He seemed to have lost his nerve. “You know you can tell me anything.”
He planted a kiss on the top of my head. “Yeah, I know that. I shouldn’t have even brought it up, though, at least not right now. You’ve got so much on your mind already.” A pang of guilt hit me. I hadn’t even broached the topic of my grandmother’s fate, or the more difficult matter of Emmet coming home to Savannah.
I placed my hand against his rock-hard shoulder and pushed myself back so I could see his eyes. “Tell me.”
He removed my hand from his shoulder and pulled me back in against him. “Before the baby is born, I think we need to talk to my parents about who I really am.”
I was dumbstruck. What had we done to betray his origin? Had I said something? Had I not said something? Panic nearly caused me to blurt those questions out.
“I mean, look at them,” he said, interrupting me. “Then look at me. Dad’s barely five foot seven. He and Mom are both black Irish.”
I felt myself relax. It was true, only the most miraculous combination of Claire and Colin’s recessive genes could have created my redheaded giant.
“I know what you are about to say.” Peter rocked me gently. “I’ve looked through all the family pictures. I don’t look like any of my relatives from either side.”
“So, you think you were adopted? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I would have thought so, but no, there are plenty of photos of Mom when she was so pregnant she looked bigger than a—” He stopped himself. “Pregnancy didn’t suit her like it does you.”
Relief washed over me. He had no idea that Claire was not his natural mother. “Yeah, nice try there.”
“I’m hers all right, but I don’t think my dad is my father, if you follow me.”
I didn’t have the heart or the energy to lie to my husband actively. “How do you feel about that possibility?”
“Yeah, thanks, Doctor. It’s more than a possibility. I feel it in my gut. I always have. I love my dad so much, it never mattered before, but now . . .” I pulled from his arms so that I could see him. His two-tone eyes, one blue, one green, looked down, as if he were imagining the confrontation he felt he should have with his mother. “I need to know who I am.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “I owe it to our son. I mean, there are medical reasons.” This rationalization didn’t ring true, even though logically it sounded valid. He had obviously long suspected his parentage, and that he was becoming a father himself must have sharpened his desire to learn the truth. It hurt me to think I would be one of those forced to hide the truth from him.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll go to visit Claire. Together. We’ll ask her together. All right?”
He nodded, and it broke my heart to see tears well up in his eyes. He brushed them away with the back of his hand, then reached over and turned off the light.
NINE
I awoke to find Peter gone. Again. I rubbed my eyes, amazed to see the clock showed it was past eleven. I should have been up hours ago, helping Iris finish up with preparations for Thanksgiving. I jumped out of bed and rushed through a shower. Makeup could wait. I dried my hair enough so it wouldn’t tangle and threw on drawstring sweatpants and one of Peter’s T-shirts.
I smelled no cloves, no cinnamon, no sage. I rushed downsta
irs and into a kitchen empty except for Uncle Oliver, who sat at the table examining the old tourist map we had marked with the locations where the body parts had shown up. His eyes were red. He’d been crying. The sight unnerved me. He always shrugged off emotion. Pain seemed to slide off him. To witness Oliver hurting was a new and unpleasant sight. I averted my eyes to the map. So much had happened since I last looked at the map, it seemed like a thousand years had passed.
“Peter’s at the bar. Told me to tell you that you shouldn’t worry, he would hold off on talking to his mom.” That was a relief. I still had time to warn Claire. “Cryptic message delivered, my duties have been carried out.” Oliver looked up and read my expression. “Oh, and Thanksgiving’s been canceled, Gingersnap.” He gave me a sad smile. “At least in the Taylor house.”
“Oh.” I felt somehow cheated and guilty for feeling cheated at the same time. Halloween or Samhain wasn’t a big day for us like it was for our Wiccan friends. For us it was a time to indulge in an overabundance of sugar and dress up the way popular culture told us witches should dress. Iris always went all hippie earth goddess, and Ellen did the pointed hat and green makeup. Fun, but not a big deal by any means. Thanksgiving was going to be my first big family holiday as Peter’s wife. I’d been looking forward to combining our families. Maisie was back and on the mend. We needed to celebrate her return to health. A touch of guilt rose in me. This was to be my first Thanksgiving without having to suffer from Ginny’s vocal, no, vociferous disapproval of my every action. And dang it, we’d faced so many horrible things over the last several months, I just wanted one nice day. A day to have everyone I loved together. To enjoy them before I lost anyone else. “Why?” Even though I essentially knew the answer, I had to ask.
“Something about learning our mother is trapped in hell killed Iris’s spirit of gratitude. On top of that Sam called. He’s decided to spend the day with his family in Augusta. Iris is upstairs in her room and won’t come out for love or money.”
