“We need to do something, push this back out,” I said, “but Emily said the anchors won’t let us.”
Jilo spat on the ground. “The hell you say . . .”
“It’s true,” another voice came, this one totally unexpected. It was sharper. Northern. “The others would stop us. That,” Rivkah said, her dark hair whipping around her face, “is why we have to act now before they register what we are doing.”
“How did you find us?”
“From whom do you think Emmet inherited his tracking skills? I spent two years in the Israel Defense Forces. I sensed you were in trouble, so I came. That’s why I’m here,” she said, anticipating a question I hadn’t even had time to consider. “Now do you want to talk, or do you want to turn this storm around?”
“Of course we want to turn the storm,” Iris said. “But you can’t take part in this. A Taylor caused this. The Taylors will act alone and shoulder the responsibility. This is not your fight.”
“I am not going to stand by and let innocent people die. You let me worry about the consequences.” The blowing wet sand bit at my ankles. Lightning ripped a seam in the sky and thunder shook us.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“How’d she start it?” Jilo asked.
“I don’t know. She just whistled.”
Iris nodded. “Well, the classics are always the best. We need to pull the storm back and then bend its course. I will have to descend into its eye to do that.” She shed her housecoat, the light silk of her nightgown instantly ravaged by the rain. “Jilo, honey, I am so glad you are here.”
“Well, that make one of us.” Jilo’s frail form shivered.
“If any of us knows how to collect and transmit power, it’s you,” Iris said. “It’s going to take all of us and all of our power to stop this storm. We need someone who can borrow everyone’s magic and loan it to me.” The two women looked at each other, an unspoken pact forming between them.
Ellen stood and stepped away from Adam. She looked at her brother and shook her head. “I don’t know, sweetie, I’ve done what I can . . . We’ll just have to wait and see.” Oliver shuddered at the words. “I’m sorry. I caught his essence just in time, but I don’t know. He’s lost so much . . .”
The wind howled even more loudly around us, drowning out the rest of her words. Iris raised her head to the sky and lifted her arms. Amid the flashes of lightening, she spun up into the air, turning her face into the driving wind. I watched in amazement as her body took to the wind, her flight against it a testimony to her strength.
We all pulled closer, huddling around Jilo. Oliver spoke first. “Jilo Wills, I grant you my magic. All of it. It is my power to give, and I give it to you of my own free will.” He paused. “I’m counting on you, you old buzzard. You fix this.”
More surprising than watching Iris take to the sky was witnessing Jilo’s gnarled hand as she reached out and pulled Oliver into her grasp. She pulled him to her and planted a kiss on his forehead. “She do her best.”
Ellen came next. “Jilo Wills, I grant you all of my magic. It is my power to give, and I give it to you of my own free will.” Jilo began to glow, the sole point of light now that dark clouds had devoured the sky.
I stepped forward, but Rivkah grabbed my arm. “Not you, Mercy. We need you as Plan B,” she said and then turned to Jilo. “Jilo Wills. I grant you all my magic. It is my power to give, and I give it to you of my own free will.” Lightning tore at us from the four corners of the sky, merging into a single bolt and striking Jilo as one. At first, I thought she must have been killed, but the old woman of the crossroads shot up and hovered a few feet off the ground. Clasping her hands together, she shot a single blinding arc of energy across the water, transferring what she had collected to Iris.
The wind lessened. The rain eased. Iris was succeeding, I just knew it. Then, the next instant later, she was thrown face down in the surf. Oliver jumped up from Adam’s side and ran toward her, but after a couple of steps, he too collapsed. I used my power to slide over to her and pull her out of the water. I knelt over her and felt for a pulse. I couldn’t find one. I looked up and called for Ellen, only to witness her weave and collapse.
“We’ve been found out,” Rivkah said, falling to her knees, and then onto her side, her left arm sprawling over her head.
A moment of total silence descended upon us, and then wind roared and snapped back onto its original path. The world around us flashed, and Jilo collapsed to the ground as all the magic was drained out of her.
“Sons of bitches,” she screamed and shook her hand at the sky. “You sons of bitches.” She looked at me. “Yo’ other anchors done cut off the magic. They done worked a binding on yo’ family and the Yankee woman. I think they done killed ’em, girl.”
I ran like mad from one to the next. No pulses, but I sensed they weren’t dead. They had been suspended, frozen. “You stop this,” I screamed, knowing full well even a whisper would be heard. They must be observing us after all. “You don’t have the right.” Feeling a sharp pain in my chest, I fell to my knees. The wind lashed stinging sand across my face, and another, sharper pain stabbed into my solar plexus.
Jilo tread toward me across the wet sand. “They workin’ you now. Don’t you let them, Mercy. You give your power to them, you ain’t never gonna get it back. They take yo’ magic. They take you family. Don’t you let them. You fight, girl.” She knelt before me and grasped my hands.
The pain was excruciating, and I almost gave into the waves of darkness that rolled over me, but then I thought of Colin, and I found the strength to fight back. I screamed, not out of pain, not even out of anger, but out of a mother’s primal sense to protect her child. No more. I would be weak no longer. I was no one’s victim, and neither was my child. “I reclaim my magic,” I shouted into the wind. “It is mine, and you may no longer have it. I revoke any permission I granted you.”
As the anchors channeled their combined power together to try to control the magic that belonged to me, my witch’s eyes witnessed multiple vistas, different worlds, encapsulating us, as one reality pressed in against another, competing for supremacy. Beyond them all, a pair of monstrous eyes, as large as moons, as large as planets, closed for eons, winked open, and turned toward us. Not yet fully awake, they still reflected the hunger of hibernation. Were the other anchors really so desperate for me to back down? They had risked everything in their attempt to control me. The fools were playing chicken with the line and stirring up the demons.
The hurricane was almost upon us. Waves lapped farther up on shore and washed over the inert bodies of those I loved. If they didn’t wake soon, the sea would carry them away, and they’d be lost to me forever. Jilo released my hands and faced the sea. I felt my heart slowing, as the other anchors continued their efforts to bind me without collapsing the line. A wave found me and knocked me flat. I struggled to push myself up. When I managed to force myself back to my knees, Jilo had disappeared, but the entire world around me had filled with the sickly, bruised blue light that I’d come to associate with Tillandsia.
