“Yes. From the outside, I would have never guessed.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much more to show you yet. The entrance here is the most complete portion. All the same, your fiancé’s crew is doing a wonderful job.”
“Peter doesn’t know about you, that you are involved with all of this?” I asked, cautiously taking the seat next to her, almost as if I were expecting it to bite me.
“Of course not,” she replied. “As far as he knows, he’s handling the work for a group of Tucker’s friends.”
“Tucker’s dead.” I said, collapsing into the cushions.
“I know.” Her voice broke as she said the words. “That’s why I knew we could meet here. When the news spread, Peter sent the crew home.”
“You’re using magic to spy on Peter?”
She laughed a slow, sad laugh as tears came to her eyes. She raised her finger at a security camera neatly hidden in a corner. “No, my dear one. I am using technology to keep an eye on progress.” She took a breath and wiped her tears. “Tucker was a dear friend. My oldest and perhaps even my last in Savannah.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you two were close.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said and folded her arms across her chest, bracing herself. “You don’t know anything at all about me. Thanks to Ginny and my sisters.” I felt a pain in my chest as she lumped Iris and Ellen in with Ginny.
“I promised to tell you everything, and I plan on doing it now. Tucker’s murder has convinced me that it’s urgent for you to know the full truth.”
“But what does he have to do with any of this?”
“Tucker has been helping me . . . helping me take the steps I needed to make my way home to you. Someone has been working against us.”
“Ellen would not have killed Tucker,” I said, my loyalty kicking in. “He and Ellen were engaged.”
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Everything Tucker did, he did to help us, including proposing to Ellen.”
“He was lying to her?” My emotions ran along a zigzag path; I could not find a firm footing. Just when I had begun to believe that Tucker really loved my aunt, a new reality had been revealed to me. “How could breaking Ellen’s heart be of any help to us?”
“Breaking Ellen’s heart?” She raised her eyebrows and lowered her chin, looking at me with astonished distaste. “Your concern is touching,” she said, looking down her nose, “but your loyalties are misplaced.” It was all too much for me. I could not bring myself to think of either of my aunts as a murderer. My mother seemed to read my thoughts, whether through magic or because they were telegraphed by my face. “I am not making any accusations. I am only telling you that the man who has been helping me in my return, in reaching out to you, has been murdered. And that is a sign that someone knows I have returned and is working against me. The way Tucker was murdered tells me that that same someone has it in for you as well. They are trying to fit you up for Tucker’s murder.”
“I don’t think I really have to worry about the police,” I said, reasoning out loud. “I only have a tangential relationship to Peter’s great-uncle, and of course I know, knew, Tucker, but . . .”
“It isn’t the police I am worried about. It’s the families. They are of course aware of your mishap with the old man. They must have felt you draw on the line’s power, but even if they did not, their golem spy would have reported it to them at the first opportunity.”
“I don’t think Emmet is spying for them,” I said.
She paused to consider, and then nodded. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe I’ve grown too suspicious over the years, but soon you will understand why. All the same, I am sure the families know of the incident.”
“You’re probably right about that much,” I agreed.
“So now Tucker has been murdered, his heart burned out of his chest just like with the old man. This time, though, there was no tug on the line’s power.”
“So the families should realize I had nothing to do with it.”
“Or perhaps they will decide that you have been practicing magic using other means to gain the power. They are aware that you have been holing up with Jilo, that you and the crone have been up to something together.”
“But we’ve been trying to find Maisie.”
“Something that they have expressly forbidden. I don’t believe that they’re aware that’s what you two have been up to, but they smell rebellion brewing.”
“I’m not rebelling . . .”
“Then what would you call it? You are simply doing the exact opposite of what they have told you to do.”
“How could you know what the families are thinking anyway?” I asked.
“I have my resources, and I know their concerns about you.” So she had her own spy among them. I wondered who might be filtering information to her. “You have been refusing to spend time under the tutelage of their golem,” she said, “preferring the left-handed training you can get at Jilo’s feet. You are not knuckling down and taking the steps you need to assume your position as an anchor of the line. If that wasn’t enough to convince them that trouble is nigh, there is the final and most damning point of all. You are my daughter.”
My heart warmed at the sound of pride in her voice, but I could not make the leap she seemed to want me to make. “I still don’t see how any of this relates to Ellen and Iris,” I said. “How you could possibly think that they are attempting to set me up? Why would they want to?”
She placed her hand on her chin, her flawlessly manicured index finger resting against her lips. Her eyes looked down and away. She seemed to be considering events long since passed. She looked back up at me. “So much history. So many secrets. I’ve been keeping them for so long, I don’t quite know how to start.”
“Tell me what happened,” I said, kicking off my shoes and drawing my legs up under me, making a conscious effort to appear more relaxed than I was. “If Ellen and Iris are so horrible, how could you possibly have left Maisie and me with them?”
Her perfect complexion turned gray. “What have you been told?” she asked. Her lips pressed together into a tight line.
“The short version? You seduced Connor and Erik, got pregnant by Erik, and then died giving birth. You were noble at the end, though, and you put me before yourself. You begged Ellen to use the last of her power to save me.”
“You poor child,” she said. “Hanging the responsibility of your own mother’s death on you.” Our eyes met. It felt wonderful to be validated, to have her see things from my perspective. The comfort did not last long; I found myself wondering if she were mirroring me, trying to say what she knew I’d want to hear to gain my confidence. She pressed her hands together as if preparing to pray. “Okay,” she continued. “Let’s start with the easy part: Connor. What do you know of my powers?”
“Nothing. We never discussed your powers.”
“Of course they wouldn’t have been discussed with you.” She concluded a train of thought I hadn’t yet boarded. “Still, your mother has a few tricks up her sleeve. One of the most useful is that I can create a double of myself. A doppelgänger. As outwardly real as I am before you now. I cannot maintain the double for long, although I have over the years gotten much better at it.”