“Don’t worry, baby,” she said. “If we don’t find it, I’ll set Connor on the case with his pendulum.” She looked up at me. “And you, young lady, don’t you worry about Adam. He’s going to realize he is barking up the wrong tree soon enough.”
“He thinks one of us did it for Ginny’s money,” I said.
“Aunt Ginny didn’t have any money of her own. She got her stipend from the trust just like the rest of the family does. Just like you and Maisie will, starting on your next birthday. Nobody’s going to gain financially from poor Ginny’s death. What she had to give wasn’t money. It was knowledge.”
She reached out and took my hand. “He’s wrong, you know, this detective. It wasn’t anyone from the family, close or extended, who hurt Ginny. If a witch with bad intentions had been approaching her, Ginny would’ve sensed the danger from a mile away.” Ellen weighed her words. “Someone born of the power, we have a signature, something like a vibration. When we get near someone like us”—she looked away from me, maybe feeling a bit guilty for excluding me—“that vibration either falls in sync and kind of hums along with ours or is like nails scraping against a chalkboard.” She let go of my hand and turned her attention back to Wren. “Ginny would have sensed it if a rage-filled witch was coming at her.”
“But if she could know when a witch was coming at her, why couldn’t she tell if a normal person was headed her way? Seems to be a hell of a blind spot,” I said and then regretted having used the word “normal” for non-witches.
“I would say ‘regular’ instead of ‘normal,’ ” Ellen corrected me, but I could tell she wasn’t really upset. “Whoever hurt Ginny was regular. But they certainly weren’t normal. My feeling is that the person was probably deranged. You know how disturbed people tend to get more excitable during a full moon?”
“Sure, it’s why we have the term lunatic,” I said.
“Precisely. It’s kind of the same when a crazy person, pardon my lack of political correctness, approaches the line. The vibration causes them to become more unhinged than they might typically be. And Ginny was the focal point, the anchor for our portion of the line. So you end up taking crazy and turbocharging it.” She paused. “As far as Ginny not picking up on a threat, I suspect she thought she could control the situation. That she underestimated the strength or craziness of whoever attacked her. All the same, the killer is not one of the family.”
“Yeah, I know, but I don’t think I helped convince Detective Cook of it.”
“Don’t worry. He will chase his tail a bit, but he is keeping an open mind. And by open, I mean open enough for me to poke around in a little.” She placed her hand on Wren’s head.
“What did you see?” I asked.
She began to stroke Wren’s blond curls, the muscles in her forehead relaxing at the contact. She took a lot of comfort from him. “One of the neighbors spotted a young man in Ginny’s yard, the morning she was killed. African American, I gather. I couldn’t pick out the actual description, just Adam’s impression of that description. It looked like no one I knew.”
“My ball,” Wren was growing impatient.
Ellen patted his head and stood. “All right, little man,” she said, taking hold of his hand. “Let’s go find it. Where do you remember playing with it last?”
“Outside,” he replied.
“Then let’s start there,” Ellen said and led Wren from the room.
Seconds later, Teague Ryan, one of the cousins, popped his head into the room. “You done in here?” he commanded more than asked. Teague’s square jaw and high forehead landed him somewhere on the looks spectrum between high school prom king and newscaster. His sense of entitlement positioned him somewhere between a spoiled six-year-old and Louis XIV, the Sun King of France.
“Yeah,” I replied. “All yours.” He stood stock still in the doorway, preventing my exit.
“Excuse me,” I said, but he didn’t budge. I managed to duck around him into the hall, but he reached out and grasped my arm before I could walk away. The pressure of his grip made me wince at first, but I managed to shake myself free.
“You Savannah Taylors think you got this all wrapped up,” he said, his harsh northern accent making the words all the more abrasive. “But I don’t think you should be so sure of the outcome this time.” He circled in front of me, blocking my way again. “You Taylors are weak and spoiled, while others, myself for example, have been working on our discipline, building our strength. I think the line is going to pass your family over this time. The rest of us have been dancing to the Taylors’ tune for generations now, but Ginny was the last one of you to lord it over us. It’s our turn for the power now.”
“As far as I am concerned, y’all are welcome to it,” I said, pushing past him and doing my best to avoid the psychic feelers that I could feel directed at me from every corner of the house. I was an easy target for the cousins to read, and they all knew it. I concentrated on the mantra, “Mind your own damned business!” hoping it would blare out the rest of my thoughts.
I climbed the stairs and headed down the long hall toward the linen closet where I knew Maisie was waiting for me. We had been using the space as our clandestine rendezvous point since we were old enough to walk. The closet had a window and was actually large enough to serve as a small bedroom. It might have housed a servant at some point, back when it was still socially acceptable to have live-ins. Over the years it had become more to us than a place to whisper secrets. It had become a sanctuary, a holy of holies. And now, with the house crawling with the cousins, it was also the only place left to share even a nominally private conversation.
It was silly, I knew, but for tradition’s sake, I softly tapped our secret knock. The door opened silently for me, revealing Maisie, whose face was softly lit by the glow of candles on the cake she was holding.
“Happy birthday to us,” she said, smiling. I stepped into the room, and the door automatically swung closed behind me. Maisie was so powerful that she probably hadn’t even needed to consciously direct it.
“But our birthday isn’t for days yet,” I said.
“Yeah, but if I get selected to replace Ginny, I won’t be able to spend it with you. I’ll be off training under another anchor. And I don’t want to miss celebrating our twenty-first together,” she said. “Now come here and help me blow out these candles. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I laughed. “I’m already surprised.”
“This,” she said, “is better.”
I walked over to her, feeling the warmth that emanated from the candles.