“Mr. Perry, if I had any magic powers, I assure you that I would use them to make you disappear,” I said, provoking a laugh from my group.
Perry didn’t like being refused, and he liked being laughed at even less. “No seriously, Mercy. Tell them,” he said. Then, turning toward the men, “Trust me, her aunt Ellen and I have shared some very unusual pillow talk.”
“I think we should continue on with our tour,” I said, ignoring Tucker’s comment. “Maybe another time, Mr. Perry.”
“Oh, I do hope so, Miss Taylor,” he said, reaching out to touch me. I stepped back quickly, and my guys stepped in between us, forming a protective wall. Over their shoulders I could see Perry lifting his hands in surrender, an oily smile on his face. He turned and started walking south on River Street, but then stopped and called back to me.
“Mercy, remind Ellen that I will be picking her up tonight for Tillandsia. As soon as you and Maisie turn twenty-one, you’ll both be very welcome. I’d love to be your sponsor. After all, it was your mama who brought me into the fold.” Tucker’s mention of my mother made my stomach turn. It was bad enough to know my aunt was involved with him. I certainly didn’t want to consider the possibility that my mother had once had a connection to him. The thought was enough to make me lose my game face, and my guys noticed it.
“Are you okay?” the tall one asked. He probably had a daughter my age, I realized. “Do we need to worry about him for you?”
“Why no, not at all,” I said and managed a not-too-fake sounding laugh. I was getting too good at this lying game. “You just witnessed a bit of our local color.”
“What was this Tillandsia thing he was talking about?” the round one asked.
The Tillandsia Club was a dinosaur, a throwback to the days when Savannah society was still comprised of iron magnates and wannabe railroad barons. Its ranks have included senators, congressmen, governors, bankers, judges, and other such white collar thieves. Social democratization had passed Tillandsia by entirely. Even today, the only way in was to be sponsored by a member in good standing. The members of the club wanted to be able to get their good times on without word of their behavior getting out and tarnishing their public image. Tillandsia was one of the few groups to which my family’s wealth had opened the door, and since Ellen could drink a man twice her size under the table, it seemed like a natural fit for her.
“Tillandsia is the genus of Spanish moss,” I said, gesturing widely at a cluster of trees that were visible from where we stood on River Street. “It’s also the name of my aunt’s gardening club.” I lied about the club if not the classification of the plant, knowing that it would help move the guys off the subject. “Onward and upward, gentlemen!”
Our route would take us over some large cobblestones and up some uneven steps, and I knew it would be best to get the guys past these hurdles before their drinks kicked in. I hustled them over to the trees between the Old Savannah Cotton Exchange and Bay Street, releasing any thoughts of Tucker Perry as I breathed in the dappled golden light, letting Savannah possess me. One of the ghost tours passed by, and the guide raised his hand to me in greeting as he carried on talking about Moon River Brewing and the ghosts that bump around on the building’s upper floors. The only hauntings I ever mentioned on my tour were the ones I knew to be false, particularly if they could be twisted into stories that were funnier than they were creepy. After all, I advertised as the Liar’s Tour.
Truth was, there was magic in Savannah, magic that was beyond that of the Taylors. Sometimes I wondered if my family had come here in an attempt to tame this raw energy or maybe even harness it and make it their own. Savannah had the power to hold people long after their final sell-by date had been carved into marble. You didn’t need to be a witch, or even a psychic, to see spirits in Savannah—you just had to pay attention.
I let the tour proceed on automatic. The guys were happy just to be outside in the warm evening air, momentarily free from the pressures of work and family, with a more than adequate, but still legal, blood alcohol content. My stories flowed without interruption until Drayton Street, when one of the guys asked, “So this cemetery we’re going to, is it the one from that Garden at Midnight movie?”
“No, that is Bonaventure,” I said, moving swiftly past the thought that my own mama was buried in Bonaventure. Death and life, death in life. The two weren’t just joined at the hip in Savannah, they were downright symbiotic. Witches, even powerful ones like my mama had been, aren’t immortal. Their lives are just as fragile as anyone else’s. “We are going to visit Colonial. Bonaventure is still an active cemetery,” I said. “There haven’t been any burials in Colonial since the 1850s. Everyone who loved anyone who’s buried there has long since passed themselves.”
I forced a smile onto my face and began my tale about Rene Rondolier, arriving beneath the Daughters of the American Revolution eagle just as I got to part about the illicit love affair between the giant and the Savannah belle. Sunset was still over an hour away, but the keepers of Colonial kept to a fixed calendar regardless of the sun’s opinion. “The gates are going to be locked soon, so let’s duck in real fast and head toward the back wall,” I said and began to guide them toward the tombstone-lined wall. I was still talking when I realized that the guys had fallen back; their attention had shifted from me to some fracas that was going on near the center of the cemetery.
An elderly but still sturdy woman with skin as dark as coffee was trundling along in a line as straight as the few remaining monuments would allow toward the gate we had entered moments before. I recognized her instantly. Known as Mother Jilo, she was a worker of Hoodoo, Savannah’s response to New Orleans’s Voodoo. The main difference between the two was that Hoodoo had at some point become decoupled from the African gods, leaving behind only the practice of sympathetic magic, a conjuring method that uses like to affect like. “Sympathetic” had always struck me as a rather warm and fuzzy term for a brand of magic that was most often used to seduce away otherwise faithful spouses and bring about the death of enemies. Over time, Hoodoo had even taken on a decidedly Protestant flavor, coming to be known as “root magic,” meaning that its power was rooted in the Bible itself. Those who practiced it, or at least practiced it well, were known as “root doctors.”
Jilo was the undisputed queen of Savannah’s root doctors, the large brim of her yellow sun hat shading cruel and mercenary eyes, her folding chair serving as the throne from where she ruled her empire. Only a local fool or an outsider ignorant of Savannah’s ways would ever mistake Jilo as anything other than the powerful tyrant that she was.
A much younger woman followed in Jilo’s wake, scurrying to catch up to her. When she got in front of Jilo, she collapsed onto her hands and knees. “Mother! I beg of you! I want to take it back,” she half moaned, half screamed as she reached out, trying to catch the older woman by the ankle.
Even in the failing light, my eyes were dazzled by the colors of Jilo’s ensemble—a large daffodil yellow sun hat and a violently purple dress that probably once fit her but now hung loosely from her bones. Her outfit was jarring against the vibrant green of the folded lawn chair she was half carrying, half using as a cane and the small red cooler she was clutching in her other hand. I shuddered as I considered the likely contents of the cooler.
“What do you think is going on there?” one of my guys asked as I approached them.
“I think that is something we best stay out of,” I responded.
Jilo managed to avoid the woman’s frantic grasp, stopping to swat at her with the chair. “Jilo done told you it too late to take back.”
“But I was wrong,” the woman cried, ducking her head beneath her raised arms. “He never cheated on me.”
“Well that between you and yo’ man.” Jilo wheezed and took another lumbering step toward the gate of the cemetery.
“But he’s going to die, Mother!” The desperation in the woman’s voice was heartbreaking The tall, paternal member of my group stepped in front of me, placing himself as a protective barrier between me and the unpleasant goings-on. Lord knows, growing up in Savannah, I’d seen much worse skirmishes than this little drama. I poked my head out around him.
“That right, he is,” Jilo responded, her voice as cold as ice water. “That what you done paid Jilo for.” The old woman straightened her back and coughed repeatedly, then bent and spat on the ground.
“But I was wrong! I’m sorry.” The woman fell facedown into the turf, sobbing.
“That ain’t Jilo’s fault. Now, if you want Jilo’s help getting a new man, you let her know. That she can help you with, but yo’ old man, he as good as gone, and the quicker you get used to it, the better.” Jilo continued on her way as though nothing untoward had happened, passing beneath the eagle as we silently watched her.
“That was really quite extraordinary,” the tall guy said in an undertone. “This ‘mother’ arranges murders for hire?”