“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?”