“It’s true, my friend didn’t want us to meet. I promised her that, if possible, I would let you pass through this world without knowing me. That’s why I have stayed in the background, keeping a watchful eye over you but never initiating contact,” she said, then slipped the bottle up beneath her veil. This time she took a long draw from it. “But that son of a whore . . .” She paused. “Maguire,” she offered, raising the bottle in salute. “The worm forced me to break my vow. Just as he forced you to break yours.” She leaned back on the steps, propping herself up on her elbows and splaying her legs in the most unladylike fashion possible on the step below.
“But he ain’t gonna mess with you now.” Pushing herself up a bit, she turned her face to the heavens, as if she were greeting God himself. “He ain’t gonna risk it now that he knows I’m still around.” The veiled face turned back to May. “You’re gonna have to let me teach you the things I taught your mama. And her mama. And her mama before that. Hell, girl, your family and me, we go a long way back.” The Beekeeper held her hand out to May. May felt ill at ease; Maguire had made a very similar statement. Did this creature, too, feel it somehow held ownership of her people?
May took a step or two closer and reached out, willing herself to have the bravery to touch this phantom. Her quivering hand fell back to her side. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid.”
Focused on her guest, and her own trembling, May hadn’t noticed the front door opening. It was the screech of the screen door that alerted her to Jilo’s presence. The little one pushed the door outward, and with one chubby fist in her mouth, stumbled out onto the porch. Her eyes filled with delight at the sight of the Beekeeper.
“Jilo,” May called, but it was too late. The child had already bounded, arms flung wide open, to where the Beekeeper sat.
The creature reached over and scooped the child up into her embrace. “This one,” she said, “she isn’t afraid of magic.” She chuckled as Jilo reached out with her wet fingers and pulled the veil high. “She ain’t afraid of nothing.”
THIRTEEN
The Savannah Morning Star
July 13, 1936
Page A1
Local Luminary Leads Delegation to Berlin Olympics
Distinguished Savannah businessman Sterling Maguire (shown center in above photograph) will lead a group of seven Georgia state dignitaries to the Games of the XI Olympiad that are to be held next month in Berlin. “Before his death, my father grew to be a great admirer of the German chancellor,” Maguire said. “I share my father’s enthusiasm for this dynamic new leader of the German nation. By combining the best thinking of our own American industry with the subversion and removal of the undesirable and decadent elements of society that led to his country’s decline, Chancellor Hitler has single-handedly pulled the German people out of the morass they found themselves in following the Great War. As the German people have learned from great Americans like Henry Ford, so is there much we Americans can learn from great Germans like Adolph Hitler.” When asked about earlier pressures from certain fringe elements to boycott the Berlin Olympic Games, Mr. Maguire stated, “Consider the source. Why would those who would reject the Messiah Himself be any more kindly inclined toward Chancellor Hitler?” The delegation is scheduled to arrive in Berlin a week prior to the commencement of the games to allow for an official tour of the city and the new 100,000-seat stadium. The highlight of the visit will be an opportunity for the delegation to meet with both the chancellor and Minister Hermann Göring.” (Story continues on page A10.)
May took her time cutting the piece from the newspaper, making sure to hold the scissors firmly in hand and to cut precisely along the straight-edge lines she’d drawn as guides. She flipped through the pages to find the article’s conclusion, then repeated the process, although that bit didn’t really have much to add about Maguire. It went on about some new thing called television that was gonna let people miles away from the games watch them just like they were sitting there. Kind of like radio, the article explained, just with moving pictures, too.
She dabbed a bit of paste on the back of each portion of the article and added it to the scrapbook with the other news pieces she’d collected about the Maguires since the last time she’d laid eyes on them, ther
e in the basement of the Pinnacle. Maguire had kept plenty quiet; he must’ve received the Beekeeper’s message loud and clear. May had been watching for news of him in the papers, and she always had an ear open for any talk on the streets. Kids still went missing, but at least none had turned up butchered like the boy she’d buried out back. All the same, May was taking no chances. Sure, she was using her magic on a regular basis now, for the benefit of others as well as herself, but she wasn’t going to accept silence as surrender. May was determined to know her enemy, track his doings, and try to figure out when he might make his next move against her.
“Fletcher Maguire, Industrialist, Humanitarian, Dead at 62” was the first headline to have caught her eye. It had been front-page news only six weeks after she’d helped the father steal his own son’s body. The article alluded to the stroke Fletcher had suffered the night of her mama’s passing. From the way the elder Maguire’s body had looked, May had thought him much older. Maybe it had been a result of her mama’s final attempt to rid the world of him, or maybe it was the hate burning in his soul that had aged him so. She wondered how long it would take his foul spirit to burn through the son’s young flesh.
Some days after the grand obituary stained the front page, a single paragraph, buried toward the back of the Star’s section C—too far back to be of much interest to the whites and not part of section D, which carried most of the colored news—announced that Mrs. Sterling Maguire had traveled to Arizona with the goal of divorcing her estranged husband. Six weeks and one day later, the society page announced Sterling Maguire’s engagement to a blonde Birmingham debutante with a foreign-looking last name.
These more personal items glinted like gold among a pile of other mentions about Sterling Maguire fulfilling some civic duty or other, or mentions of the various businesses in which he owned an interest, a lot of them with names as foreign as his new wife’s.
May examined the man’s fine young features once more before closing the book and sliding it back under her mattress.
FOURTEEN
September 1936
For the first time in months, really since the first night she’d used magic, May dreamed about her mother. In the dream, she was walking behind her mama—recognizable only by the curve of her shoulders and the way she carried herself—but her mama wouldn’t turn back to look at her no matter how she pleaded.
May awoke to a scent of cigar smoke, something she hadn’t smelled in her house since her mother’s passing. She sat up in bed, suddenly alert, fearful that one of the girls had caught something alight. But no, she realized the next moment, this odor could be nothing other than a foul-smelling cheroot. She figured the scent was nothing more than a remnant of the dream.
Specks of dust danced in the air, and it surprised her to see sun streaming in through the window. She hadn’t missed the sunrise more than a few times in her adult life, and perhaps only a few more times than that as a child.
She sure as hell was no longer a child now. Lifting her old carcass out of bed became a bit harder with each passing day. This morning everything hurt. She swung her legs out of bed and rubbed her aching knee, consciously willing relief to it. The Beekeeper had shown her how to channel healing energy from the earth itself into her aching joints, which eased the stiff pressure and allowed her to move as freely as she had twenty or more years ago. The only problem was that the magic’s cure was only temporary. She had to connect with the magic again and again, willing it to rise up from the earth into her muscles and bones, “like sap rising in a tree,” as the Beekeeper had put it. May worried it was like an opium smoker returning to his pipe, and the more she came to depend on magic, the more of herself she’d lose to it.
It was Maguire who’d done it to her. If magic was a trap, a snare into which Maguire had willingly fallen, he’d dragged May in with him. One trap, two souls. May understood her mama better now. Her mama had done her best to protect her from magic, and May would go to her grave doing the same for her girls. At first she doubted she’d ever be capable, but now she was determined to succeed where her mama had failed. She’d take Maguire down before she drew her last breath.
As her feet made contact with the bare wooden floor, she heard the click of a door and watched as her closet door eased open. A warm and bright amber light spilled into the room, but instead of marrying itself with the natural glow of the sun, it swirled around in it like the sheen of oil on water. The angle at which the door had opened blocked the source of the glow from her sight.
Laughter, rough but jovial, sounded from behind the door. Last year, she would have figured she was dreaming. Today, May knew better. She rose to her feet, hoping she could deal with whatever nonsense had slipped into her home before the girls awoke.
She crept up behind the door, using it to shield herself from sight, planning to peek through the crack to see what awaited her. Just before she reached it, she realized how foolish it was to think whoever or whatever stood on the other side of that door didn’t already know she was there, so she stepped into the door frame, clutching the knob as if it could somehow help her maintain one foot in a sane world.
The cramped dark closet she’d always known had given way to a room whose boundaries were larger than those of her entire house, larger, she reckoned, than Savannah itself. The light she’d witnessed shone from a golden chandelier, much grander than anything the Pinnacle had ever boasted. The walls of the grand chamber before her were lined floor to ceiling with mirrors, so the dazzling bulbs, each like a miniature sun, were augmented through reflection. Beneath the chandelier stood a table whose length seemed to run on nearly forever, its far edge disappearing into the horizon, melding into its own reflection.