The house’s front door flung itself open. “Martell,” Jilo’s voice thundered.
The young man deflated at the sound of her voice. “Ah, I was just messing with her a bit, Gramma.”
“Martell.” I spoke his name, realizing that this was the great-grandson Jilo had helped escape from jail after he’d been arrested on suspicion of having murdered Ginny. To help him break out, she’d bent light around him, making him invisible, but then she had trouble mustering enough power to unbend the light. She had confessed to me that her first use for the power I’d given her was to make Martell visible once more, but I hadn’t given him much thought. “Nice to finally see you. Now back off and let me talk to Jilo.”
He hesitated, but Jilo called out. “Let ’er in. She a Taylor, and Taylors don’t understand the word ‘no.’?” My eyes locked with Martell’s. One last challenge, a warning that told me he loved his great-grandmother, and then he stepped aside.
I opened the screen door and stepped into the darkened room. All the shades were closed, and the lights were off. The way Jilo had banished light seemed less an attempt to keep out the day’s building heat, and more as if she were in mourning. “Now what the hell you want?” The question came to me from the room’s darkest corner. The hum of the box fan was silenced as Jilo’s knobby fingers slid out of the shadow and switched it off.
“I want to see you. Make sure you are all right.” I took a couple of steps toward her, but stopped, shocked at the sight. She seemed to have shrunk somewhat, crumpled in on herself. Her hair had turned a confrontation of steel and snow, without even a memory of the jet it had been only a few days before. It appeared that the years she had managed to forestall had caught up with her overnight.
“You ain’t got to worry none about Jilo. She just tired. She tired of silly people and they silly desires. The way they so lazy that they come to Jilo for magic, rather than tryin’ honesty and hard work to get what they want. She tired of the diggin’ and she tired of the Hoodoo. She don’t want the power no more. She tired of the magic, and she sure enough tired of the Taylors,” Jilo said, and then stopped herself. “Jilo don’t mean you, girl.” Her voice softened. “Jilo will never get tired of her Mercy.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I rushed over to her, sitting cross-legged at her feet. Her hand, cold and nearly leathery, reached forward and began to stroke my hair.
“Tell me what happened, Jilo. What really happened,” I said.
Silence settled between us for what seemed like several minutes. “That damned uncle of yours” was all she said.
“Oliver?” I asked, confused.
“You got any others?” she asked, causing me to realize that with Connor and Erik gone, the list had indeed been whittled down to one.
“What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” she said, “and then again, everything.” She began humming again, stroking my hair. “Jilo saw it,” she said finally. “She saw the whole damn thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh,” she said shifting stiffly in her chair, “he ain’t meant to do nothin’ to Jilo, but he had Jilo stand there next to you in that tree of his. Jilo didn’t see anything at first. She just did what yo’ uncle told her to. She sprayed the perfume. She put the dirt in yo’ hand and poured the whiskey over it. But she didn’t see nothing. Not until she look in yo’ eyes. And then she saw the whole thing. Jilo’s entire life, it done flashed before her, just like she was dyin’. And Jilo saw. She saw every single choice she made. How every single action tied into every other single action. Every single wrong. Every single harm. Jilo done saw herself from the outside in, and what she saw was wrong. Jilo saw the beast there waitin’ for her. Just waitin’ there with it sharp teeth to gobble up her sinful heart. It too late for Jilo, my girl. She done the harm she done. She know she gonna have to face up to that. But she ain’t diggin’ herself no deeper. Jilo’s done with magic.”