“Help him do what?” I tried moving again, but couldn’t even squirm.
Connor looked up from his work and smiled at me. “In one hour, I am going to be having drinks with the crème de la crème of Savannah at a charity auction. I will be photographed repeatedly with my beautiful wife Iris on my arm. In one hour and fifteen minutes, Wren will crack your skull in, just like he did Ginny’s. I’ll find your body here in a few days, after it’s much too late for Iris to pull any impressions from the scene.”
He turned back to the journal and continued copying. “I took photos of all of this with my cell phone’s camera,” he said. “But you know how magic can interfere with technology. Just a few more pages, and I’ll leave you two to the rest of your evening.”
I couldn’t find the wind or the will to say another word. Connor carried on, occasionally repeating a phrase to himself or double checking the accuracy of one of the traces he’d made. His satisfaction seemed to increase with every conquered line until he turned to the last page, and shut the book with a satisfied sigh.
Suddenly the journal burst into hot and sticky flames. Cries began tearing from Connor that spoke of something deeper than terror and more pointed than pain. The flames clung to his fingers even after he had cast the journal aside. It must have been booby-trapped to prevent its secrets from ever leaving this house.
After a moment, Connor fell to the floor wailing. Between screams, he ordered the flames to stop, but they continued to pour from the open journal and rush across the floor to engulf him. He managed to climb onto his knees, and he turned to face me, his hands extended as if I were capable of helping him. What remained of his face was contorted with fear and pain, his eyes reflecting the knowledge that the fire would not abate, that it would consume him. Still unable to move, I could only watch as his hair smoldered and caught fire and his skin blackened. He rose and tried to take a step toward me, a living candle, but then fell back to the floor. As his body jerked up and down, the flames began to spread, and what was left of Connor became the epicenter of a fire that was expanding in every direction. I could feel the heat of the conflagration on my face but was helpless to escape it.
Desperately hoping that I might still be able to access some of Oliver’s power, I tried to will the burning to stop, but it continued on unabated, racing faster and faster to the furniture and up the bookcase, melting the books’ bindings before the books themselves burst into flame. The room was thick with smoke, and the only reason I could see was going on around me was because my head was so close to the floor.
“I’m sorry, Mercy,” I heard Wren’s voice call out to me as the door to the room slammed shut. The fire licked at it almost instantly, defying me to try to touch the now glowing knob. I could hear sirens in the distance, but I knew they would never arrive in time. The flames enveloped the wood of the door then seemed to collect and regroup themselves. Suddenly the fire began advancing on me with full force.
It stopped abruptly, close enough to redden my skin with its heat and choke my lungs with its residue, but not to do any real damage. The flames were like none I’d ever seen. Even without a witch’s vision, I could see their true form. Hundreds of small, salamander-like creatures. Suddenly I realized that they weren’t from an actual fire at all—they were fire elementals. A chorus of razor-sharp voices exploded around me, angry and confused, and then there was a single unified gasp. The creatures circled me, each shooting out a tongue to lick at my foot. To my surprise, the contact left me cool and unharmed. A wave of murmurs poured out from each of creatures in a language that had long since faded from this world.
The flames joined together and covered me. I was certain that my life was over, but instead of burning me, they enveloped me and lifted me gently to my feet. I felt sensation return to my body in a rush, and my limbs finally started obeying my commands again. The united flames floated me upward and out a window that had shattered upon my approach. Below, I could see the fire trucks, their hoses aimed not at the fire itself but at the other houses surrounding the charred and twisting remains of Ginny’s house. I was carried unseen above it all, then the flames released me a street or two over, beyond the smell of smoke and the red and white lights of the emergency vehicles. I landed on my feet as surely as a cat, and the fire elementals burrowed themselves deep into the earth, leaving behind no trace of their existence.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Peter was on me the second I entered my house. A look of relief flooded his face, and I realized that whatever anger I’d felt toward him earlier had taken a backseat to the rage and terror that were pulsing through me. I pushed past him, right into Ellen’s arms.
“Thank God you’re here. Thank God you’re all right,” she repeated over and over again, rocking me.
Oliver came up behind me and planted a kiss on top of my head. “You smell of smoke,” he said. “You were at Ginny’s?”
“You know about the fire?” I asked and then realized that they would have been alerted by the fire department.
“What happened?” Peter answered my question with one of his own.
I looked him directly in his eyes and said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“But I’m worried about you, honey,” he said, trying to pull me away from Ellen and into his arms. “I want to give you my support.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I repeated.
Oliver sensed something in my voice that he didn’t understand, but knew enough not to like. “Leave,” he commanded, and Peter instantly withdrew and headed out the door.
I extricated myself from Ellen’s embrace. “Connor’s dead,” I said and watched for her reaction.
“We know, sweetheart,” she said.
“But how could you know?” I asked, my fear leading me to wonder if she had learned it from Wren. There was no way the fire department would have had the opportunity to look for remains yet, and given that the fire had had a supernatural cause, I strongly suspected that there wouldn’t be any.
Ellen didn’t respond—she just took my hand and led me into the library. As we approached, I could hear Ray Charles playing on the ancient stereo turntable that Connor had insisted on keeping, even though its boxy wooden sarcophagus took up valuable space. He had always claimed that vinyl records had a warmth and depth to them that other recordings lacked.
Ellen reached down and opened the door. I stepped in to find Iris floating in the center of the room, lifted by a controlled gust of air. The gown she had intended to wear to the charity auction fluttered angelically around her. I had never known that Aunt Iris could fly or that she could control the wind, but there she was. She normally kept her hair pinned close to her head, but tonight it hung loose, and the wind that kept her aloft teased it wildly in every direction. It was a strangely beautiful sight. Tears streamed backward along her cheeks, but she stayed perfectly silent. The only sign that she was still with us was when she restarted Ray after the record player’s needle came to the end of the recording’s groove.
Oliver had followed us into the library. “She was sitting in the kitchen having tea with me. Everything was fine,” he said. “Then she stood up and started wailing. She kept saying something about Connor and a fire, then she told me that he was dead. She came in here, and she’s been floating and playing that record over and over again for the past half hour.”