“I tell you what; I need a few minutes to get ready. You give me the address, and I’ll meet her there.” He stayed where he was by the gate, not stirring. My phone began to ring. No number showed, but I answered anyway. I could use this as an opportunity to create a cover story for why I couldn’t go with the driver.
“Please get in the car with Parsons before the family comes home,” my mother’s voice commanded. “You aren’t safe there, darling girl. Let Parsons bring you to me. Please come.” The phone clicked off at the same moment the driver reached over and unlatched the gate.
An unexpected arrival. An ambiguous threat implying that the people who had raised me might want to harm me. Neither of those things felt right. On top of it all, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this Parsons was being held up by invisible strings, and should they be cut, he’d fall immobile to the ground. I wondered if my mother herself was the puppeteer, using Parsons much as she had controlled the tourist outside the cathedral. Still, my need to see my mother and get some answers trumped my inhibitions, so I did as she told me.
The drive led us out of Savannah proper, and I squirmed as we passed the old powder magazine on Ogeechee, the memory of my last visit there making it impossible for me to take an easy breath until we entered Richmond Hill, where Ogeechee changes into the Ocean Highway. Richmond Hill came and went. We passed a small graveyard to my right, and shortly afterward, we turned off the highway and entered into a maze of country roads, more of them gravel than not.
I felt a bit claustrophobic behind the tinted glass. I pressed the window button and was relieved that it opened, relieved that at least something in this world remained under my control. Dusty, dry air hit me. Outside the limo’s arctic twilight, a fine early fall day was taking place. The blue sky and warm air worked together to help unwind some of my tension. I hung my hand out the window, enjoying the feeling of the air rushing around me. It reminded me of Iris, and how she could use the air currents to fly. I was more than a little disappointed that that particular trick didn’t seem to be in my repertoire. If I could let myself be taken and carried by the wind, I’d probably never come down. I couldn’t understand how Iris could have voluntarily put that ability on hold during her entire marriage to Connor. He had been weak but extremely prideful, and Iris had managed his resentments by dumbing down her abilities.
One thought of Connor led to another, and my blood began to boil as I considered the way he’d planned to let Ginny’s house burn down around me. Even though the son of a bitch had believed himself to be my father, he’d been ready to kill me to get his hands on a little more power. I trusted that Oliver would dispose of the spirit trap in a way that would free us from Connor for good. I looked down and realized that blue sparks had begun to form on my fingertips, my magic ready to strike out and protect me from a danger that was no longer there. I closed my eyes and leaned my face into the breeze, letting it calm me. The car hit a rough patch in the road, jarring me back to attentiveness. That’s when I realized that I could be heading into another, very similar confrontation right now. As badly as I wanted to trust my mother, experience had shown me the importance of remaining vigilant. I wanted to believe she wouldn’t expose me to danger, but only a little over three months ago, my own sister had turned me over to a boo hag for sacrifice. If it weren’t for the betrayals I’d suffered at the hands of my uncle and my sister, I would never have entertained my mother’s insinuation against my aunts and uncle. Maisie and Connor had both betrayed me, though, so I needed to hear my mother out. I was running a little low on trust all the way round right now.
We slowed as we approached a private drive, framed by stone gates and canopied by parallel rows of ancient live oaks. The driver eased between the gates, turning off the rough public road and onto the newly paved roadway. The smell of creosote perfumed the air. I leaned out of the car to get a better view of the house—no, mansion—at the end of the lane. The words “decrepit grandeur” came to mind as we came nearer. It was a fine old house. Georgian, with a nearly square base, stretched into a rectangle by the addition of a wide porch at both the entrance and above that, on the second floor. Four windows down, four windows up, with a door dividing each row. Six Doric pillars, obviously intended more as decoration than support, stood guard, wearing their badly battered and peeling coat of white. Various pieces of construction equipment staged around the house promised that better days would be coming. In front of the house, the straight drive intersected with an oval. The fresh soil in the oval’s center was clearly destined to provide nourishment for flowers, perhaps a young magnolia? Was this to be my mother’s house? Had she truly come home?
The car came to a full stop, and I swung my door open and hopped out before the driver could reach it. “You should have allowed me to assist you, miss,” he said, the words sounding again as if he’d swallowed someone else’s phone. I gave a weak smile in answer, and let him push the door closed. I took a few steps back, away from the house, so that I could take in the full effect. I backed up without looking behind me and bumped into a sawhorse, surrounded by very fresh sawdust. My eyes had started back to the house when they got stuck on a name stenciled on the sawhorse. “Tierney Construction” leapt out at me, and I swung around surveying the rest of the equipment that had been left in place. Everything that wasn’t large enough to have been rented had Peter’s name stenciled or otherwise inscribed on it. The unexpected connection between my mother and my fiancé didn’t sit right. My instincts had kicked in again, doing their best to warn me away. Something was not right.
“Mercy,” my mother’s voice called to me from the porch. “Come in,” she said, and stood there waiting at the top of the steps, her arms wide-open for an embrace. As confused as I felt, the sight of her buried my apprehensions. I wanted so badly to believe in her. I couldn’t resist it. I ignored the pavement and took a straight line across the oval’s unplanted garden. “Careful, careful,” my mother called out, laughing.
I flew up the steps and into her arms, spinning her around. The joy was undeniable until it up and winged away when my eyes landed on the house’s black-and-red door. “Tillandsia,” I whispered into her ear.
She pushed her way free of my weakening embrace. “Yes, my darling girl, Tillandsia.” She took me by one hand, and with the other, turned the knob on the very door that I had seen in my vision. The improbable hope that Maisie would be standing there, safe on the other side of the door, flooded through me, but when the door creaked open, it revealed nothing but a freshly sanded wood floor and two comfortable and modern armchairs that looked hopelessly lost in this enormous space. As my eyes traced the lines of the entranceway, I wondered what furniture could possibly be consequential enough not to be dwarfed by such a setting.
The area in front of me was immense and hexagonal. A dome skylight, which had not been visible from the house’s exterior, hovered above it. A set of stairs to my right carried on past the second floor to a gallery, which probably allowed a 360-degree view of the surrounding landscape, thanks to the dome. I realized the Georgian exterior was merely a façade. Symmetry played a very small part in the house’s interior. My mother closed the door behind us and took her place in one of the easy chairs. “Spectacular, isn’t it?”