The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)

by J.D. Horn

Anyone who truly thought ladies didn’t sweat never spent the summer in Georgia.

Truth was, we’d always been held at a respectful arm’s length, sensed to be useful but dangerous—kind of like a nuclear power plant.

You didn’t need to be a witch, or even a psychic, to see spirits in Savannah—you just had to pay attention.

“Girl, ain’t your family never taught you nothing?” “They taught me that the power isn’t something you can simply draw into yourself. It’s the other way around. A true witch springs from the power. The people who borrow the power, they aren’t real witches. They can steal it from time to time, but the power escapes quickly when it’s clenched in a fist.”

“The world lost a lot of its magic when they shifted us,” Jilo said. “The witches, like yo’ family. They try and act like they did some noble thing for the rest of us. But all they did was take every last bit of the magic left in this world for themselves. They built a kingdom where they the kings, and they can do whatever the hell they want with the rest of us. And Jilo s’posed to act like they doin’ her a favor.”

What must it feel like to have a choice about whether to show the world the person time has made of you?

“You know you aren’t supposed to come into a room without announcing yourself,” I said, trying my best to sound stern. But how can you get angry with a little boy who has been a little boy forever, even before you were born? A child you once played with yourself? A child who isn’t even really a child?

“You don’t reason with a lightning bolt or negotiate with a hurricane,” Iris said. “The power is a force of nature; witches didn’t create it, we merely found a way to ally ourselves with it. I know on the surface it seems like the power is something witches control, but more often than not I think it controls us.” She shook her head. “Sometimes it seems to me like there is a sentience, a mind behind it. Sometimes it seems like it’s just a current. Either way, it will not be denied.”

You have to close some doors, honey, no matter how nice a yard they open out onto.”

Someone try to hurt you, sure they doin’ wrong. But when they attack you, they are sending energy your way. Strong energy. And that energy belongs to you. You have every right to use it for your own purposes.”

This victim you talk about, he accept the intention of the person trying to hurt him. He accept it out of fear. He accept it ’cause he don’t know he don’t have to accept it.

“Henry was the most decent man who ever walked this earth. He put his arm around me and told me that I needed to be tougher for my own good, but that I was going to get through it. And then he pulled me close and told me that his grandson was a fool not to love me like I deserved to be loved.”

“I met Henry once; he’s a good guy,” I said. “But Henry died right after you were born.” Oliver started to shake his head, but then he sighed. “Savannah.”

I sensed that the Oliver I’d known was gone, and although part of me would miss him, I suspected that my uncle might become a better man now that he’d been freed of the secret he had been carrying all these years.

The misery of the past roiled from the building like heat off a blacktop.

“She’ll hate you,” Jackson said. “We’re sisters, a big part of her already hates me,” I said and smiled. “But a big part of her loves me. I couldn’t just run off with you behind her back. We could never be happy together that way.”

All of a sudden I understood Florence, and why she’d come out here for forty years waving her apron. She wasn’t waiting for a man, she was hoping for the return of the girl she’d been before her life had been turned upside down. I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the heart to lie about her again.

He was the black sheep, and I was the dud.

forgiveness was not a one-time act. It was a decision to move on and focus on a person’s good features each time the hurt over what they’ve done crept back up on you.