Free The Source (Witching Savannah, Book 2) by J.D. Horn Page A

prying eyes of the other witch families. To my surprise, Jilo volunteered the use of her haint-blue chamber, a magical hall that existed just outside our dimension but could still connect to any place within it. It stood as a testament to Jilo’s skill that she, a non-witch, could use borrowed power to build such a thing. For years, she had secretly connected it to a room in our own house, making her capable of coming and going as she pleased. Not that she’d snooped around too much on her own. She’d relied on the boo hag who had camouflaged himself first as Oliver’s imaginary friend, Wren, and then as Jackson. Wren had manifested himself in our home for decades, but my family had never caught on to his true nature, assuming he was a tulpa, or a thought-form, a thing so well imagined that it had separated itself from the one who’d originally envisioned it.
    I hadn’t been inside Jilo’s haint-blue room since the night I’d found Wren there holding a knife to Jilo’s throat. Walls, floor, everything had been colored the same aquamarine that was prized for its efficacy in repelling unfriendly spirits. That being said, if you invited the spirits in, the way Jilo had done when she’d made her pact with the boo hag, the haint blue wouldn’t do you much good.
    Today, Jilo’s cerulean throne was missing, and in its place Oliver had drawn a chalk sigil. The etching consisted of a crisscrossed combination of lines and circles that took up a good portion of the room. Walking around it, I counted ten circles, and I noticed that a pentagram had been inscribed in the centermost one.
    “Jilo told him, he oughta use blood, not chalk, but that sweet uncle of yours would have none of it.” Jilo’s voice echoed around me, although my eyes couldn’t get a fix on her yet. To me, the room looked completely empty. Then the air in one corner rippled, like August heat coming up off the highway, and there she stood. “He,” she said, punching the word into the air, “say he know what he doin’, though, so Jilo need to stand back and let the expert handle things.”
    “What is it supposed to be?”
    “He say it the ‘Tree of Life,’ but it sure don’t look like no tree Jilo ever lay eyes on. We didn’t talk much. He just pranced in here, made his scribbles, and took off.”
    Disdain for my uncle dripped from her every word. That Jilo would ever allow Oliver into her sanctuary, that she and Oliver would or even could work together, amazed me. “Thank you for helping us, Jilo. Thank you for letting us use your . . .” I struggled for a term. Room? No, it wasn’t a room. Rooms remained stationary, but this space could coexist with any other point on the earth. Right now it hovered over our own garden. The pentagram at the center of Oliver’s drawing overlaid the point where he’d placed the sundial. “Well, just thank you. And thank you for putting up with Oliver’s ego too.”
    Jilo’s creased face smoothed as much as her advanced years would allow. “You welcome, girl. All the same, Jilo like to buy you uncle for what he worth and sell him for what he think he worth.”
    A humming filled the air, and the lines on Oliver’s diagram began to glow. I was focusing so intently on them, I didn’t notice the shimmering air that signaled his arrival. I sensed his presence—a tingling that ran down my spine—and looked up. He stopped dead in his tracks and took a moment to absorb the haint-blue chamber. “I failed to say so last time, but this truly is impressive, Mother.”
    I was grateful that he’d used the term of respect when addressing Jilo.
    “I don’t think many of those born of the power could construct a chamber like this.”
    He had meant it as a compliment, but to Jilo’s ears, it sounded like another reminder that she had no power of her own, only borrowed power. “Well that is mighty ‘witch’ of you,” Jilo said, her eyes narrowing.
    “I meant no offense,” Oliver said, offering a courtly