I’d learned all this in the worst possible way.
Charles rushed to my side, and I pressed my face to his chest, my tears wetting his shirt. Paloma smoothed my hair. My physical and emotional energy were spent.
Once I wasn’t feeling quite so shaky, we headed upstairs to the kitchen where Paloma and Charles listened intently as I conveyed what the ignisvisum had revealed.
The final set of images had been familiar. They were of me—the real me. The me not altered by a New England 17th century diet or a husband dead in the war. Not Elizabeth or Mary or Rachel or Abigail—though we were all the same—but me, the person I remembered being. Sophia.
Ivory watched through the window of our small home in Keota as Mother held me shortly after my birth in 1987. After three centuries, Ivory walked among the living like any other human. She watched me on the playground at school. Followed my family when we moved to Belle Meadow. She’d been at the movies on my first date, and our meeting in college hadn’t been an accident.
She’d planted Elizabeth Parsons’ court document in with my father’s belongings. Everything had been a lie. Even her Boston accent had been faked, the voice of her thoughts and memories old fashioned, archaic … nothing like the modern voice in which she spoke to me. No wonder I’d never recognized her thoughts before.
Ivory had killed Mr. Petrenko to save me from being arrested for stealing. It’d been her thoughts tumbling through my mind at the time of the murder. She needed to ensure I’d go off to college, where she planned for us to meet. That couldn’t happen if I was in jail. And Marcus’ interest in me had never extended beyond Ivory asking him to arrange a staged attack. She’d forged the note from him, hoping to spook me, hoping I would turn to her so desperate to protect myself that I’d be willing to become a Cruor myself.
She hadn’t counted on my turning to Charles instead.
When Ivory’s plan at Club Flesh backfired, she’d risked that Charles might tell me her secret, maybe even hoped he would, to save her the trouble, so I might come to her with acceptance and understanding. But the more time Charles and I spent together, the more anxious she’d become, until eventually she saw him as nothing more than a threat. That was when she tried to kill him—when she ended up attacking me instead.
At least I really had only taken memories of myself. The ignisvisum had shown the times Ivory spent with Elizabeth’s spirit or thinking of her. I struggled to wrap my head around the idea—that Elizabeth’s spirit was mine, too.
It was nearly seven at night by the time I conveyed everything to Paloma and Charles.
“I’m sorry,” Charles said. From the thoughts floating through his mind, he didn’t know what else to say.
Gripping my hand, Paloma offered all the support I needed with the expression on her face.
I managed a smile. “These ‘forever girls’—have you heard of them?”
Paloma stole a glance at Charles. “As far as the Council is concerned, they never existed.”
“And as far as you’re concerned?”
“There is too much evidence to deny their existence. After today, after seeing you obtain the memories of your ancestor—of your own spirit—I can say there is no doubt in my mind that they exist, and that you are one of them. It’s the only thing that would make sense of everything I’ve seen in you.”
“So what does this all mean for me?”
“All your previous lives are a part of you, even if you don’t remember them. Any abilities you possessed then should be accessible now that you have knowledge of them.”
I let her words sink in, but my mind was still on my once-friend. “I don’t understand why Ivory thought killing Charles would bring her and me together.”
Paloma rose and started another pot of tea. “She was a hurting woman, Sophia. Sometimes people have unhealthy ways of expressing their love. It’s not always easy for someone to be turned while grieving. It can affect them indefinitely.”
I stared as wax dripped down a candle in the center of the table. Visions stolen from Ivory’s memories flashed through my thoughts: flesh wasting away in a fire after Elizabeth’s—after my—hanging. Take her ashes, so that her spirit may live on, Ivory had said.
I blinked, refocusing on Charles. “This is just … hard to accept.”
He’d tried several times over the last hour to approach me—to comfort me—but each time, I’d pushed him away. I needed space, and he’d finally resigned. Now he merely listened, nodding whenever I spoke. Thanks to our blood bond, his emotions were pressing hard against my own, and part of me wanted to surrender to the anger there, as though his anger would be somehow easier to bear than my own weighted hurt.
The new revelations made me feel safe enough to expose my other secrets. I turned to Paloma. “The blood bonds I’ve experienced with Adrian and Charles….”
“Yes?” Paloma asked, nodding for me to continue.
“I saw some of Adrian’s memories … and I’ve felt Charles’ emotions.” I looked at him apologetically. As if it weren’t intrusive enough to have me in his thoughts, how might he feel about me sensing his emotions as well? He offered a weak-but-understanding smile, and I focused back on Paloma. “Is this because I’m a forever girl?”
“I’m not sure, Sophia.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “Not everything in life can be explained.”
Paloma dropped a tea bag into a cream-colored ceramic mug and poured steaming water from the kettle over the top. She set the tea in front of me. The water darkened at the bottom as the steam rose to warm my chin and nose.
Just as I was about to take a sip, Adrian walked in. He set his laptop on the counter and turned to Paloma. “Relocate Ivory. Charles, Sophia—we must talk.”
My mind froze at his abrupt tone, then slugged forward. Paloma take Ivory? Adrian was supposed to take her.
Paloma seemed calm in response to what was an exceptionally rude way for Adrian to couch his request. She gave one of her soft smiles. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’ve already secured her in your car.”
I hadn’t even heard him come in, and already he’d moved Ivory to Paloma’s car?
Paloma looked over at me as she gathered her coat. “Please call if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”
She paused in the doorway, giving me one last gentle smile before leaving.
Once the front door closed, I fixed my glare on Adrian. “What the hell is going on?”
“My apologies for rushing at you with this. Please, let us discuss.” Adrian paced across the linoleum floor, from a tile near the window to a dented one near the kitchen door. Back and forth, from sienna to mustard, each tile separated by dark grout and imprinted with fleur de lis. “I need you both to pay careful attention and stay calm.”
Charles’ eyebrows drew together. “What’s going on?”
“Your parents,” Adrian said, directing his gaze toward Charles. He continued in a sunken tone. “I’m deeply sorry to tell you.”
A sense of dread clenched my stomach.
Charles’ eyes hardened. “Tell me what?”
“They have been apprehended.” Adrian wrung his hands together and began pacing again.
Charles stood, fingertips pressed firmly against the table in front of him. “You’re mistaken.”
“I’m afraid not,” Adrian said, stopping to place a hand on Charles’ shoulder.
The low lighting reflected off the unshed tears in Charles eyes.
My gaze darted between them. “They who? Thalia’s coterie?”
Charles shook his head. “He means the Council.”
I barely registered the words. How did they learn of Charles’ parents? Now, after hundreds of years?
Adrian leveled his gaze at Charles. “We’ll get them back.” An intensity saturated his voice and a sheen of purpose glazed his eyes.
How did Adrian know all this? The emotions rolling off Charles revealed complete trust as an undercurre
nt to his fear and concern. Maybe he could read Adrian’s aura and saw him as someone trustworthy. But Charles had failed in his judgments of others before, and while I hated to be skeptical of a friend, I focused on Adrian’s thoughts, letting the rest of the noise float into the background.
His subconscious replayed the moment he’d learned the news. After Charles had called, Adrian went to Club Flesh to gather information on Ivory. Instead, he overheard the bar owner speaking with someone in the office. Someone who was looking for Charles and who said his parents were already in the Council’s custody.
Charles’ sagged into the seat across from me. “Us against the Council? Thalia’s thugs are one thing, but that place is too heavily-guarded.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Adrian said. “Thalia’s coterie turned your parents in. They caught them as they were leaving town. Now they are after you, too.”
“Do they know where I am?” Charles asked.
Adrian shook his head. “They haven’t discovered your exact location. Not yet. Last week they tried to track Sophia but lost her scent a few miles from here.”
“I’ll help,” I said. As much as Ivory’s memories weakened my ability to trust, they strengthened my confidence in myself. Somewhere inside of me, a power lurked, waiting to be tapped into.
“No.” Charles said in a tense, clipped voice that forbade any questions. “You won’t.”
Fortunately, I didn’t care much what his tone forbade. “None of us may be strong enough alone, but together we might have a shot.”
Charles ran his hands over his face. “You don’t know the Council.”
“Let her assist,” Adrian said. “We cannot do this alone.”
Charles pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and leaned back in his seat. He could think things over if he liked, but it wouldn’t change anything. I was going to help.
I pulled Adrian into the hallway, and, for once, he didn’t seem like he was about to self-combust while standing near me. There wasn’t enough time to recap everything, but I gave him the run down on the important details.
“One more thing,” I said. “During one of my earlier lives, I exhibited another power, beyond my clairaudience. Telekinesis, I think. Could I channel that somehow?”
Adrian gave a solemn nod and walked to the library room. He indicated the wooden chair at the small desk, and I seated myself and ran my fingers over the scarring of the desktop while he retrieved several books I hadn’t read from a shelf.
He sat beside me and pushed over a large tome. “These are transcripts from times of Olde.”
I raised a brow and opened to the first page. “Should we get Charles?”
“He will join us when he’s ready.”
I scanned the content. A few pages were rough and stuck together, and light-brown water stains smudged some of the writing. The book consisted mostly of odd photographs—creatures, almost human if not for their shark-like teeth; close ups of unraveled rope, screw threads, sawdust; stamps from the Cayman Islands, circa 1904; and black lady bugs eating holes through stalks of browning rhubarb.
“What is this?”
“Someone’s journal,” he said. “I don’t know whose.”
The photographs served only to intensify the growing pit in my stomach. I flipped through, searching for any relevant text. Between a photograph of the cracked, dried mud of a riverbed and a copy of a veined map outlining Europe, I found some potentially useful information.
I pulled the pencil I’d been chewing on, now perforated with bite marks, away from my mouth. “This is it.”
* * *
CHARLES JOINED US half an hour later. Our plan hinged on a theory no books had proven: if the power traveled with my spirit, I could tap into five lifetimes of magic, as Paloma had said. This book detailed exactly how achieving this might be possible.
I needed a marker from each life: the court document from Elizabeth’s trial in Salem would work. The photocopy had burned in the fire, but I’d kept the original in a fire-safe box, properly stored along with my social security card and birth certificate. For markers to represent my other lives, I selected a violin, Leigh Hunt’s The Rebellion of the Beasts, and a pair of baby’s shoes.
Within a couple of hours, Adrian helped me round up the items: the baby shoes and violin were an easy find, but he’d had to exhaust some of his connections to find me a copy of Leigh Hunt’s novel on such short notice. With the items in my possession, I could now channel my previous lives with more ease.
“I’m supposed to do this,” I said, confidence settling over every nerve in my body.
Adrian placed a hand on Charles’ shoulder. “Do not fear, my friend. She’d only be helping.”
“We’ll see,” Charles said.
I sensed his uncertainty. Even without dipping into his thoughts—and it was definitely still more natural for me to avoid using my clairaudience—I was pretty sure he knew I wasn’t going to budge on the issue.
Charles pinched the bridge of his nose. “If we’re doing this, we’ll need to leave for Damascus immediately.”
Adrian logged onto his laptop. Charles and I sat alongside him as his fingers clacked over the keyboard at an inhuman speed. I studied the computer screen. The format was foreign to me; Adrian was viewing an impossible IP address.
D-connect—that little Internet card thingy he’d brought over to my house all those months ago. The supernatural Internet suddenly seemed more valuable than the first time I’d encountered it.
“This fellow”—Adrian jabbed a finger toward the text on the screen, the name ‘Rhett’ written in plain block letters—“has an exceptional reputation. He’ll fly us out there, no questions asked.”
Adrian scribbled some numbers on a sheet of paper and then furiously crossed them out. “Math is not my strong point. Perhaps one of you might lend a hand? We need to determine the appropriate departure time.”
I lifted the page. “I can figure this out.”
I factored in time differences and Damascus’ hours of darkness for this time of year as well as the plane’s travel speed of up to two thousand kilometers per second—about ten times faster than a normal airway plane, and maybe a bit faster than what the US Air Force used. Because supernatural technology was beyond that of humans, we’d avoid detection.
“If we leave at sunrise tomorrow, we can arrive tomorrow evening. We’ll need a flight time under twelve hours, but that’s nothing his plane can’t handle.”
Adrian booked the flight using something called ICAO codes instead of the KAPA or OSDI codes normally used by airports.
Charles and Adrian discussed the details of travel, while I worked on developing whatever power I might contain. I sank back to the visions I’d stolen from Ivory along with some strange moments I’d had growing up.
In third grade, an eraser I hadn’t even touched had flown off my desk and across the room. I’d gotten detention for that. Another time, when I was sixteen, a door I hadn’t even touched slammed in Mother’s face, almost as if it had a mind of its own. Or, at least, almost like it shared a mind with me.
Even the dishes that had fallen over during my positive energy ritual might have been a result of my gift. At the time, I thought it’d only been the wind. How many of these moments were signs of my powers breaking through?
The only thing those moments had in common was how hurt or angry or frustrated I’d been at the time. How could my powers be good if they came from negative emotions?
It’s all about your intentions, I told myself.
With that in mind, I tried to summon all my hurt and anger, which wasn’t too hard. I’d been suppressing those emotions for hours. Years, if you count the hurt put on me by Mother and the small town we lived in.
I focused all that conjured energy on trying to move a pencil from the table. When that didn’t work, I took a break for a cup of apple-vanilla tea and lit a few candles before trying again. Another thirty minutes passed with no success. I’d lost count of how many ti
mes I’d tried, but I wasn’t giving up. I closed my eyes and centered all my energy inward, trying to build up a store of power, then opened my eyes to try again.
The pencil budged—a small bubble of excitement tickled in my chest—but then the leaden utensil shot across the table and smacked against the wall. The splintered wood and snapped lead crashed to the floor.
I sighed. I had no control over this ‘gift’ and not much time to gain any. I sat on the edge of the bed with the violin Adrian had run out to pick up earlier. I lifted it and tried to imagine what it would’ve been like to be Mary. To be me.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled the bow across the strings. The air in my lungs felt suddenly strange, and my heart fluttered. It didn’t sound as bad as I would’ve thought. It only sounded uncertain. But the more I gave myself to it, the smoother the melody carried. The same melody Mary had played. It was alive in me.
Once I finished, I felt refreshed. Energized. Charles and Adrian were staring.
“What was that?” Charles asked.
I shrugged. “I—I don’t know.”
Adrian nodded his approval.
I’d never played before—not in this lifetime—but a new passion ignited within me. Now all I needed to do was control the energy. Thinking it would probably be best to work with something sturdier than a pencil, I grabbed a pen from the kitchen junk drawer and, this time, focused with a destination in mind: moving the pen from the ground to the table. The pen hovered for a moment before falling.
It was Ivory’s words to Abigail that finally helped: Believe in this. With new determination, I tried again. This time the pen floated up from the floor and over to the table, my energy bleeding out as I lowered it to the table’s surface. It dropped the last inch, rolled a tiny bit, and came to a stop.
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