by Ivy Sinclair
“I see that you are as stubborn as ever,” she said as she handed one to Riley as well.
“No, I just stopped being naïve,” Riley said. His nose dropped to the cup, and he inhaled deeply. “I have missed your Dragon Jasmine tea though.”
Sister Alice smiled, and for the first time I saw a hint of warmth. She obviously cared about Riley. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened between them to have caused the strain that Riley alluded to when he spoke of her. Her eyes swept back to me, and I saw the creases around them tighten. I realized with a start that she was afraid. Not for me and not even for herself. She was afraid for Riley, and it was because of me. It seemed further confirmation that whatever my past, it was dark.
“Riley flatters me. The tea is an herbal concoction that I discovered many years ago. I must have been about your age,” Sister Alice said as she brought her own cup to her lips. She blew on the steaming surface. “Not unlike Riley, my introduction to the world of shadow and light was sudden and disturbing.”
“The world of shadow and light?” I let the cup rest on my knee. I was afraid that if I brought it to my lips, she would see that my hands shook slightly.
“That is what I call the world that exists with ours,” Sister Alice replied. “There are dark creatures and there are those who come from the light. They stand beside us, and yet we go about our lives as if we can’t see them. Riley prefers to think of two realms that co-exist side by side, but I have always seen it as our world exists in-between these two forces. That is why people like he and I are so often caught in the middle of all of it.”
“What about me? Where do I fit into all of it?” I was weary of the speeches and the vague references to things that I didn’t yet fully comprehend.
Sister Alice put her cup back down on the coffee table. She folded her hands in her lap. “Where do you want to fit in?”
I burst out laughing. It was the wrong emotion and the wrong reaction, but I couldn’t help it. It was a ridiculous question. “I don’t want to fit anywhere in it. I want to go back to my life and forget this all happened.”
“That’s not the truth, Paige, and you know it.”
“How do you know her name?” Riley leaned forward as he placed his arm on the armrest of my chair. “I haven’t introduced you.”
“Very rude of you,” Sister Alice said. “But ultimately unnecessary. Despite the fact that you believe you don’t remember your past, you still chose your own name.”
I gaped at her. “My real name is Paige?”
She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “More accurately, your name has always been Paige.”
I put the cup down on the coffee table before I dropped it. My hands began to shake more violently. Riley reached over and took my hands. “You know her.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Sister Alice said quietly. “She is a reincarnation of a being that was never supposed to exist on the human plane ever again.”
“She is human,” Riley said. His fingers tightened around mine. “I would have been able to tell if she were supernatural. She bleeds. When I met her, she had just been attacked by a Typhon demon, and she would have died if I hadn’t intervened.”
“She hasn’t reached her full maturity yet. It was stunted, likely when she lost her memories,” Sister Alice said.
“How do you know about that?” It was eerie to think how much more Sister Alice might know about me than I knew about myself.
“Medical diagnosis, especially when a supernatural element is involved, is one of my specialties. I can see that you have been suffering from a unique kind of amnesia.”
“Putting that aside for the moment, who exactly do you think I am a reincarnation of?” My mind was still tripping over Sister Alice’s revelations. It didn’t make sense to me yet. The puzzle pieces didn’t fit together.
“Are you absolutely sure that you want to know the answer to that question? You’ve enjoyed a life that is free of worry and pain. You’ve been oblivious to the world of shadow and light. You don’t have to let it be part of your life. You could disappear. Fall off the grid. That all is within Riley’s power. He could help you do that. I tell you this because once you know, Paige, there is no going back to whatever simple little life you built for yourself. There are truths in this world that we cannot back away from, no matter how hard we try.”
For a moment, I forgot to breath. Her warning hit me like a ton of bricks. She was right, of course. Once I knew the truth of who I was, I couldn’t not know again. Everything hinged on what I was going to say. I stood at a crossroads. Then I realized a piece of the puzzle actually did fit together, and several things fell into place.
“I’ve been here before.” I didn’t make it a question.
A slight widening of her eyes was the only indication the nun gave me. She was good. She might hold the knowledge I needed, but I wasn’t as ready to trust her as Riley was. That was one thing about losing all memory of who you were. Trust was a lot harder to earn.
“We have met before, yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Riley exploded as he shot up out. At his full height with me sitting in his shadow, he was thoroughly intimidating. “For fuck’s sake, Alice. I brought her here so that she could get some answers, not play more mental mind games.”
“You will not curse here,” Alice’s voice could have sliced through skin. “There was a time when I would have gladly offered you any and all answers you sought, but then you gave me reason to question your intentions and motivations. I owe you nothing.”
“Fine. Fair enough, but you owe my mother,” Riley snapped.
There was a long pause, and given the weight of his words in the air and the stricken look on Sister Alice’s face, I knew that he had said something horribly significant. It only punctuated the fact that there was still so much about Riley’s past that I had yet to uncover.
“My debt was paid to Joanna over the three hundred and twenty-five days that you were in my care,” Sister Alice said quietly. “I pray for forgiveness every day because I failed her.”
The conversation was derailing fast, and I couldn’t let whatever had happened between them in the past cost me the knowledge that I desperately needed to know now. I stood up and put my hand on Riley’s arm. “Riley, please.”
His jaw worked up and down, and I could tell that he struggled with a series of emotions that he was barely keeping in check. I could only imagine what he would have done if I weren’t there. Of course, he wouldn’t have been there at all. He had made that more than clear in what he told me. I was a force that had completely disrupted Riley’s life. I couldn’t help but wonder, at some point would he resent me for it?
Riley shook my hand off his arm and walked over to the fireplace at the far end of the room. He placed a hand on the mantle and stared into the dark hearth. I understood. It was the best that he could do.
I turned back to Alice. “That’s why you didn’t question anything about me when we got here, and that’s how you knew that my name was Paige. I came to you before for help. That’s how you know all of this about me. There isn’t any magic involved. I told you myself.”
“I admit that the story was a bit farfetched, even for me,” Sister Alice said.
I took a shallow breath and sat down. I retrieved my cup from the coffee table and took a sip of the tea. I almost chuckled. Riley was right. It was the best damn cup of tea I had ever tasted.
I put the cup back on the saucer. “I’d like to hear it, Sister.”
Then I waited.
CHAPTER NINE – SISTER ALICE’S STORY
The pounding on the door pulled me out of a deep slumber. The book on my lap spilled to the floor as I shot up out of the comfortable chair next to the fireplace. I could see by the barely glowing embers that I had been asleep for several hours. Mother Superior was going to be upset with me. I was due to deliver the morning prayers, and it wouldn’t do for me to be disheveled and sore from a night spent in the armchair again.
It was the pounding on the front door again that alerted me to what had woken me in the first place. I glanced at the clock above the mantle. It was three o’clock in the morning. Nothing good came of things that arrived at three o’clock in the morning. Many of the other sisters were merely suspicious of the infamous witching hour, but I had personal experience with the mischievous evil things that roamed freely at that time of night.
I ran a hand over my hair and tugged my turtleneck down around my waist. I had no doubt that I looked as if I had just been dragged out of a deep sleep. Not much that I could do about that.
As I approached the door, I let my senses reach out in front of me. Although an angel had long ago cast a spell that was supposed to keep dark things from crossing the threshold of the convent’s property line, I didn’t take any of that for granted. If something evil wanted in this place, I had no doubt that it would find a way in.
I felt nothing out of the ordinary from my sensory inspection of whoever stood on the other side of the door. That meant that whoever was there was likely human, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Perhaps whatever business brought this person to my doorstep had nothing to do with the world of light and shadow. Perhaps I was becoming too jaded in my old age.
I threw open the deadbolts without looking out the peephole. That was one advantage to having the gifts that I had at my disposal. I was confident that I could defend myself if necessary from any harm; at least any harm that might come at the hands of a human. As I pulled the door open, a slight form in black clothing greeted me. A hood obscured the face from view. I frowned.
“At least have the manners to show yourself to the servant of God on whose threshold you are intruding on in the middle of the night.” Bad manners were one thing that I would not tolerate.
A pale hand emerged from beneath the folds of the black sweatshirt and swept the hood away. A girl on the cusp of womanhood stared at me with wide blue eyes that held no fear. This was a child who had seen the ugly underbelly of humankind, I had no doubt; more than likely a runaway.
“I’m looking for Sister Alice.”
“You have found her,” I said evenly. The fact that she knew my name told me volumes, and I caught the sigh before it could exit my mouth. My hope that this had nothing to do with the matters of that other place were quickly dissolving. “Come in. It’s late. You must be cold.”
She stepped across the threshold and shivered. “Double protection spells. I guess you’d probably need them though.”
I didn’t let on that her awareness of the protection measures that I carefully checked and double-checked on an almost daily basis surprised me. Only one with great mystical power would be able to detect them at all. The girl looked as if she were still in her teens.
I gestured toward the room straight in front of us and followed behind her as she moved there. I looked longingly at the lounger that I had so recently exited. I wasn’t going to be sleeping again for awhile.
“My name is Paige,” she said once she arrived in the room. “The rest of my story is irrelevant. I’m looking for something, and I was told you could help me find it.”
“I help those in need assuming their cause is pure,” I said slowly. I cursed the fact that my mind wasn’t yet firing on all cylinders. I needed my wits about me when dealing with those who operated in the dark corners of the world. No matter how innocent her face, something told me that this Paige was far from pure. “I am happy to see if I can assist if you tell me what you are looking for.”
Paige began to pace the room. “I don’t have much time left, and everyone else that I’ve spoken to says it doesn’t exist at all. That it’s just a myth that is nothing more than a bedtime story.”
I couldn’t help it. I was intrigued by this young woman. I let my senses float out into the room again. Paige stopped in her tracks and turned to me with a glower. “Would you please stop doing that? It’s distracting and gives my thoughts fuzzy edges. If I was going to hurt you, don’t you think that I would have done so by now?”
I blinked and my energy snapped back into my chest. “How do you know that I was doing anything at all?”
“I may be young, but I definitely wasn’t born yesterday,” Paige said as her lips tightened into a thin line. “That’s part of the problem.”
I frowned again. “I don’t understand. Why don’t you sit down? You are obviously agitated, and I sense that you have traveled far to see me. Let’s start again.”
“I don’t have time!” the girl snapped. “If you can’t help me, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
I approached her slowly, as if I were approaching a skittish colt. She watched me warily, but when I was within a foot of her, I gently let my hands skim her shoulders. “Come with me into the kitchen. Please. I’ll make us some tea. You are safe here.”
I wasn’t sure if she believed me, but she allowed me to guide her out of the sitting room and down the corridor to the kitchen. I was relieved that she appeared to be calming down. I had replaced the furniture in the common room more than once after a visit from one of my ‘special’ guests.
I flipped on the light to the kitchen. It was small, but clean and welcoming. I gently nudged Paige toward one of the chairs at the small kitchen table and then made my way to the cabinet where I kept the tea that I only brought out for my guests. To fill the silence, I began to hum a wordless song that my mother sang to me many years ago.
“I had nowhere else to go.”
I didn’t turn around. That was one thing that I learned long ago about confession. It was better to be still and let all their words spill out. Then you could make a determination of how you could help them mop them up later.
“Of course, child,” I spoke only enough to be soothing and encourage her to continue as my hands stayed busy filling the teapot and turning on the stove.
“They started about the time that I turned twelve. The dreams. At first I didn’t really even notice, but now sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s a dream.”
The air in my chest squeezed tight. Father Dan was on a trip to the headquarters of the archdiocese, and he was the only one willing to assist me with exorcisms. He wasn’t due back for another few days.
“The voice I hear in my head isn’t mine. Four years ago, I was walking home from school and this thing jumped out of the bushes and attacked me.”
I put the teapot on the stove even as I frowned. I held my questions though. She was just warming up.
“I got away, but it followed me back to my house. It hurt my parents. My father told me to run, so I did. I’ve been running ever since. But my father gave me the name of a man who lived a few towns over and said that I had to get to him to be safe.”
I leaned back against the countertop and gripped the edge. Paige grew more animated as she spoke. “The man told me things. Crazy things. And then he said that he had found out that one of our neighbors was like a spy for the demons. He hadn’t been able to warn my parents in time.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh of happiness. It was sharp and sardonic. It was the laugh of a woman barely holding onto sanity by a thread. “I just wanted to make it all stop. He told me that if I found this thing, I’d be able to be free of it.”
“Free of what, dear?” I couldn’t hold my questions any longer. I slid into the seat across from her and took her hands in mine. They were cold. I wanted to touch that part of her that would confirm my suspicion once and for all, but I didn’t dare. For the first time since her arrival, my senses tingled with something else. Energy. Magic. Whatever you wanted to call it. And it was suddenly wafting in waves off of Paige.
“This thing inside of me that wants out!” Paige sputtered. I could feel her panic now, and I had to brace my legs to keep them in my chair. As the emotions rolled off of her, they were washing over me. It had been a long time since I had encountered anyone so powerful, and I was rusty. I let go of her hands and placed my palms against the cool tablet
op to center myself.
“He said that I’m not me. He said I was someone else. That my body was nothing but a vessel and that the time was coming where I could move on and know that I had done the world a great service.” My eyes rose to hers then as I waited for her next words. They glowed an even brighter blue, and I couldn’t tear my own away. Not now.
“He said that it was prophesized that I would become a Goddess.”
CHAPTER TEN- RILEY
“A Goddess?” Riley snorted. “C’mon, Alice. You practically tucked me in with bedtime stories of the all-powerful mighty God. He’s been the only one who gets a starring role when it comes to deities in everything I’ve ever heard.”
“What was I looking for?” Paige interrupted me. She hadn’t taken her eyes off of Alice. For a woman who just found out that she was supposedly going to be possessed by an unknown deity, she was taking the news rather well. “You said that I was looking for something that would free me from the thing that wants to possess me.”
I saw signs of worry crease Alice’s face. “You aren’t possessed, Paige. You are the reincarnated version of a Goddess. There’s a difference.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Paige said as she stood up. I watched her begin to pace the room. “Possession. Reincarnation. It sounds like the end result is the same.”
“In one, you are taken over by something else that invades your body,” Alice said slowly. “In the other, you simply remember who you always were to begin with.”
“That’s not who I am,” Paige said.
“You don’t know who you are. You didn’t then, and you don’t now. Who’s to say that you wouldn’t want to take those memories back? Why do you fight it?”
“Because the dreams are dark and terrifying and… and… wrong!” Paige exclaimed as her hands flew wildly in the air. “There is nothing peaceful or calm about those dreams. I wake up with my heart racing, and my thoughts are filled with screams and pain. I don’t know what this other version of me was Goddess of, but I have no desire to ever find out.”