Gabriel smiled and love emanated from him. “From Williamsburg, Virginia originally. He and my dad and my uncles came here before I was born. But he’s all I have left now, and I guess I’m all he has. I’m his namesake, and I’m proud to bear it.”
“I have family from Williamsburg. Who were his parents?” A few more questions and I knew without a doubt that fate had once again crossed my life with the boy of my youth. “Is he well?” I asked finally. There was a catch in my voice that made Locke gaze at me more intensely.
Gabriel didn’t seem to notice my emotion, his eyes now studying the ice in my lemonade. He must think it a huge waste of money, a curious luxury, but he couldn’t know that Unbounded had advanced technology that made ice a simple matter. “Not so much these days,” he said, meeting my gaze once more. “He’s mostly bedridden and he doesn’t see well at all, though his mind is still strong. But I plan to marry soon, and I pray that will ease his burdens.” His smiled faded. “That is, if I can . . . I . . .”
I knew what that meant. He wanted to be able to support a wife before plunging into matrimony. From where I sat now, he seemed too young to marry, but mortal lives were short, so they only did what they should.
“You will be married.” I looked at Samuel, who was still standing, enjoying the shade. “Please bring me a purse. And will you have Martha find my tin box? She’ll know what I mean.”
“Of course,” Samuel bowed. I trusted him with all the running of the house, and like our other workers, he was content. It was a fine line we walked, Locke and I, treating our slaves with respect and trying to work within the system to free them, while at the same time making the cotton plantation support itself. Too often we’d had to use the funds Locke’s parents had left us to keep the business afloat or to protect our friends.
When Samuel returned with the tin, he had Gabriel sign the customary promise note, while I removed the necklace that had belonged to Gabriel’s mother. Without unwrapping it from its handkerchief, I slipped it into the purse of coins Samuel had also brought. “Don’t open this until you get back to your grandfather,” I said to Gabriel.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Gabriel bowed to me and then to Locke before turning to stride across the lawn. Even in his humble clothes he looked far more confident than when he’d arrived.
“What was that about?” Locke asked, arching a brow.
“I knew his grandfather as a girl.”
“I see.” She knew there was more, but I wasn’t ready to share. I didn’t know if I would ever love anyone the way I had Gabriel, but I had a lot of years to figure it out.
TWO DAYS LATER, I WAS in the library when Samuel appeared. “Someone to see you, Miss O’Hare.”
“Who is it?” I looked up from the letter I was writing.
“Gabriel Smithson.”
“Show him in here, please.” What could he want with me so soon? I hoped it wasn’t bad news. Perhaps he’d come to tell me his grandfather was dead.
The thought brought me to my feet, so I was standing when young Gabriel entered. His face was drawn, his eyes filled with pain. “What is it?” I asked. My heart thumped loudly in my chest.
“My grandfather is dying. I’m sorry, but . . . he’s asking for you. He won’t say why. I expect . . . maybe he wants to thank you.”
I called for a carriage and went at once. The farmhouse was larger than I expected, and far more masculine. Gabriel’s wife had evidently been dead a long time. I was shown to his room, where I found a frail, wizened figure in a large bed, the light—or life force, as I’d learned it was called—around him faded and weak. As I sat in the chair by the bed, he opened his eyes. Warmth shot through me. He was my Gabriel. There was no mistaking the eyes, despite the white haze clouding them.
His gaze shifted to his grandson. “Please, give us a moment.”
When the boy was gone, Gabriel took my hand. “Ava.” The word sounded like a sigh. “I knew it was you the moment I saw the necklace. But how? You haven’t changed a bit.”
I had Changed—and far more than he’d ever suspect. “Your eyes are old,” I said. “You must be seeing a memory.”
“I see well enough.” A pause and then, “Ava, I never stopped loving you.”
There was no sense in pretending. “Nor I, you.”
He smiled at that. “Keep watch over my boy, will you?”
“I will.”
Part Three
Fifty Years Later
April 1845 - Natchez, Mississippi
Free at Last
WHEN BETSY SIGNALED FROM THE back hallway near the hotel dining room, her dark face was flushed, her eyes wild. My jaw hardened as I let the newest letter from Gabriel’s second great-grandson fall to my lap. Betsy obviously had found something in her investigation of the slave pens.
I nodded once, letting her know that I would meet her in my rooms. Slaves weren’t allowed in the dining area of this upscale hotel, though they could help their owners in the privacy of their own rooms. Betsy had been free for a decade and living in the North for the past five years, but in this town, home to the second largest slave market, it was wise to keep up appearances. Drinking a final casual sip of my afternoon tea, I placed the porcelain cup on the delicate saucer, picked up my reticule, and arose.
“Miss!” A motion to my left had me shifting imperceptibly into a better defensive position. Despite my layers of petticoats and skirts, no one in the dining room could be much danger, but I was always prepared. I touched the handle of a knife, hidden in the folds of my dress.
A man bent and picked up my letter that had fallen to the richly tiled floor, his muscles rippling under his tailcoat. I caught a glimpse of a red silk vest under the coat. “You dropped this.” His eyes bore into me as he stood, and for a moment, I didn’t breathe.
Ah, it’s you, I thought. I’d noticed him when I’d come into the dining room. I’d even felt regret that I wasn’t in Natchez on some pleasure trip that might allow me to meet him. He had light blond hair with a high widow’s peak, intelligent blue eyes, a square jaw, and a bold, confident manner. So confident that if my ability hadn’t included being able to instantly identify Unbounded, I might have mistaken him for one of my kind.
He’d also noticed me, and the interest I’d sensed from him earlier was stronger now at close proximity. He handed me the letter, and our eyes held. It was difficult to tell his interest from my own, though I refrained from delving into his more private thoughts.
It’s been too long. Too long since I’d let myself care for a man. Here I was acting like a young girl simply because a gentleman had been mannerly.
A really fine gentleman.
I blinked the thoughts away and accepted the letter. “Thank you. I very much appreciate it. It would have been a great loss to me.”
His smile was disarming. “I’m glad then. Though I daresay, I’m jealous of the man.”
“Oh, really?” I couldn’t stop amusement from seeping into my voice. “How do you know it’s from a man?”
“The intentness in your gaze.” He inclined his head, his grin still wide. “But he is far away, and I am here. I think it might be important to point this out.”
That made me laugh. “Maybe so. I’ll think on it.”
“It would be my great fortune. I will be here a day or two.” He gave a full bow that somehow seemed both to mock and to flatter me. “I won’t keep you. I saw your girl wave to you. She looked . . . upset.”
His concern for a mere slave intrigued me. “Yes, you are correct. Please, excuse me.”
He bowed again, and I forced my curiosity about him to the back of my mind as I hurried out of the room and up the front staircase.
Betsy was waiting in my sitting room, terror for her sister and her family etched across her face. “I saw ’em! Looks like they only jest come t’ town. Got ’em in the pen, out in the open, not inside. Like there’s too many to fit. They be on the block t’morrow, if’n I guess right.”
“Then
we’ll act tonight. Locke and I will get them out. And Ritter, of course. You must stay here. You’ve risked enough by traveling here on your own.”
Betsy nodded. “I cain’t see how sumpin’ like this can happen. They was free and happy up North. We all was.”
“You will be again.” I set my reticule on the narrow wall table next to the door. “If you will, please go inform Locke and Ritter that we need to be ready to go before nightfall.”
Betsy took two steps toward the door before she halted and turned around, flinging herself into my arms. “There was nowhere else t’ go. I knew you’d help Frances. But don’t go gettin’ yo’self hurt. You’s the only white angel I know.”
I returned her exuberant hug. Betsy was my own physical age, and she’d grown up on my plantation in Savannah. She didn’t seemed to notice that I hadn’t aged while we’d lived together or in the five years since I sent her and her sister, a former slave from a neighboring plantation, north with their families.
“Don’t you worry. It’ll be all right.” My drawl hid my real emotion. Inside I was furious. This wasn’t the first time my former slaves had contacted me for help, but it was the first time an entire free family had been stolen from the North and brought back to be sold into slavery.
Since my recent return from England with Locke and Ritter, I’d been hearing more and more about such illegal events happening, and there was no way I was going to sit by and watch as my friends’ lives were stolen. If I had my way, this particular slaver, Lucias Johansson, was going out of business—permanently.
Just that fast, Betsy curtsied and was gone. I began removing my skirt to prepare for the evening’s adventures. I normally loved the gowns of the south, but my combat training had also taught me how impractical they were. I couldn’t be encumbered by skirts tonight. The clock on the fireplace mantel told me I had plenty of time for my disguise.
Excitement rippled through me—my Unbounded genes kicking in. I was ready for action. I craved it. Though we’d recently had two skirmishes with the Emporium in New York City when their agents had tried to assassinate several key political leaders, for the most part I had been in the background. All Unbounded were gifted at something, but my sensing ability was a rare talent and none of our Renegade allies were willing to risk me. After determining the guilty parties, I’d been relegated to watching and waiting.
Neither of which I did well, even when necessary. Maybe it was something I’d learn in the next hundred years or so.
My eyes landed on the letter I’d been reading earlier, sticking partially out of my reticule. Miles Smithson, Gabriel’s second great-grandson, had grown up to be a good man, and the money I’d spent educating first his father and then him had been well-employed. Miles had become an attorney-at-law in Alabama and hadn’t needed my patronage for years, but I still enjoyed exchanging letters with him. Though I couldn’t tell him the full extent of my life, he shared my views on nearly every political issue—especially those regarding slavery.
Of course he might not have had much chance to pursue other opinions. I’d been his family’s benefactor since Gabriel senior’s death, sending all his posterity to college. Because I was their benefactor, they’d had no choice but to listen to my views, and the more educated they became, the more they understood the world at large and the evils slavery represented.
I’d met Miles only once, when he was a young child. Though I’d promised Gabriel to look after his family, I’d satisfied my duty with letters from afar so that my unchanging appearance wouldn’t be noted. Every now and then I made an appearance as some relative—a granddaughter or the granddaughter’s niece. It was enough to fulfill my promise and to keep them safe from the Emporium, who would use them as collateral against me if they discovered an opportunity. The Emporium would be happy to capture a sensing Unbounded with an extended lifetime of childbearing in front of her.
At that thought, my stomach tensed. I had almost married again a decade ago, but for the fertile Unbounded, marrying always meant bearing children, and I couldn’t. Not then. So I had let him go. I hadn’t regretted my decision. Mostly. One advantage of living two thousand years was having plenty of time to change your mind.
Maybe I’d look Miles up on our way back to Georgia. He would be twenty-nine now, only a few years younger than I was, and he wouldn’t remember my visit so long ago. I’d be interested in meeting a man who wrote an old lady—or someone he thought was an old lady—such witty and intelligent letters. I’d have to pretend to be an even younger relative than the granddaughter’s niece he thought me to be, the woman he’d met as a child. Maybe a cousin this time. I’d have to research what I’d told him.
Humming under my breath, I turned into my bedroom to finish dressing.
LOCKE’S SMILE GREW WIDE as she took in my appearance. “You make a mighty pretty boy.” She was also dressed as a man, and her blond hair was hidden under a hat like mine, but her disguise made her look in need of a good shave instead of a woman wearing a man’s clothes. Nothing short of a miracle where the very female Locke was concerned.
Dragging my gaze from the mirror over the bureau, I scowled. “That noticeable, huh?”
Beside her, Ritter barked a laugh. “Your skin. It’s not right. Not even close.” He peered closer, a sardonic grin on his face. “Is that face powder mixed with coffee grounds?”
I groaned, though a part of me noted the laugh. Even after seventy years of working together, the laughs didn’t come frequently enough. His anger still consumed him, but he was more careful now. Maybe in another fifty years he might understand that anger never brought our loved ones back. It only made us different from the people they had loved in life. Maybe we even risked becoming someone they wouldn’t care to know.
“I was trying a new process,” I said, “but I hadn’t tested it yet.” I usually did our operations in my dresses—accidentally touching people or pushing my way into their minds to study the sand stream of their thoughts. More often than not, my job was primarily to inform those gifted with other abilities which Emporium agents were Unbounded and which were mortal employees. Only when I was really lucky did I get to use my combat training. This only made me train all the harder because I didn’t want to let anyone down if I did have to fight.
Locke opened her bag and began setting out containers on the bureau. “Well, the smell certainly screams eau de l’homme.” She meant aroma of man, but the French words lost something in the translation.
Ritter folded his arms across the very wide expanse of his muscled chest. He looked dark, dangerous, and deadly. I sensed he wasn’t offended by Locke’s comment, his thoughts already far away. A flash of memory filled me: a dark-haired woman in a blue dress, her body severed in three. Ritter’s former fiancée, who had been murdered with his family. Severing the body’s three focal points—the brain, the heart, the reproductive organs—was one of only two ways Unbounded could be killed. That his fiancée wasn’t likely to undergo the Change hadn’t mattered to the Emporium. They had been gunning for Ritter, who, after reaching his thirtieth birthday, had Changed, and for his little sister, who had the possibility of Changing one day.
I wished I could convince Ritter that it wasn’t his fault, but in the end I didn’t think it would matter. His family and the woman he loved were still dead, along with Ritter’s Unbounded ancestor who’d arrived barely in time to save him. It was a guilt he’d have to come to terms with or the two thousand years of his life would be long and lonely.
That loneliness I sometimes still felt in my own heart, and on those days, Locke and Ritter and my work weren’t enough. I still longed for my Hannah, but I no longer blamed myself for her death, even though ultimately, through my youth and inexperience, I was responsible for it.
“So what’s the plan tonight?” Locke asked, as she began fixing my face. She was older than me by more than four centuries but was content to let me lead. She just wanted to fight. Between her and Ritter, who shared her combat ability, I’d have to ma
ke sure they didn’t have too much fun. Mortals broke easily, and while we wanted to stop the abuse of our friends, our ultimate goal was to protect mortals from the Emporium—and from themselves.
“We’ll free Frances and her family from the holding pen,” I said. “Then we’ll track down Johansson and have a chat with him.”
“So we aren’t just going to wait until tomorrow to buy Frances’s family? It might be better.” We’d done it before, but the anticipation in Locke’s voice belied her comment. She wanted to put an end to the slaver as much as I did.
“No,” I said. “We’re going to shut Johansson down.”
THE CLUSTER OF BUILDINGS AT the Forks of the Road was little more than a dirty prison camp. The sprawling market would sell up to five hundred slaves a day, most bought in Virginia and sold here in the Deep South to cotton plantation owners. Importing slaves from outside the US hadn’t been legal for over forty years, but the domestic breeding and slave trade abounded. The profit was huge and even larger when the slaves weren’t really slaves at all like Betsy’s family.
Anger burned in me. We’d helped thousands of former slaves over the years, and our Renegade allies were active in politics, fighting to end slavery altogether, but the greed of humanity—and the Emporium, who had fingers in every large slaving company—meant that it would likely be years before the end came altogether.
One life at a time, I told myself.
Most of the slavers had marched their so-called property to Natchez like cattle, boating them only part of the way. Here they would be bathed, clothed, and then haggled over like a mule or a wagon. The indignity aside, being torn from their homes and loved ones was something they never got over. I knew because I felt their emotions, and they were every bit as human—perhaps more so—as those who treated them like animals.
Rough wooden buildings partially circled the slave holding pen, the spaces between the buildings enclosed with wood fencing, tin scraps, or whatever was at hand. A large gate led into a courtyard. Inside the buildings, slave men and women and children were kept at night and bargained over during the day. But Betsy had seen Frances and her family in the courtyard with others, constructing makeshift tents or simply collapsing on the ground. That told me the market was unusually full, but the coming summer did mean higher profits, so it wasn’t surprising.
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