“I think I’d be able to tell,” I say. Veronique is getting better, but I don’t think anyone can fake it that well.
“Not everything comes through every time,” he says. “Especially if you’re still a young Akhet. If she’s not Iawi, it’s possible that she didn’t bring that ability with her in this lifetime. Not likely, but possible.”
Janine chews thoughtfully and then glances at Griffon. “So you think she’s Shewi?”
Griffon shrugs his shoulders. “Not Shewi. She didn’t feel like a new Akhet. Rogue, maybe. She’s definitely hiding something. Something to do with Cole.”
“What do you mean, ‘rogue’?” I ask, trying to keep up with the conversation.
“Rogue Akhet aren’t part of the Sekhem, the organization most older, Iawi Akhet belong to.”
“What’s that? Some sort of Akhet secret society?” This was sounding more and more like an Indiana Jones movie.
“Sort of. It’s … it’s more like a way to organize what we’re all here to do,” Griffon says. “The ways we give back. Fix things.”
“Like what things?” I ask. Janine and Griffon exchange glances across the table.
“Everything,” Janine finally says. “Everything that humans have helped screw up over the millennia—hunger, poverty, disease, climate change. Anything that threatens our continued existence. Each Akhet becomes specialized over time, using the skills they have to keep improving and working on a specific issue through each lifetime. As your abilities increase, your responsibility to the Sekhem increases.” She spears another potato with her fork. “In any case, Griffon isn’t usually wrong about these things.”
“But how do I find out what Veronique wants?” I say, growing uneasy with the conversation. “And more importantly, what can I do about it?”
“It’s hard to say,” she says. “Sometimes rogue Akhet just want to disrupt your life. Throw some trouble into it to make up for whatever they feel was done to them.” She pauses. “Although Griffon thinks that she wants more than that.”
“Her essence feels dark,” he says. “I don’t think she’s been Akhet for all that long—a hundred years maybe, but sometimes newer Akhet are the most dangerous. Like baby rattlesnakes that don’t know how to control their poison. Whatever happened between you in the past, I don’t think she’ll be satisfied with a bump on the head.”
Janine frowns. “It’s just so unusual for a rogue to be after an Akhet who’s so young.”
“But it happens,” Griffon insists. “Remember that girl who was kidnapped—?”
“No need to scare her,” Janine interrupts, smiling at me. “Cole has enough going on without you piling horror stories on top of it.”
I look back and forth between the two of them. “So what do I do now?”
“I think you should confront her on your terms,” Janine says. “See if you can get some information yourself. That might give you an idea of how dangerous she really is, and what your connection might be.”
I think about the vision of the concert. “You mean, like, physical contact?”
“It doesn’t take much,” Janine says. “Shake her hand. Let your knee brush hers when you’re practicing. Let the physical connection open up the possibilities of your psychic connection. Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’?” she says, taking another bite. “Makes a lot of sense.”
“But won’t she block her essence?” I ask, the words feeling awkward in my mouth. I realize as I say them that I’ve been acting like I believe everything they’re telling me. Like talking about Akhet and reincarnation is the most natural thing in the world.
“Not if she thinks you don’t know what you are,” she answers. “And for much of your relationship, you didn’t. Blocking your history and your essence takes a lot of work. Few can keep it up for very long, and most won’t if they don’t think there’s a compelling reason for it.” She tilts her head toward me. “I can tell that you have strong abilities, even if your awareness is new.”
“Really? Like what?”
“I don’t know exactly, but it’s all based on advanced physiology. When I touched you, I felt that your ability to connect with others is exceptionally strong. It will grow and refine with time, until you can control these connections at will.”
Griffon smirks. Even that looks good on him. “Janine’s working on her emotional intelligence. Some Akhet think that empathic skills can be learned. Stuff like reading people’s emotions and information, knowing whether they’re telling the truth. Sounds good, but I doubt it.”
I remember the sensations when Janine grabbed my hand. “That’s weird, because I felt something when you touched my arm at the door.”
“Like Akhet vibrations?” Griffon asks.
“No,” I say. “It was different. More like some kind of energy. Like emotions that were coming from Janine.”
“You did?” Janine looks pleased. “Hmm. I must be getting better at it, then.”
“In any case, it’s not safe for you to see Veronique by yourself,” Griffon grumbles. He catches my eye.
“Won’t she think it’s weird if you start sitting in on her lessons?”
“I don’t care what she thinks,” he says.
“Cole may be right,” Janine says. “Veronique doesn’t suspect anything right now. Seems like she’s just biding her time. No need to raise her suspicions unnecessarily.”
“Almost causing Cole to fall down an entire flight of stairs isn’t exactly biding her time,” Griffon says.
“You don’t know that she had anything to do with that,” I say. “It could have just been me.”
“So you don’t think that Veronique was involved in the fall?” Janine asks, her dark eyes intent on mine.
“I don’t know,” I say. “She had the opportunity I guess, but the case could just be defective. It might have been an accident. No one’s fault.”
“Right,” Griffon says. “You keep thinking that.” He stands up and begins gathering plates. “I’ll do the dishes. You two go relax in the other room.”
“Coffee?” Janine asks. I nod. “I’ll be right in,” she says. “Go through and I’ll bring your cup.”
“Thanks,” I say, and walk into the living room. One whole wall is a floor-to-ceiling bookcase with family photos resting on stacks of books and crowding many of the shelves. Wandering over to take a closer look, I realize that I recognize some of the faces in the pictures. Next to the normal family photos—Griffon at the Grand Canyon, Griffon playing soccer, Griffon on the baseball team—are pictures of people I recognize from the news and the Internet. There’s one of Janine shaking hands with Nelson Mandela, and another with Al Gore. An adorable young Griffon in a suit and tie hugging a woman who looks a lot like Oprah Winfrey. Guess that really was one of his two truths.
There’s one of Griffon surrounded by a smiling Janine and his dad, still recognizable even without his Warder’s uniform. They made a funny couple—he’s all buttoned-up and English and she’s borderline hippie, and I wonder what drew them together. I pick it up to get a better look.
“Perusing the wall of fame?” Janine asks, setting a steaming mug on the coffee table.
I quickly put the photo back, feeling guilty for snooping. She comes over to join me at the bookcase and glances at the family picture. “You wouldn’t exactly put the two of us together, would you?” she says, making me feel a little bad for thinking the same thing.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking at it again. “Don’t they say that opposites attract?”
Janine laughs out loud. “Lord, I hope so. I think the two of us will be under the official Wikipedia definition of opposites.” She nods and looks a little more serious. “I still feel bad about how things worked out. Goes to show that you can’t always use your memories of past lives to make things work out in this one.”
“But Griffon said that his dad isn’t Akhet,” I say.
“He’s not,” she says. “But I could s
till see our connection. We met at a party when I was an exchange student in Scotland, and I recognized him immediately.”
“So you’d been together in the past?” That is so romantic. The kind of thing that inspires thick novels and country songs and those long, wordy Hallmark cards that Mom loves because they always make her cry.
She nods. “We’d been lovers a long time ago. I tried to reconnect that thread, but there were too many things separating us in the end.” She pauses. “He’s been a wonderful father for Griffon, though. And he understands and accepts things in a way that a lot of people wouldn’t.” Janine shakes her head, as if to get rid of the memory.
A framed drawing to the right of the bookcase catches my eye. It looks like a map of New York City, but it’s drawn as a sphere, as if the whole thing is actually a 3-D globe. Hundreds, maybe thousands of buildings, bridges, water, and parks all drawn with detail so sharp I can practically see the trash on the streets. “This is amazing,” I say, stepping closer. At first it looks black and white, but as I study it, I see the tiny green squares that are the neighborhood parks and the blue of the river that surrounds the whole thing.
“Isn’t that cool? Completely accurate, too,” she says. “You could give this to a new cabbie and they could use it to get around the city.” She looks closely at it again. “Griffon was only ten when he did this.”
“Griffon drew this?” I’m speechless. It’s like something that should be hanging in a museum, not as a piece of kid art in a family room.
“He drew it from memory,” she says. “We took a helicopter tour of Manhattan one time, and he came up with this a few weeks later.”
“That’s amazing,” I say, but even as the word comes out, I know it’s not totally correct. “Amazing” is what you say when someone does a backflip or sings “The Star-Spangled Banner” all the way to the high note in the second-to-last verse without their voice cracking. This is something else entirely.
“That,” she says, “is part of being Akhet.”
We stand in silence, looking at the photos, until she reaches up to pull a silver frame off a high shelf. “And this is one of my favorite people.” She hands it to me—a picture of Janine with her arm around a tall white guy with glasses.
“Who is he?”
Janine brushes some dust off the glass. “Only the man who’s going to save us from ourselves,” she says, placing it carefully back on the shelf.
“Save us?” For a split second, I’m hoping she doesn’t mean that in a Hail-Mary, Praise-Jesus kind of way.
She glances up at his photo with an adoration that scares me a little. “Yes. Save us. If we don’t do something soon, it won’t matter who is Akhet and who isn’t, because there won’t be a planet to come back to.”
I look at the face of the man in the photo and feel a flicker of recognition. “Didn’t he make a ton of money in computers?”
She nods. “Software. But that’s not the reason that he’s so important.”
I wait, but she doesn’t continue. “It’s not? I heard he owns his own island somewhere.”
“The important part isn’t how he earned his money, it’s what he does with it. World health care, AIDS, poverty, climate change. All of these things are being helped by the money from his foundations.” Janine turns to me, her face more serious than I’ve seen it all evening. “Most of us take the knowledge and abilities we possess to research issues that affect the world. Others use them to make money to support those issues. You can’t choose how you are born, just who you become. It’s part of our journey as Akhet.”
All of a sudden I understand what she’s saying. “So, wait. Is he one too?” I look back over the photos in the case. “Are all of these people Akhet?”
She looks back over the gallery and smiles. “Most of them are Sekhem. And the ones who aren’t Akhet probably will be in another lifetime or two.” Janine reaches up to straighten out one of the photos, and as she turns, I can see an intricate tattoo on the back of her neck—a cross with a loop on the end filled with curling ivy and flowers. As unusual as it is, it also looks familiar. Before I can get another look at it, she moves and her hair covers it back up.
I turn back to all of the photos lining the bookcase. “So you’ve actually met all of these people?”
Janine nods. “Some are colleagues. Many have become friends over the years.”
“But I thought you were only a professor,” I say, realizing how bad it sounds the minute it leaves my mouth.
Janine laughs. “I get around,” she says. Her smile fades, and she looks serious for a moment. “There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with being Akhet. I don’t know how much you’ve talked about it with Griffon…”
“Not much,” I say. Talking to Janine has made all of the ideas about Akhet and Sekhem seem more real—as long as I don’t think about it too hard. Sometimes rational thought can be a liability.
She frowns. “I forget what it’s like the first time,” she says. “Forgive me if I assume too much.”
We sit on the couch, and I pick up the coffee. Cream and sugar, just the way I like it. Janine smiles at me but doesn’t say anything as I take a sip and try to absorb everything she’s been saying. I can hear Griffon banging pots around as he does the dishes. I try to pick up the thread of our conversation. “So Akhet like Veronique don’t join the Sekhem?”
“Not usually. But then again, not everyone does—some Akhet choose a different route. It usually takes new Akhet a lifetime or two to get hooked up with the Sekhem to see if they can serve. But rogues are different. Rogue Akhet usually do what they can to sabotage the good things others are trying to accomplish. Some of them end up the worst of the worst.”
“Like who? Serial killers?”
She pauses a minute before continuing, and I can feel her measuring how much information she’s going to give me. “Sometimes. Sometimes worse. If they’re not stopped, some are capable of widespread destruction.” Janine leans forward and sips her coffee. “Pol Pot. Stalin. Bin Laden.”
“Like Hitler?” I ask, unbelieving.
“Well, he is your most obvious candidate,” she answers.
“All rogue Akhet?” I ask, unbelieving.
“All very old rogue Iawi Akhet,” she says. “Every time rogues like these come back, they get stronger and smarter. It may take decades for an essence like Hitler’s to come back again, but they always do.”
“So the essence that made Hitler who he was back in the thirties might be alive today?”
“Exactly. It might be in the body of an adorable two-year-old girl at this very moment, just waiting to get older. And stronger.”
I shiver at the thought. There is one question that has been looming all week, but asking it feels like it would be tearing at the fabric of humanity’s most basic beliefs. I take a deep breath.
“Who decides?” I finally manage, not sure if my meaning is clear at all.
Janine tilts her head to the side. “Decides?” she repeats. “About what?”
“About when you’ll come back. Who you’ll be. How many times.” I look around the room. “All of it.”
“You’re asking if there’s a God? Someone who directs our actions? Judges us on what we do in each life, like some sort of final exam?”
I nod, knowing that the next few moments could reveal the mysteries of life that hang over everyone’s basic existence.
Janine sips her coffee slowly. “I don’t know.”
I stare at her. After everything she’s told me, it’s not the answer I’m expecting. The answer I feel like I deserve. “You don’t know? You guys have lived all of these lives before, come back as other people, but you don’t know how it works?”
“That’s the hardest thing to ultimately understand,” she says. “That our knowledge is limited by our experiences. We don’t have any sort of direct line to God or Allah or Buddha or whatever deity you care to worship. What happens in the time between lives is the greatest unknown, even to the oldest Iawi
Akhet. All I do know is what I’ve experienced over my lifetimes, and that it’s up to me to put that experience to work in this one. It might take a year or it might take a hundred to come back, but so far, I always have.”
A feeling of despair settles into my chest. Janine doesn’t have any more answers than I do right now. For all of her lifetimes of experience, she hasn’t found out any more than I have in sixteen years. It feels a little like a rip-off. Or maybe a cop-out. I sit forward on the edge of the couch. “So where does the … essence … go if it’s not going right into another body? I always figured that for reincarnation to work, you had to go from one body right to the next, like lighting one candle with another.”
Janine shrugs. “Hindus believe that the spirit takes time to rest between lifetimes, in some sort of limbo between this world and the next. The Buddhists don’t really believe in transmigration at all.”
“But what do you believe?”
“I’m still working that out,” she says.
Griffon comes in right then, and I suspect that he’s been listening at the door. “So, are you clear on everything?” he asks. “All the rules and regulations?”
“Not exactly,” I say, trying not to give in to the tired feeling that’s setting in. I’ve come here hoping for some clear answers, but all I’m getting are more questions.
He sits down on the couch, right next to me at first so that I can feel the faint vibrations in the tiny space that separates us. After a second, he glances down and slides over so that there’s about a foot between us on the couch. For everything that says about how he feels about me, about us, it might as well be a mile.
“Don’t try to get all the answers right away,” Janine says. “Just leave yourself open to new information.” That’s the most Berkeley thing she’s said all night. “But be careful.”
She leans over and puts her arm around my shoulders. Her vibrations are even stronger than Griffon’s, but seem to have a different rhythm—one that’s softer, more controlled. “You’re welcome here any time,” she says. She nods at Griffon. “Despite appearances, you should listen to what Griffon has to say. You’d be wise to trust him.”
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