Midlife Reckoning
Today at 1:45 PM Eastern is my midlife. As in, the exact midpoint of my life in this incarnation as Veronica Winzler von Windlach, call sign “Zephyr.”
I’ve known since I was a child that this life will end at age ninety years, three months, fourteen days, ten hours, and eighteen seconds. I remember my death deep inside some post-apocalyptic bunker where I volunteered to take an elixir to end my pain rather than continue to be a drain on the limited resources of the people I’ll lead for over forty years. I don’t recall every detail, but the big things, I remember vividly, whether in my past or future.
But that memory of the bunker shimmers in the distant future, and I have plenty of time to contemplate my life before I must contemplate my death. Today, instead of celebrating my midlife, I’m the woman dressed in black and clutching a dark umbrella against the heavy rain. Motionless at the edge of the cemetery, I stand as witness to the funeral of the most powerful High Priest of a long-dead God.
“Well?” asks Virgil X. Caine, my friend and fellow Daeganean priest from behind me. “Do you remember his future incarnation yet?”
Shaking my head, I extend my wide umbrella to cover Virgil as he limps toward me, even though he’s already soaked through his black suit and his close-cropped silver beard is matted to his face. His shoulder-length hair fares a bit better, pulled into a tight knot at the back of his head and held in place by a pair of hair sticks that hide small but lethal daggers. He leans hard against a stag-headed cane.
Virgil is a deathwalker for the priesthood, though our Ranking High Priestess has placed him on a sabbatical because of personal circumstances. Aoife Jung may be a force to be reckoned with, but contrary to popular opinion, she’s not completely heartless.
“Not yet. Sometimes the revelations come slowly. I do remember Terre in his next incarnation, as a young man just taking his oath, even if I can’t remember his mundane name yet.”
Beside me, Virgil guffaws. Even wet, he smells vaguely of sandalwood incense. “Well, that’s all Aoife cares about—finding his parents before he’s reborn. Don’t worry: you’ll remember. You’re not just a recruiter, Zephyr. You’re the recruiter.”
My turn to laugh. There’s not much recruiting to my job. My purpose is to locate new incarnations of former members of our secret society across the last millennia so Aoife can get a head start on training them in her image. Unlike most new Initiates into the order, I wasn’t offered the Gift of Knowing, sometimes called omnipresence, or “all time is now.” Very few Initiates accept the gift of remembering their futures because at least half of those who do will go mad within weeks. Not me. I was born with that gift.
I remember everything. Everything.
Except for Terrence Vanderholt’s next incarnation.
“Sorry,” I whisper above the patter of rain on my umbrella. “I shouldn’t be laughing at a funeral. Especially Terre’s.”
And especially not after what Virgil’s been through with his recently deceased wife of twenty years—and what waits ahead for him with his mother. He might not have chosen the gift of memories of his future, but I can see them. When the time is right, I’ll send him to meet the woman who’ll help him heal, but he has more wounds to endure before he will meet her. For now, he still blames himself for not seeing through Kimber’s ability to hide her medical condition and not being there with her when her soul moved on.
I clear my throat. “Did you know Terre well?”
Virgil shakes his head, hard enough that a few droplets from his topknot land on my shoulder. “Not well enough. I’m ashamed to say it now. He was a great man, and I should have made the time to know him better. Honestly, though, I was always put off by the politics of the upper echelons of the order. It may not have been Terre’s fault, but you know how much I hate drama.”
I barely hear him. “Does this seem weird to you?”
His eyebrows arch sharply. “Which part?”
Which part, indeed? I’m always the woman in the distance at these funerals. Black dress and pearls with white-blonde hair in a neat bun. Quiet. A watcher. Not a leader of the priesthood. Not yet, anyway. It’ll be another three years before I wrest away control from Aoife and begin to right the mess she’s made of trying to save the human race. Nothing weird at all about that.
My mind strays suddenly to impending good news. Another two weeks and a few days before I meet Shelby, the love of my life, who’ll be with me until the end of it. A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
“Zephyr? I’d read your mind, but that would be unethical.”
I swallow a chuckle. Good thing Virgil has integrity, or my wandering thoughts would make him blush. Just thinking of the first time Shelby will kiss me—in less than three weeks—causes me to break out in a cold sweat.
Forcing myself to focus on the scene across the cemetery, I nod toward the seven figures encircling an open grave in the rain. “That doesn’t seem weird to you? Terre was a great man, as you said. The most powerful priest of our order, reincarnating as Lord Veranyx, time and again, and reclaiming his place. Yet, how many people do you see at his funeral? Not Aoife. Not the throng of people he trained.”
Squinting, Virgil cocks his head. “One appears to be a minister. Not sure who arranged that, given Terre’s beliefs. That woman and the man with her—”
“Drusilla St. Augustine. Terre’s friend and long-ago lover. He was here to meet with her when he was murdered. And that’s Eric Cabordes, her current significant other, holding her hand and comforting her. Not Daeganeans. The two men standing near them are detectives. Also not Daeganeans.”
“What I wonder is why Terre is being buried here in Florida, so far from home?”
I shrug. “Aoife ordered it.” Hauling in a deep breath, I lean close to Virgil and point discreetly. “But, if I’m not mistaken, there are two Daeganean priests in the circle. See the two men with topknots standing apart, not just from the funeral but from each other? Both have their shields up.”
“So do we.”
True. Another gift of the priesthood. Our powers make us shiny energetically. We can call too much attention to ourselves from unseen entities, other witches, and even ordinary humans, especially small children. Our energetic shields act as camouflage so that we can appear to be the ordinary people we are not.
I shake my head. “I can’t see through their shields, and if I try too hard, they’ll take notice of us.”
“You can’t just remember them from the future?”
“I-I can’t.” Dread twists in my stomach with the realization. I’m almost certain the younger man standing farthest from the grave is Raven Darbyshire, the much-honored Last Priest, and the one staring daggers at him is Jakin Crutchfield, his arch-nemesis. But while my guess is based on previous introductions at Winter Solstice gatherings of the priesthood, none of my knowledge is based on memories of the future. A few seconds ago, I’d recalled the detectives and Cabordes’ identities from a memory that hadn’t happened, not yet, but that recognition was inexplicably gone, as if I’d lost my sense of smell and nothing tasted the same.
“Virgil,” I say, my voice quivering. “I think…I think I’m in trouble.”
“What? With Aoife?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. She’s been super happy with my work and all the intel I’ve brought her. But…I don’t know. Something’s off-kilter. I need you to scan me.”
“You sure?” His eyes widen. “Like, now?”
The aura around him shimmers an electric blue and pulses brighter as he contemplates my request. He watches my expression. I may crack the occasional cynical word, but it’s not like me to joke about priesthood rules.
Scanning another priest or priestess isn’t forbidden, but it’s generally not appreciated and can be dangerous. None of us like psychic spies prying into our personal secrets, which is why we keep our shields up, even when we’re alone. Some of us have booby traps set up to wallop spies or turn the tables on them and peer into their own secrets.
Usually, the spies get turned away with a sudden migraine or nightmares. But it depends on who you are and what you have to hide. Last summer, a witch from another coven tried to peer into Aoife’s private world and dropped dead of a brain aneurysm.
Even worse, spying is a two-way street, and if the door is opened by some nosy witch, the one spied upon can look through the open portal and strike back when the spy is most vulnerable.
Virgil’s eyes narrow as he watches my expression. The sun peeks unexpectedly through the rain. The shadows on the ground elongate and stretch out like fingers reaching toward us.
We stand silently in the graveyard. Clumps of weeds and flowers stud the earth. The ground is uneven: some graves are overgrown with moss, others only a tuft of grass left to mark the site.
I snuggle closer to Virgil with my umbrella. “As my closest friend and confidante, you have my permission to scan me. And yes, right now. I need to know what’s wrong with me that I can’t remember things I know I should remember. I’ve been feeling…sort of off since the last full moon, but today, I feel like I’m losing my mind. It can’t possibly be dementia. If it were, I wouldn’t remember the distant future so clearly.”
“Hormones?” Virgil offers, then blushes. “I mean, um, Kimber’s hormone fluctuations sometimes caused brain fog when she was going through menopause. But so do viruses and stress, too. And lack of sleep.”
“Then you’ll be able to scan me and tell me if I’m menopausal, stressed, or fatigued, or if it’s something else. Please? I need an objective opinion. I promise I won’t bite.”
Nervously, he closes his eyes, lashes fluttering. He switches his cane to his left hand and slides his right hand up the umbrella handle to my own. The bind rune tattoo on the inside of his right wrist touches my matching mark, the Walking Lightning sigil, which appears to outsiders to be a lightning bolt with a diamond-shaped head. I could use this connection to pry into Virgil’s secrets if I wanted, but I won’t. I don’t have to—I already know his future.
“Shit!” Virgil’s eyes fly open as the tattoos touch, almost as if he’s suffered an electric shock.
I start to swear to him that I didn’t do anything, that I’d freely allowed him in to see my secrets. Instead, he shakes his head wildly and steps out from under the umbrella as he breaks contact.
“Virgil, I—”
“Everything’s changed.” Rain drizzles down his forehead and into his eyes. His voice is three octaves higher than it should be. “It’s your future, Zephyr. It’s changed.”
“Changed how?” My heart beats faster, pounding harder than the rain between us.
“Well, for starters, you’re not going to make it till the end of the month,” Virgil says slowly, each word puncturing my chest like an icy shard. “Sometime in the next few weeks, you’re going to die.”
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