A Whisper of Futures Past
I stare after the two sedans’ taillights. The scent of patchouli and sandalwood wafts through the air where Lady Moira faltered moments ago.
“Are you okay, Peanut?”
As soon as the sedans are out of sight, Veronica’s demeanor changes. The toddler sniffles vanish, replaced by calm maturity beyond her years. It’s unnerving to observe the shift in her energy.
“Don’t call me Peanut anymore. It’s Veronica now,” she says plainly.
I’m taken aback. “What do you mean, sweetie?”
“No need to pretend now.” She sighs and backhands a snot bubble hanging from her nose. “I tried to shield us, but I’m still awkward in this body. I was over-confident. My abilities as Jaryx can’t fully realize yet. It’s something I’m going to have to grow into. Nothing short of a standoff with the High Council could have convinced me of that.”
I stare at her, astounded. This can’t be the same blubbering three-year-old from minutes before.
“You’re. . .definitely. . .Jaryx?” I stammer. “But the recruiters couldn’t sense you. Except for…” Tessa’s hidden glimpse of recognition. “Was that you clouding their sight or the extension of Lady Moira’s shields?”
Veronica’s blonde curls bob up and down as she nods. “Both. My grandmother’s blood shields me from their psychic senses, but the young one saw a glimmer of my light. Not enough to be sure, though. Just enough to make her question their plans for me. There’ll come a time when Tessa will pave the way for me to lead the priesthood, all because of what she witnessed today and three years ago. She knows I’m the rightful High Priestess of the Order.”
My mind reels. I’ve cared for this child since birth, never suspecting she actually harbored the ancient soul of the Wolf Queen. Until two days ago.
“So, you do remember your past life? I mean, this lifetime’s future memories. I mean—”
“It was so long ago, Maeve. The details are fuzzy. But I remember enough. More the aftermath than anything else.” She tilts her chin up proudly. “I am Jaryx, returned to guide our people through the coming storms. Literally. Off-the-scale hurricanes and tornados. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. A tsunami that destroys the Eastern coastline all the way to Huntsville, Alabama, and north of Atlanta, Georgia. No one leading the priesthood now has seen the pole shift like I have. My destiny is far greater than Moira realizes, and neither she nor Siobhan will see the End of the Age, though Siobhan will miss it by minutes.”
I shudder, reminded of the High Priestess’ ominous words about my own future—or lack thereof.
“Will I see it?”
She shakes her head. “You don’t want to.”
I do the math in my head. If it’s over forty years into the future, I’d be in my mid-sixties. If I survive that long.
“Your grandmother said. . .she warned that if something happens to me, they’ll take you back,” I say quietly. “But I won’t let that happen. I’ll protect you. With my dying breath.” I pluck another tissue from inside the car and start to wipe her nose, but she takes the tissue from me.
“Have faith, Maeve.” She cleans up her face and the trail of mucus on her tiny forearm. Veronica shakes her head, again seems wise beyond her physical years. An old soul, indeed. “My path is set, and nothing can stop it. Yours, too, Maeve.”
Cryptic words from one so young. I ache to shelter this child who is far more than that.
“My grandmother is dying,” she continues, staring at the spot on the horizon where we last saw the sedans. “Slowly, but dying. Siobhan will take her place soon, and everything will change. It’s Siobhan’s destiny, but also her revenge. Everything will change, right down to how we recruit, what we wear, how we protect ourselves. She’ll disband the High Council, saying she doesn’t need anyone’s advice. Trust me, Siobhan will rewrite the priesthood, but in ways that threaten it. Her daughter, Aoife, will make things even worse. But for now, we need to leave before they come back. Because they will come back.”
I shudder at the thought, but I know she’s right. Their astrologer, together with the wolf activity here, have put us on the High Council’s radar.
“So we still have to flee from here? Is that your fate? And mine?”
“Yes. The shunned High Priest who came to our house yesterday will help us. I won’t meet him again in this life, but he helps us to escape.”
I blink in surprise. “But you said you don’t see him again.”
Veronica frowns at me. “I said I met him only once, but I do see him again. When I was growing up in this lifetime, he came to my house often but always kept his distance from me. He’d spend hours relaxing in the rose garden with a glass of wine where no one passing by could see him. His voice carried, and I could hear his conversations from my room, but for some reason, I wasn’t allowed to meet him again. After I left home, I never saw him again. I don’t know what happened to him.”
My heart pounds with questions, but Veronica has said enough for now. I pull her close, my arms encircling the ancient soul returned to guide her people through the darkness ahead. For now, she is still a child in need of rest. She stiffens in my embrace, then melts against me.
“We can talk more later, Pea— I mean, Veronica. Let’s get you back into the car. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Not that I have any idea where we’re going.” I stuff a fresh tissue into my jeans pocket. My fingertips touch the two necklaces.
My stomach rumbles. Somehow I forgot all about breakfast and it’s time for lunch—if we have time for lunch. As I give Veronica a moment to get situated in the front seat, I fumble with the luggage in the hatch, pulling out a red sweater for her and a paper bag filled with three-day-old key lime wedding cookies for me. Normally, Veronica pleads for a couple of the cookies and gets their white powder all over her face, but she doesn’t even look up when I plunk them onto the front seat. Instead, she glowers at the street, her small hand gripping the driver’s door as she stands on tiptoe for a better look.
My eyes snap to where she’s staring, and in the wake of dissipating fog, I see the object of her focus with startling clarity: a light blue Ford Pinto, partially concealed by the overgrown row of azaleas that line the edge of the front yard. The driver’s window is rolled down, and a woman with sex-symbol hair presses a pair of bulky binoculars to her face, aimed directly at us. If I hadn’t paused for food, we might not have noticed her.
Veronica gasps. “Who is that? She’s not going to let us leave. She. . .she. . .I knew her. In my last lifetime. I knew her, Maeve.”
“Second welfare worker,” I mutter. “She already tried to get in to see you while I was loading the car and you were sleeping.”
“She’s dangerous, Maeve. More dangerous than Moira right now. She—”
I’ve had enough of witches and their supernatural powers. I’m sure I can handle a nosy welfare worker who, full of vinegar, has promised me that we’ll “do this the hard way” and retreated when Veronica’s fur-and-fangs protectors arrived at my side.
“She’s Ouida. . .something. From the Montgomery office, she said. And I’ll take care of this. You get in the car. And stay out of my cookies until I get back.”
“No, Maeve,” Veronica calls after me in a small voice, but I ignore it. She doesn’t have her full powers yet, so it’s up to me.
“Maeve? Maeve!” She tries again in her little voice. “Maeve, I recognize her energy. Her soul name is Aetheryx. To her soul, it’s been a thousand years, but to me—what she did to me—was only days ago. Maeve—”
All the more reason to put a stop to this woman’s harassment. Maybe the reason she’d reincarnated in Veronica’s first lifetime in a millennium was to use her status as a welfare worker to make trouble for Veronica and me.
I’m not going to let her bother my daughter again!
As I stomp toward the blue Pinto, the woman drops her binoculars and kicks the driver’s door open. She steps out and blocks my path, not caring that she’s been caught but flaunting it.
“You need to leave. Now,” I state firmly. My voice shakes. I’m not good at confrontation unless someone’s messing with my little girl, and even then, I’m not especially brave. Only when it really matters.
The woman scowls, one hand drifting toward the hem of her blue skirt. “Oh, no. I don’t think so. I know what’s going on here. I wasn’t sure until I saw the wolves. That child—Lady Jaryx—she’s coming back with me to the priesthood where she belongs.” Her mouth curves into an obscene smile. “Or not.”
I freeze. How does she know about Veronica’s true identity? Not even Lady Moira could tell.
“You somehow fooled Moira, but you can’t fool me.” She taps the bind rune tattoo on her wrist. The sigil of our God. Walking Lightning. A tattoo just like mine, but fresher.
“Y-you’re a priestess of Daegan? I’ve never seen you before.”
She rolls her eyes to let me know I’m stupid. “Theodore found me two years ago in Crete. Or rather, I led him right to me. I was Initiated after Cora died.”
“Lady Cora died?” The old woman had been nearly eighty-five when she mentored me, but her astrology skills had been legendary in the priesthood. But now I understand. “You’re the new astrologer, aren’t you?”
“At your service.” She laughs at her own joke. “No, not really. I’ll never be at your service. But when you’re gone, I’ll offer my services to Moira to take care of poor little Veronica. See, I have my own plans for her. She has no idea who I am or our history, so she’ll grow up thinking I’m her adopted mother. She’s too young to remember you ever existed.” Ouida juts out her lips in a grotesque, half-sad, half-pleased smile. “She’ll be eating out of my hand for the rest of her life, and I can finish what we started a thousand years ago.”
“No. No, I won’t let you.” Nor, I think, will Veronica, provided she can hold onto her memories as the Wolf Queen.
“You think you know more than I do? Honey, I’ve managed to fool everyone in the priesthood. Old Theodore is so proud of finding me, but I’ll tell you a secret: I found him. And Cora was so pleased with what a good student I was, but I was her equal before we ever met. And Moira is the most pathetic of all. So full of despair. Failing. Running out of time. She has Siobhan studying at a library in Dublin when the nitwit should be at her mother’s side, getting ready to take over the priesthood.”
So that’s what Lady Moira meant when she said the Siobhan was “on track.” Her mother had sent her away for in-depth tutoring and to keep her out of the public eye until the time is right.
The woman laughs, her fingertips curling at the hem of her skirt. “I don’t have to read your dim little mind to know what you’re thinking. Siobhan is safe. But only because I need her to be. I have plans for her.”
“Siobhan will never listen to you,” I growl. “She was my best friend since we were babies, and she doesn’t listen to anybody.”
“Yeah? She listened to me four years ago. I even picked out the father of her baby—the reincarnation of one of the most powerful priests in the last five centuries. Why do you think she defied her mother and got herself pregnant at the wrong time? And all it took was me sitting on a park bench next to a bored girl on holiday with her mother. A few carefully chosen words of advice to take advantage of the friction she had with her mother.” The astrologer smiles. “Just like casting a spell.”
I can’t say anything. All I can do is shake my head. I remember Siobhan coming back from two weeks in London and her sudden plans for claiming her power and her abrupt interest in the guy I had been crushing on for the previous year.
“It won’t be long now,” the woman continues. She slides her knuckles under her skirt, along her thigh. “The stars are lining up for Moira’s funeral and for Siobhan to emerge as the new Ranking High Priestess, but she’s an angry kid who’s lost her way, and everyone who could help her either wants to punish her for not birthing the Chosen One—or they’re dead. Like Spencer von Windlach.”
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