“Since I’ve found you, I’ve never lost track of you.” He stood and walked toward me.
I backed out of the doorway and quickly walked to the living room reminding myself he had plenty of opportunities to hurt me before if that were his intent. What did he expect me to do now?
Trying to calm down, I decided to try treating him as a guest… without getting too close.
“How did you find me the first time?” Nervous, I kept moving, getting us both a drink of water. He sat at the table and waited for me expectantly. Hesitantly, I joined him. Sitting across of him, I relaxed a little and passed him his glass. Just like at school. A conversation across the table.
“I felt you the moment they bruised you. Your pain was my beacon.” He took a drink of water and then explained. “I feel every birth and death in Belinda’s line, but those are weak signals compared to when one of you is hurt. It’s because of those faint signals that I lost track of you at times.”
I tried to piece to together why he would feel our pain, birth or death, but couldn’t think of a reason. “Why do you feel us?”
“How else would I keep track of all of you throughout the years? Especially when you move around so much? It also helps me know how many of you are approaching your seventeenth birthday.”
I thought of the family tree in the back of Belinda’s book. Perhaps the dead branches weren’t dead after all, but branches that had moved away for safety. They could have made a copy of the book to pass down through the daughters of their branch. “Are there others then? Other descendants of Belinda?”
He shook his head sadly. “The four of you in this house are the last of her line. You are the only one of age.”
“Five you mean.”
He canted his head to the side as I’d seen him do before when puzzled. “No. Four. I am not mistaken.”
The certainty of his tone had me frowning. Playing with my half-empty glass, sliding it back and forth on the tabletop, I stared at the clear water thinking. Without a doubt, there were five of us in this house or my mind wasn’t the only one in question. Maybe, somehow, we’d managed to hide one of us from him.
The obvious answer came to me. Gran and Aunt Danielle. Twins. He’d probably only sensed a single birth since they’d been born so close together. And they looked identical. With Aunt Danielle mostly staying home, he’d probably never seen both at the same time.
I glanced back up at him. He watched me closely and I tried to keep my expression blank. They were both gone, but for how long? I wanted to get answers, but his presence could jeopardize their secret.
The biggest question still remained. Did he pose a threat to us? And it wasn’t a question I could just ask him. Yes, he’d walked Clavin into traffic, but he’d made it clear it was because Clavin hurt me. But it hadn’t just been Clavin. What would he do to Brian if he knew about his involvement? Since hurting Clavin, he hadn’t done anything more than possess people to talk to me. And even then, when I said what he did would make people crazy, he used Clavin… and in a way that Clavin wasn’t going to notice since he was taking a nap. I sighed. Why couldn’t I detect lies instead of seeing the future?
“Why do I see my future when I touch a boy? Where does that come into all this?”
He replied with a sad note in his voice, “Once her father made the deal, she chose a suitor. It had been a disappointment, but a few months later, she bore a daughter. It gave me hope that maybe her daughter, wouldn’t be so opposed to the idea since she would be raised knowing I waited to meet her. But Belinda sought to make a different deal with another of my kind. She wanted the deal removed. Ahgred’s price was too high... her life to spare her daughter from the choices she faced at seventeen. Since my deal with her was complete, I couldn’t interfere. But I was near and listened to the bargain she made. I will never understand why she agreed.
“She’d married a lazy man and grew to despise him. The money her father obtained through his deal with me, he gave to them as a wedding gift. The man lavishly spent the money. Because of her mistake in choosing him as a husband, she asked that her daughter be granted a glimpse of what her life would be like if she were to choose the man she touches. Ahgred was a fair broker. Such a gift, used repeatedly, required a high price.”
I leaned forward in my chair caught up in his retelling, imagining a young woman dressed in a fine dress angry at the world.