“Lizbeth,” Ruthie’s voice came out of Luther’s mouth, sweet and gentle as a spring rain at dawn. “Jealousy don’t help anyone.”
I shrugged. “I’m supposed to be the most powerful seer in centuries, but I can’t see anymore, and I could never bring you like he can.”
“We all have our talents, child. Right now yours are in a different area.”
“Will I ever be a seer again?” I asked, my voice so wistful it surprised me.
In the past, all I’d wanted was to be normal, for God to take away the psychometric gift I’d been born with. Then Ruthie had given me her gift, and I’d wished that away too. Now that gift was gone, and I ached to have it back again.
“Time will tell,” Ruthie murmured.
If I closed my eyes I could delude myself; I could forget—momentarily—about the boy channeling the woman and once again see Ruthie Kane.
Nearly everything about her was sharp—her mind, her elbows, not to mention her spiky hips and knobby knees. I never could figure out how a woman who resembled a bag of bones could give the softest, sweetest hugs on the planet. The kind of hugs people lived—and died—for.
She’d fold me into her arms, and the fluff of her steadily graying Afro would brush my face as I listened to the sturdy thud of her great big heart. I missed those hugs so damn much.
I opened my eyes. The kid looked nothing like her, and if I tried to hug him, I’d probably wind up with a black eye. Not that I needed a hug or anything.
Yeah, I didn’t believe it either.
“What’s that mean?” I asked. “Time will tell?”
“The future is . . . murky.”
My eyebrows lifted. “I thought the future was written.”
“It is. Unfortunately, the way it’s written . . .” Luther’s huge hands spread wide. “Could mean anything.”
I rubbed my forehead. Why did I even try to make sense of my life?
“Listen.” I dropped my hand. “I had a . . .” I paused, frowned. “Well, I thought I was dream walking, but—” Quickly I explained what I’d seen and how I’d seen it.
Luther’s mouth turned down, just the way Ruthie’s always had whenever life threw her an unpleasant curve. “Not dream walking,” she muttered.
“You’re sure?”
Those familiar eyes in that unfamiliar face met mine. “Coffin, dirt, graveyard. The dead don’t dream, Lizbeth.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. This was a message.”
“From whom?”
“The usual messenger,” Ruthie said, obviously still thinking. “This woman was dead, and then she wasn’t.”
“And how does that happen exactly?”
“Someone, or something, raised her.”
“Zombie?” I’d never met one, but that didn’t mean they weren’t around.
Luther’s curls flew as his head moved left, right and left again. “Zombies don’t run; they shuffle. They aren’t very pretty either. The decay don’t go away just ’cause they’re above ground instead of below. But what zombies really don’t do is turn into birds and fly.”
“What does?”
Ruthie held up one long, brown finger. “First, tell me about the bag she carried. Size. Shape. Weight.”
I placed my hands four inches apart. “About like this.” Then I did the same lengthwise and added a few inches to the space. “And this. Weighed a pound or so.”
Ruthie’s gaze remained on mine. “If you had to guess, what would you say was inside?”
I closed my eyes, imagined again what it felt like to be the woman in the grave. I shivered at the memory—the dirt in my nose and mouth, the darkness all around me, the press of the earth, the smell and the madness that hovered very close to the surface.
“Focus, Lizbeth. What was in the bag?”
I stood in the exquisite rays of the rising sun, felt the cool, damp morning dew on my feet and my face; then I lifted my hand—scratched and bleeding, but already healing—to the satchel looped around my neck.
As soon as I touched it, I got a flash so strong it made me stagger and open my eyes. “Whoa, what the hell?”
I’d never been able to touch something in my memory and see it. Of course I’d never been able to enter anyone’s mind without first physically touching them; I’d never “become” someone the way that I’d become the woman in the grave.
“What did you see?” Ruthie’s gaze was intense; Luther held his breath.
“A book. Very old. Had a crest on the front.” I scowled, staring into the distance, thinking so hard I risked a brain embolism. “A star.”
“Five points or six?”
I closed my eyes and laboriously counted as I held on to the image in my head with all the power that I had. A bead of sweat slid from my brow, tickling first my cheek and then my neck. “Six.”
“Hexagram.” Relief colored Ruthie’s voice.
I opened one eye. “That’s good?”
“Yes and no. Pentagram—five points—can be white or black magic. Just depends.”
“But a hexagram?”
“Jewish magical symbol. Legends state it came into use after being discovered on a signet ring transcribed with the secret four-letter name of God.”
“Which is?”