Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Ten



Jenny ate an unspeakably delicious slice of mushroom pizza with a rich, spicy tomato sauce, sitting alone at an outdoor table at L’Oraziano, directly across the street from the high glass facade of the economics school. She had a weird craving to smear a glop of peanut butter on top of the pizza, but she didn’t have a jar handy. As best as she could tell, she was about three months pregnant, and she was starting to feel it.

Mariella Visconti had not bothered her again, but Jenny had continued thinking about the girl as the weeks passed. It made Jenny uneasy to know that another of her kind might be right here in Paris, one who was searching for Seth and already knew where Jenny lived.

Jenny was allegedly shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, in Paris it was just another Thursday, but it would be nice to have something that reminded them of home.

This was the third day she’d slipped off to spy on Mariella. So far as she could tell, Mariella had told the truth—she did live in a student apartment building near the Sorbonne, where she attended classes at the Broca Center, the business school, as well as the Saint-Charles Center, which housed the school of art and cinema. Today, she’d come to the economics building, which was far from the rest of the campus. Jenny watched and waited for her to come out.

If the girl was like her and Seth, then she posed a serious threat. Jenny couldn’t stand not knowing. She had to determine whether the girl had a supernatural touch like her, and what it was, and what the girl’s intentions might really be. Watching Mariella go to class or hang out with other students at cafes and wine bars wasn’t telling her much, unfortunately.

Jenny had a sense of growing urgency, as if time were short. She tried to pretend that it didn’t have anything to do with the baby growing inside her, or her insane wish that the baby could live, that she and Seth could start a family. Thinking about it only led to pain...but still, she couldn’t help feeling more worried and more alert to danger.

Jenny decided not to wait any longer.

She wolfed down her food, to the disgust of two women at the next table, and then hurried out.

When Mariella emerged from the front door of the building, Jenny just happened to be strolling slowly along the sidewalk, and she just happened to glance up and make eye contact with Mariella. A look of recognition flashed across Mariella’s face, followed by excitement. Jenny acted surprised to see her, then wrinkled her brow as if trying to remember who Mariella was.

“Have you seen him?” Mariella asked, looking up and down the street. Mariella wore gloves, a long jacket, and a scarf, and most of her hair was gathered into a soft cloth hat. Like Jenny, Mariella bundled up before going out in public.

“I’m sorry, who?” Jenny replied.

“The boy. Do you not remember me?”

Jenny looked at her for a few seconds. “Aren’t you that girl who came by my apartment? Looking for some guy?”

“That is me.” Mariella’s smile faded as she realized Jenny hadn’t come to tell her she’d found Seth. “How did you find me here?”

“I was just having lunch.” Jenny pointed across the street. “I was walking by, and I had a feeling that I should stop here. So I did.” Jenny shrugged.

“Do you get strange feelings sometimes?” Mariella’s voice dropped to a whisper, and she glanced over her shoulder, as if afraid a student or teacher would hear her. “About the future?”

“I get strange feelings about everything,” Jenny said, and Mariella surprised her by laughing. “Can you see the future?” Jenny asked. “Does it happen when you touch people?”

“How could you know this?” Mariella’s eyes widened, and she looked at Jenny’s hands, gloved in powder-blue silk. “We should walk away from the school.”

They went south down Boulevard de l’Hopital, along a broad sidewalk decorated with stands of trees gone skeletal in late November. The baroque and Art Noveau architecture gave the entire evening a dreamlike atmosphere as the glowing spheres of the streetlamps came to life.

“Tell me what you know,” Mariella whispered.

“About what?”

“About anything. About all of it.”

Jenny looked at the girl’s earnest face and almost felt sorry for her.

“You tell me,” Jenny said. “You touch someone, you can see the future?”

“Just the future of that person, which keeps things fuzzy,” Mariella told her. “And the future can change if you tell them about it, but it rarely does. I see their futures whether they want me to or not. Even if I don’t want to see—that’s why I wrap myself up in public. If I don’t, I’m overwhelmed with glimpses of everyone’s future. And that can be very sad and depressing. But here, I’ll show you.” Mariella took off a glove and reached for Jenny’s hand.

“No!” Jenny pulled back quickly.

“I’m sorry.” Mariella smiled. “Not everyone wants to know their future.”

“Well...that’s true,” Jenny said, taking advantage of the excuse Mariella had just provided for her. “I don’t think I’d want to know.” The exact opposite was true. Jenny was eager to know what lay ahead, especially for the baby. “Can you see your own future?”

“That’s the most difficult,” Mariella said. “Because, when you see your own future, you react to it in the present, and that changes the future. Over and over. My own is almost entirely a blur. Only a few things stand out clear and strong.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Like the boy I told you about.” She gave a glowing smile at the thought of Seth, which did not make Jenny very happy at all. “I can see him in my future. I knew I would meet him in Paris. This is why I came to school in France.”

“What...kinds of things do you see?”

“It is more of a sensation. An aching here...” Mariella touched her chest. “Almost like being lovesick. It is ridiculous, but...do you believe in reincarnation?”

Jenny, who could remember lifetime after lifetime stretching back tens of thousands of years, shrugged. “I suppose anything is possible.”

“What if he is my soulmate?” Mariella asked. “Maybe that’s why I have such...passionate dreams about him.” The girl blushed and giggled, and Jenny resisted the urge to smack her across the face, pox and all. “I just wish I could find him. I know that when I do, my life will finally start to make sense.”

Jenny didn’t have much to say about that. They approached Place d'Italie, a ring of parks centered on a fountain. Jenny could hop onto the Metro and escape here. She wasn’t sure she was ready to hear more about Mariella’s passionate dreams of Seth.

“What about you?” Mariella asked. “What’s your secret?”

“Who says I have one?”

“You can tell me.” Mariella bumped her arm and snickered, almost as if they were friends. “You know about me. What can you do? There’s something in your touch, too, isn’t there?” She reached for Jenny’s hand again.

“Don’t.” Jenny tucked her hand in her jacket pocket.

“What happens to you when someone touches you?” Mariella asked.

“Nothing,” Jenny said. “Nothing happens to me at all.”

“Am I misunderstanding something?” Mariella frowned at her. Her full lower lip made a cute little pout when she frowned, which made Jenny want to upgrade from smacking her to scratching her. “You seemed to know me. I thought...” A sad look crept into her bright green eyes, and she looked away.

“What did you think?”

“I thought you were someone like me. How did you know so much?”

“I’m not like you,” Jenny said.

“Did you once know someone like me? Is that it?” Mariella looked hopeful. “Maybe you have seen the boy I need?”

“There is no boy.”

“I have to go,” Mariella said, checking the time on her phone. “Can we talk again? Over a nice bottle of wine, maybe? I would like to hear more of your thoughts. Although you must think I am out of my mind now.” She gave a small, awkward smile.

Jenny looked over the pretty Mediterranean girl in the pricey high-fashion clothes. Part of her already hated Mariella for her interest in Seth. Another part of her felt bad for the girl, who’d clearly stumbled through life without meeting anyone like herself, something Jenny fully understood. Now Mariella was trying to reach out to her own kind—unfortunately for her, most of their kind tended to be wicked, ruthless, and deceptive. Jenny herself had always been a powerful evil force. She was working her hardest to change that, but very few of her past-life memories gave any guidance on how to live with the pox and still be a good person.

Yet another part of Jenny recognized that the girl could be tricking her in any number of ways. Maybe she was another Ashleigh, capable of charming people while plotting to ruin them. Jenny decided to listen to that part of her, the one that said to trust no one and avoid contact with others as much as possible. It was how she’d survived her life so far.

“Do you want to give me your mobile number?” Mariella asked as Jenny approached the escalator that would take her underground to the Metro station. Mariella had a look in her eyes that bordered on desperation.

Jenny’s heart almost went out to her, but she stopped herself. The only safe choice was to run the girl off forever. Jenny glanced around to make sure no one was looking at them, and she peeled off her gloves.

“Do you know what my touch does?” Jenny asked her, stepping on the escalator. “It brings pain and death. That’s all I’ve ever been to anyone.”

Jenny held up her bare hands. For a moment, she unleashed the pox, her hands and face rippling with gory disease. A look of terror filled Mariella’s face as Jenny descended out of sight.

Jenny drew the pox back inside her and turned to face forward down the escalator. She heard the girl scream, and she smiled. Her past-life memories did provide plenty of tricks for striking fear into people. She’d always been good at that.

With any luck, she’d scared Mariella all the way back to Italy.


The bed in Jenny and Seth’s apartment was a rococo-style antique with curving posters at the foot. The high headboard was carved with intricate little grapevines and cupids armed with love arrows., and the mattress was stuffed with goose down. Jenny had never slept in a more comfortable bed in her life, but lately she was having trouble sleeping at all.

She looked at Seth, who dreamed the night away beside her, his bare chest painted silver by the moonlight, a crooked, happy smile on his lips. What did he have to worry about? He didn’t know she was pregnant, or that the baby was doomed. He didn’t know that another one of their kind was trying to track him down.

She was fighting panic. Mariella claimed to see the future, and in that future, she saw herself and Seth together. Jenny wondered if it was true. How would Seth react if she told him she was pregnant, and then the pregnancy reached its inevitable, bloody end? How would he feel about her? He claimed not to care about having children, but he was still young. His mind could change, especially if he learned he’d fathered a child, and it had died.

Jenny regretted how she’d threatened Mariella, remembering from previous lives that the more she used the pox, the more likely she was to miscarry. Her moment of trying to scare the girl could have cost the baby’s life. But the baby had no future anyway, so why should she worry about that?

Her thoughts kept swirling and pounding against the inside of her skull. She could sense everything going wrong, the magic carpet tearing beneath them.

Seth’s eyes drifted open.

“What’s wrong?” he mumbled.

More than I can tell you, Jenny thought.

“Nothing,” she whispered. “Bad dreams.”

“Sucks,” he said. His eyes were barely open, and his blond hair stuck out in every direction. He put an arm around her.

Jenny had been having bad dreams, too. Telling Seth about their most recent life had stirred up those memories like angry hornets, and they kept intruding on her waking thoughts as well as her dreams. Alexander had purposely tried to block her memories of her most recent lives, while restoring hundreds of others. He’d wanted the old, evil Jenny back, not the new, slightly-less-evil version she’d become as she spent her recent lifetimes with the healer, Seth, instead of the dead-raiser, Alexander.

“There’s more I didn’t tell you about our last life,” Jenny said. “The more I tell you, the more I remember.”

“I thought we ran off with the circus and lived happily ever after.”

“If ‘happily ever after’ lasts only a few weeks.”

“It’s over now. Long time ago.” He turned away from her, leaving Jenny to stare up at the ceiling. She couldn’t stop thinking about that life, which wasn’t surprising, considering the specific things she was dealing with in the present. It seemed immediate to her, as if none of the problems from their previous life had been resolved, and they were all waiting to come back and haunt her.

Jenny closed her eyes, but she couldn’t sleep.