“Perhaps you ought to hire some help.”
Abigail chewed at her lip. “I’d never be able to afford it without Theodore. I don’t know what I’ll do with him gone.”
Maintaining Abigail’s calm took much of Ivory’s mental energy, but she kept the influence flowing as she spoke.
“Well”—Ivory handed her the tea, choosing her words cautiously—“I could use a place to stay. I would be of help. That is, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Abigail nodded slowly and sipped her tea. Ivory smiled that her effort to influence Abigail had gone even smoother than she’d hoped. Abigail didn’t have the same block Rachel had exhibited.
Abigail swept her arm to indicate Ivory should sit, but in the same instant, a vase on the mantel across the room tipped and shattered on the ground.
“Oh,” Abigail said, jumping to her feet. “You best leave. Please, go now.”
Ivory froze.
“Go!” Picture frames fell from the walls and the front door rattled fiercely.
Ivory ran to Abigail, placed her hands on her shoulders, and used her influence to send her peace of mind. “It’s okay, Mrs. Anderson. It’s okay.”
They sank down into the couch and Ivory held her as she cried.
“I won’t tell a soul,” Ivory promised.
***
WITH IVORY’S HELP, Abigail learned to harness her energy. Unlike her ancestors before her, Abigail experienced only noise in place of the whispering voices.
As the years passed, Abigail and her nephew aged, their family still without answers. Ivory waited for just the right moment to reveal the source of Abigail’s gift, while Abigail’s nephew tried to find a cure.
That moment never came.
One day, as they were sitting down for dinner, Abigail spoke the words Ivory had always dreaded she might hear.
“There is something wrong with you. You haven’t aged.”
“Strange, I suppose,” was Ivory’s reply, her posture straight and her hands tucked into her lap as she watched Abigail eat.
Abigail paused, lowering a bite of food back to her plate. “And I don’t believe I’ve seen you eat a single morsel of food in all the time I’ve known you.”
Ivory couldn’t tell her the truth, not with how Abigail felt about her own curse. “You know how I like to bring meals on my hikes.”
“Eat with us tonight,” Abigail said firmly. She pushed her own dish across the table, her gaze cutting toward Ivory. “I’ll make myself another plate.”
“Really,” Ivory said. “I couldn’t. Perhaps another time.”
Abigail rubbed her temples. Ivory reached toward her, but dropped her hand back to her lap when Abigail flinched.
From then on, Abigail looked at Ivory only from lowered lids and with wary sighs. Abigail believed herself to be insane. Ivory longed to free her of her false suspicions, but her explanations would not be accepted and, without them, Ivory wouldn’t be welcome to stay.
Not even a fortnight passed before Ivory packed her things and returned to confront her sire. She confessed to him of where she’d been spending her time over the years.
“I want to turn Abigail,” Ivory told him. “I want to separate from you and go out on my own.”
“Lenore,” he began gently.
“Don’t bother trying to talk me out of it. I’ve tried once before, and if it hadn’t been too late, I’d have succeeded. This may be my last chance, and you will not stand in my way.”
“Why would you want this? Isn’t the life I’ve provided you enough?”
“Abigail is so like Elizabeth,” Ivory said fiercely. She thought of their same delicate wrists, the way they swept their hair away from their neck in the same fashion, and the way they both stepped lightly, while still giving a sense of being grounded. Ivory stared into the fire, watching the flames steal away the bark of the wood. “I think they are connected—Elizabeth and her female descendants.”
“You believe Abigail is a forever girl?” he asked, leaning back and raising his thick, dark eyebrows.
“A forever girl?”
“Reincarnation,” he said. “That is what you are asking?”
“Such a thing is possible, then?” Ivory breathed, her eyes widening and her chest filling with hope.
“They say the spirit elementals—oft thought to be women—would be reincarnated if their life was taken prematurely. They were to contain the unfiltered magic of the elements. They were the only ones who would never die an ultimate death, so long as their efforts in life remained pure and their lineage continued.”
“Do you mean that Abigail might be Elizabeth? That Mary and Rachel were as well?”
“No,” he said solemnly. “This was all hearsay. Myths. Fantasies created by those who grieved the losses of their not-quite-human loved ones.” His eyes, dark as gray coals that had burned out long ago, fell on hers. “It was all hope. Nothing more.”