But Ivory’s sire had confirmed what her heart already knew. These women were Elizabeth.
Ivory stopped by one last time to see Abigail. Watched her through the window of her home. Elizabeth was there. It was in Abigail’s eyes, in the tears she cried, in the smallest nuances of expression that could belong only to one person. That her sire could say otherwise made him unworthy of life.
Three nights later, Ivory decapitated her sire in his slumber, for he refused to release her. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Ivory felt free.
In the years to come, she integrated with the general population. She introduced herself as Ivory, glad to be rid of her sire’s name for her just as she’d been glad to purge herself of the name Sarah. She would start fresh. No more Sarah. No more Lenore.
Next time, she would not fail her lover. She would find her young, bind her in friendship, and convince her life would be safer if she didn’t carry the vulnerabilities of a human.
Ivory kept vigil for two more generations—watched the nephew, the last Parsons boy, as he grew to have sons of his own, and his sons grew to have sons as well, until, one day, another girl was born into the lineage.
Sophia.
But, to Ivory’s heart and eyes, the girl was still Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was…me.
Chapter 22
I’D COMPLETELY MISREAD every moment I’d ever spent with my once-friend. That day Ivory had dropped me off back at home, after I’d been attacked at Club Flesh—she hadn’t been angry with me. She’d been torn.
When she’d told me she knew someone who’d heard voices, the hate in her expression hadn’t been a hatred she felt toward me. It’d been her hatred of herself, of her situation, and of the people who had killed my ancestor. Killed me. She couldn’t tell me, though. Not like that.
She’d sped off down the road not because she wanted to get away from me, but because she wanted to escape the hurt she felt sitting beside me, unable to tell me that I was my ancestor—unable to tell me that I had once been her lover and that she’d followed me all these years. She needed me to want to be turned first—to become a Cruor as well—but it was at that moment she realized her plan for this lifetime had failed.
I hated the very thing she wanted me to become.
When the images bled into the darkness, the air grew still. The fire had borrowed Ivory’s memories and, since I did not return them, they died along with the fire’s embers, lost forever. I wished for someone to steal them from me next.
I dissolved the magic of my circle and dropped my face into my hands and wept. Now I understood why I’d been afraid to open up to Charles about the whispering voices. Now I understood there were deeper parts of me—pieces of my soul—trying to protect me from the possibility of betrayal or death. But through Ivory, I’d still found a way to invite those things into my life. It’d been my soul that resisted Charles but my heart that led me to trust him.
Charles rushed to my side, and I pressed my face to his chest, my tears wetting his shirt. Paloma smoothed my hair. My physical and emotional energy were spent.
Once I wasn’t feeling quite so shaky, we headed upstairs to the kitchen where Paloma and Charles listened intently as I conveyed what the ignisvisum had revealed.
The final set of images had been familiar. They were of me—the real me. The me not altered by a New England 17th century diet or a husband dead in the war. Not Elizabeth or Mary or Rachel or Abigail—though we were all the same—but me, the person I remembered being. Sophia.
After three centuries, Ivory walked among the living like any other human. Ivory watched through the window of our small home in Keota as Mother held me shortly after my birth in 1987.
She watched me on the playground at school. Killed my father when I was six.
He’d recognized her from when he was a boy. She’d been a friend of his great aunt Abigail. But now he was an adult, thirty years older while Ivory hadn’t aged a day. He was unnerved to see her every day—she could tell from the way he looked at her, always shielding his daughter from her gaze—and Ivory knew she’d have no hope of friendship with me if she didn’t get rid of him first.
When we moved to Belle Meadow, Ivory followed. She’d been at the movies on my first date, and our meeting in college hadn’t been an accident.
Ivory had killed Mr. Petrenko to save me from being arrested for stealing. It’d been her thoughts tumbling through my mind at the time of the murder. She needed to ensure I’d go off to college, where she planned for us to meet. That couldn’t happen if I was in jail.