He smiles, so I do too. It’s the kind of story most kids given up for adoption never get to hear. But then his smile vanishes.
“Your screams were so loud that we didn’t hear it at first.”
“Hear what?” I whisper.
Aidan hesitates. Softly he finally says, “It started with one woman. A wail of agony like nothing I’d heard in all my years. And then another woman joined in, then another, like some kind of macabre chorus.”
He takes a deep breath. “Within seconds they were pounding down our door with the news: each pregnant luiseach on the property had miscarried.”
I look out at the crumbling cottages in front of us, tears beginning to fill my eyes. Did some of those women live here? Were they in these buildings when something inside their bodies snapped unexpectedly? Did they run from their homes desperately, their hands pressed to their centers like they thought they could hold their babies in from the outside?
Reluctantly Aidan adds, “But that was just the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?” I ask, sitting on my hands to keep them from trembling. I imagine woman after woman pounding desperately on the enormous door of the mansion.
Aidan doesn’t break my gaze as he explains. “The news poured in from across the globe. By ten o’clock that evening we’d heard reports of miscarriages in places as far-flung as Eastern Europe and Australia, like a terrible shockwave sent ’round the world, some kind of collective falling down the stairs. Some mothers didn’t just miscarry—at least two women went into early labor and did not survive their ordeal.”
Their ordeal? He means that they died, right? The same way he meant kill when he said eliminate.
“I did all that, just by being born?” I stand and turn my back on Aidan, looking around desperately. Maybe if I can just put enough distance between my ears and Aidan’s words, it’ll be like I never heard them at all.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Aidan says firmly. He stands and grabs my arm like he can tell I want to run. “It was our fault. Your birth released a surge of unexpected energy that sort of jostled the spiritual plane. Helena was horrified.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” I manage to croak. There’s a lump the size of a boulder lodged in my throat. Aidan is right about how sensitive I am. I never met the luiseach who died that day, but I feel like I’m mourning them. Crying for them. My tears get all mixed up with the sweat on my face, and when I lick my lips, all I taste is salt.
Of course I wondered about my birth parents over the years, no matter how happy I was with Kat. I always thought they must have had their reasons for giving me up. But I never could have imagined . . . this. Never imagined I was just the product of some kind of test in breeding.
“We gathered all of our people together and struggled to decide what to do next. Less than an hour after Helena gave birth, she stood beside me in the foyer of our home and debated. At first she wanted to imprison you, observe you like an animal in a cage, study you like a science experiment gone awry.”
“At first?” I echo. I imagine them sitting in the room to the left of the stairs, the furniture uncovered to reveal plush velvety chairs and benches. The chandelier would have been back in place, hanging down from the ceiling, flooding the room with light. Maybe they passed my infant body around the room, a dastardly game of hot potato.
“But then your mother’s second in command, a woman named Aura, suggested we destroy you. She believed your birth had released something truly evil. That by exposing you to dark spirits when you were so vulnerable, we’d released the darkest of dark spirits. A darkness that could actually kill a luiseach.”
Months ago Nolan and I learned that a luiseach’s spirit—unlike the spirits of mere mortals—could not be taken, damaged, or destroyed by a ghost or a demon.
Until, apparently, I came along.
“You can imagine what happened after that,” Aidan says.
“No,” I answer wearily. “I can’t.”
“This idea spurred panic,” Aidan supplies. “Everyone rallied to Aura’s side.”
“Including Helena.” I expect it to come out like a question, but it doesn’t.
“Yes,” Aidan nods heavily. “I couldn’t believe it. Helena and I had been partners throughout our marriage, running this campus together, training young luiseach together. But now she could only see what we’d done—what our science had done. Within minutes of Aura’s declaration Helena agreed that the only way to undo the harm we’d done was to eliminate it altogether. She thought that no luiseach would be safe to procreate while you drew breath. That eliminating you could undo the surge of power we’d released. It was as though all the conversations we’d had over the previous nine months had never happened. She insisted that luiseach must continue as they always had, even with our dwindling numbers—helping spirits move on one at a time, exorcising those we didn’t get to in time.”