“I don’t have a choice, Alex. I have to. And I want to go soon—the day after tomorrow, maybe. I should have done this a long time ago.”
Suddenly, Alex’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at Jessica. “Jess . . . Are you sure this is you talking? I mean, literally, are you sure this is your idea? I better go check and see if Fana’s hiding in the hallway putting words in your mouth.”
“Don’t,” Jessica said quickly, grabbing her sister’s hand. Grasping Alex’s warm palm tightly, she could feel her own pulse surging at the ball of her thumb. Her voice had dipped low in her throat. “Alex, don’t go near Fana with that ugly thought in your head.”
Alex stared down at their two hands entwined, then back up at Jessica. Disbelief and confusion were naked on her face. “I was joking,” she said in a flat voice.
“I’m not.”
“I can see that.”
Jessica felt tears threatening, but she blinked them away. She’d had enough tears. Her entire face hurt from crying. “Don’t you see what’s happening?” she said to Alex, nearly whispering. “That child put a boy in a coma. She made it rain. She can get inside our heads. She made me forget my own daughter, like she’d never been born, until I just about had a nervous breakdown. And that man here today was about two seconds away from Fana’s doing God knows what to him. You saw it, didn’t you? Fana’s not even four years old, and she’s getting stronger. Either we’re going to be scared to death of her, or I’d better learn who the hell she is and figure out how to raise her. And we can’t do it alone. I can’t.”
Maybe she’d understood the truth about Fana since the day she’d been born with that eerie, premature laughter, but acknowledging it had been too painful before. Now, the truth was clearing Jessica’s head, giving her strength. A part of her had tried to cave in these past days, but she hadn’t allowed that to happen. This was her only child, and she was going to fight.
“You really think someone there can help you?” Alex’s voice was equally soft.
“I hope so. I sure don’t know who else to ask, Alex.”
“Yeah, I guess Dr. Spock forgot to write the chapter on this one,” Alex said humorlessly. She bowed her head slightly, as if she sat in a confessional. “Jessica . . . I’m scared for you. I’m scared of them.”
“Me, too,” Jessica said, squeezing Alex’s hand. “But the only thing that scares me more is not going. I need help with Fana. I may not find what I want there, but I have to look.”
“I’ll go with you, then. Sarah can—”
Jessica shook her head. “No way. Until you can bounce back from the dead, too, I can’t put my big sister in danger like that.”
Today was the day for truth-telling, no matter how painful. Alex was at risk. The Living Blood might heal some of her injuries and illnesses, but anyone’s random violence could steal Alex away; the mere thought that the man at their house might easily have crashed the sharp edge of an end table into Alex’s skull had reminded Jessica of that. And no amount of Jessica’s blood could bring her sister back from the dead. Here, their paths diverged.
“Don’t wait for me here longer than a few months, maybe until January,” Jessica said. “I’m going to Francistown to empty out most of our account for this trip, but there’s still cash in our bank in Miami. Have some money transferred as soon as you can. You probably should put this house up for sale now so we can get back what we’ve invested here, with any luck. But even if you can’t sell this place, just leave—hell, give it to Moses and his family. Then, send Sarah away and go back to Miami so you can be near Mom.” Jessica paused, catching her breath. “The most important thing is, you have to stop giving away my blood, Alex. You have to keep what I leave here hidden for yourself. And for Mom.”
“Don’t start with that.”
“I’m not playing, Alex,” Jessica said, genuinely angry. “You hang on to it. If I come back, fine—we’ll figure out a safer way to help people with it. But if I don’t come back . . . it’s yours. You hear me? You better promise me, too.”
Stubbornly, Alex stuck out her lip. “I don’t need all that damn blood. I still have two bags of it, and you can leave more. It only takes a drop—”
“Yeah, I will leave more. But goddammit, Alex, you better guard that blood and treat it like a gift from God. It’s not just for you, don’t you understand? It’s for you, your children, and your grandchildren. Maybe one day we can give it to strangers again, but as of right now, it’s for our family. And if you don’t understand that, there’s just something wrong with you.”
Alex was thoughtful for a moment, her chest heaving with slow, painful breaths. In that instant, Jessica felt sorry for her; she was forcing Alex to accept a lot of change quickly. Jessica could hardly believe that, only a few days before, Alex had been the one trying to gently guide her to the difficult realizations about Fana.
“I promise I won’t just give it away like we’ve been doing,” Alex said slowly. “I see what you’re saying. What happened today scared the hell out of me, too, and I know we were probably lucky it wasn’t worse. But I’m still a doctor, Jess. I can’t turn that on and off. I won’t take unnecessary risks, but I can’t sit here and pretend I’m just going to withhold the blood from everyone, forever. I’d feel like a monster if I did that.”
“Safely,” Jessica implored. “Not here. After you move.”
“Okay, I promise. I’ll wait. But, see, you’re missing the larger point: I’m not the one in danger. I’d rather it be me than you, Jess.”
Jessica sighed. Alex definitely had a point there. It was so much easier for her to worry about Alex’s future than her own. At that instant, she couldn’t even imagine her future.
“What if you find this colony and David isn’t there?” Alex asked, persisting.
Jessica paused, forcing herself to examine that possibility. A part of her she had never truly buried trembled with disappointment at the thought; and only some of that disappointment had anything at all to do with Fana. Now that she’d made up her mind, Jessica wanted to see David more than she’d realized.
“Then we’ll come back,” Jessica said.
“If they let you. What if they don’t?”
“Then we won’t,” Jessica said, resigned.
Alex’s face flinched. Jessica knew the truth came with a sting, but she hadn’t meant to wield it so carelessly. She squeezed her sister’s hand again. “We’re going to pray that’s not how it turns out. Okay? Prayer has gotten us a long way. We’ve trusted this far. If I’m still standing after what I’ve been through these past few years, Alex, then nothing can knock me down.”
Alex smiled, with more sadness than mirth. She reached over to lightly touch the edge of Jessica’s forehead, where it met her hairline. Alex had teased Jessica when she cut off her hair and let it go natural like Alex’s, saying Jessica had been hiding under chemicals so long that she’d forgotten all about her widow’s peak. Their father used to say their dispositions were so different that their matching widow’s peaks were the only way he’d known for sure they were sisters. Daddy sure would be proud of how close they were now, Jessica thought.
“Don’t stay away too long with Fana,” Alex said. “I’m sure gonna miss that little girl, hocus-pocus and all. If I don’t see her again till she’s grown, I’ma be mad at you.”
“I know you will, too,” Jessica said, returning Alex’s sad smile.
This was good-bye, Jessica realized, and it seemed to her from her sister’s eyes that Alex realized it, too. She and Alex had never lived more than twenty minutes away from each other their entire lives, even between college and Alex’s medical school, except for a year Alex had spent at a hospital in Virginia during her residency. Even then, Alex had called her every single Sunday. As much as their mother had fretted over their arguments when they were younger, they had grown up to be best friends.
For an instant, Jessica could think of no words at all.
Suddenly, Alex’s tone became light. “You know what?
I think you’re just trying to weasel out of here so you don’t have to deal with Sarah’s brother when he comes to visit her. That fool gets on my last nerve.”
“Oh, Alex, please,” Jessica said, glad Alex was giving her a chance to feel playful. Jessica suspected Alex had ended up in bed with Stephen Shabalala during one of his visits to their clinic in South Africa two years before, and she’d been teasing her about it ever since. Sarah’s brother had probably been about thirty then, Jessica guessed, and he was handsome and bright enough that Alex might have responded to his boyish attentions one of those nights they had sat up drinking beer together. And why not? Neither she nor her sister had enjoyed any semblance of a sex life in years. “He’s all right. I don’t know why you’re so hard on that man. I have a good idea, though,” Jessica went on.
“You know what? You’re so wrong. See, in psychology, they would call that transference. If you were horny, baby sister, then you should have just jumped on him yourself instead of trying to concoct some fantasy about me. He’s too immature for me to even look at like that. Anyway, I’m serious about him rubbing me wrong. I don’t like him.”
“Shoot, I wish he’d been here to help us with that guy today. When’s he coming?”
“Maybe in a few days, Sarah says. But I’m not going to let him move in here like last time. Some folks can’t tell the difference between being a houseguest and a damn roommate.”
At that, Jessica and Alex laughed together, hard. Their laughter filled the tiny room, releasing some of the burden from Jessica’s heart. Her confidence surged as she realized Alex would have protested more vehemently if she’d really thought the journey to the colony was a mistake. Alex might be frightened for her, but somehow she knew it was right, too.
After their laughter died, Alex paused. She dealt her words out cautiously. “Jess, honey . . . I don’t know what Fana did to you the other day, if it was real or just your imagination . . .”
“It was real,” Jessica said firmly. “For a while, she stole my memory. I know that.”
“Well, whatever she did . . . and I hope this won’t come out sounding wrong . . . I’m glad she did it. What happened with you in this room these past days has been a long time coming.”
Jessica’s tear ducts tried to sting, but they were too tired. “I know,” Jessica whispered.
“I started to think you’d decided Kira wouldn’t really be gone if you just didn’t cry.” Alex’s words had grown brittle, but she breathed a long breath and regained her voice, smiling weakly. “I’ll tell you what, though. I cried enough for both of us. I wondered sometimes, if I’d been given a choice, if I ever would have even wanted to meet that kid if I’d known it would hurt so much for her to go like that. Does that sound awful?”
Jessica shook her head. “No, it’s not awful. That’s why Fana did what she did—to give me that choice. But you know what would be awful?”
“What?”
“If Kira had never been. If we hadn’t had that time with her. Or if we had never helped all those children in Kira’s memory, the ones we could. Maybe it had to happen this way.”
Alex leaned forward and pulled Jessica against her in a close hug, her weight shuddering slightly. “Mmmmmm,” Alex said, a musical sound, almost humming. “Jess, you are so right. You are so, so right.”
Jessica hugged her sister back with strength in her arms that surprised her. Her worst fear, from the first morning she’d woken up and realized what David had done to her, was that her new blood would eventually separate her forever from the people she loved. David had told her about the isolation he’d felt, how he’d faced losses again and again in his hundreds of years of life. Now, Jessica had to accept the possibility that her fear was already coming to pass.
Despite her plans and promises, she and Fana might never see Alex again. She knew it, and Alex did, too. If Jessica’s body hadn’t already been drained from crying, her tears would have resurfaced in force. Instead, just as when Kira’s memory apparition had appeared in the room with her, allowing her to touch her dead daughter one last time, Jessica hung on tight to Alex. David’s hugs, too, had always been lingering and fervent, nearly desperate, and now she understood exactly why. She didn’t know how she would ever bring herself to let her sister go.
• • •
The oversized cattle kraal had been empty ever since they’d bought this property, though the scent of manure still lingered in the dusty soil, inseparable. The fenceposts were splintered and the wooden railings between them sagged, probably left unrepaired since long before Jessica and her family had come here with their peculiar mission that had at last ended.
No, she’d always known this would not be her home.
In Miami, the few times she’d ventured into David’s house after Kira was dead and he was gone—before she’d sold it to that kook who’d later bragged to the National Enquirer that he’d bought the house where Mr. Perfect lived—her stomach had never felt easy until she was safely outside again. The house had felt haunted, and she herself was the ghost. Even her mother’s house in Miami, where she’d lived until soon after Fana was born, had never quelled her anxious certainty that she was not meant to be there. She felt like a wanderer.
Hadn’t David said Lalibela was her true home? God help her, maybe he was right. But for how long? Would this sect of immortals really let her go once she showed up? Frankly, as Alex kept pointing out, she was surprised they’d let her run wild this long, especially since she was dispensing the blood they’d been hiding from the world for hundreds of years. She had always expected the Searchers to come for her someday, just as David had told her they had come for him. Yet, for all this time, they had left her alone.
But had they, really?
Tentatively, Jessica raised her voice into the early-evening breeze. “Are you there?” she called. “We’re coming to you now. We’re coming to Lalibela. So you might as well just show yourselves. I’m not afraid!” Her voice had risen toward the end, and those last three words had been an outright lie, but she’d thrown them in to try to convince herself.
Frankly, she thought, she might faint if one of the Searchers really did show his face now.
But there was no answer, of course. All she could hear was the clinking of dishes in the kitchen sink through the open window, Alex or Sarah washing up from dinner. She remembered a time long ago, in her lost life with David and Kira, when she’d sat in a cave in her front yard and felt convinced she was holding a conversation with her father’s ghost. She would never forget the words she had believed she’d heard that day: There are no good monsters.
Whether it was truly a ghost (and, shoot, why should she even doubt it after all she’d seen since?) or a fabrication in her head, she now knew that those words had been intended to warn her about David, to force her to face the reality that he was not what he seemed. She had heard the words, but she had not listened. If she had listened and left David sooner, her daughter would not now have these extraordinary powers none of them could control. And she would not be standing here about to make what could be the most foolish decision of her life, choosing to walk straight into the arms of not one monster, but sixty of them.
“Not ’fraid of what, Mommy?”
Fana’s voice behind her startled Jessica to gasping. She hadn’t even heard Fana follow her outside. Jessica grasped the rough railing she was leaning against, steadying herself. Her elbow felt weak at the joint. “I’m not afraid to go where we belong,” Jessica said, massaging the top of Fana’s head.
Fana’s face brightened, her cheeks puffing outward. “To my daddy?”
“Yes. To your daddy.”
Suddenly, Fana was hugging Jessica’s knees with all her strength, which was enough to pull her nearly off-balance. “I knew you would, Mommy. I knew if I waited, you’d wanna go.”
Instantly, a doubt: What if Alex was right? What if this isn’t my idea at all—but Jessica made herself quash it before it could reverberate more deeply and somehow enter Fan
a’s consciousness. She didn’t have room for doubts of any kind, least of all that one.
Suddenly, Fana’s grip loosened and she was gazing up at Jessica with eyes that knew too much, as they always did. “Is it ’cause I made you get sick in bed? I did’n mean it.”
“You didn’t make me get sick, sweetie. That sickness has been in me a long time. You only helped me bring it out.”
“But it made you cry.”
“I needed to cry. And I’m sure I have some more crying to do. But it’s okay.”
“See, Mommy? You were so happy when you did’n ’member.”
“Oh, yes. I was very, very happy, Fana. But . . .” How could she begin to explain this? Jessica leaned over to lift Fana up, then she sat Fana down on the top railing, so their faces were a bit closer. “I wish you had known her. I wish you had known Kira.”
Fana puckered her face into a sour expression, which stung Jessica.
“No,” Jessica went on. “You would have loved her. Believe me. She was funny and smart and pretty, just like you.”
“Not-uh. She wasn’t like me.”
“What do you mean?”
“She could’n wake up.”
“That’s because she didn’t have our blood, like I told you.”
“An’ she did’n make you scared like me.”
“You don’t scare me,” Jessica said, slightly startled.
“Uh-huh, yes, I do,” Fana said, shrugging. The gesture reminded Jessica of one an adolescent might make. “That’s how come we’re going away.”
They’d talked about it only briefly, but Fana had insisted she didn’t know why the man with the table had backed away from her. All she remembered, she said, was that she wanted him to put the table down because she was afraid he would hurt Jessica or Aunt Alex. She didn’t remember feeling anything that would have explained that predator’s look in her eyes. And Jessica believed Fana, which frightened her all the more. That might mean that Fana’s power was unconscious, at least in part, sparked by anger or fear. And if she’d put Moses in a coma because of a childish spat, what would she have done to a troubled man threatening her mother? And could she have stopped herself from accidentally hurting others?