“Before you do what?” Seth asked, and Alexander chuckled.
Jenny took a scalpel from the table. She prodded the tip into the hollow of Seth's throat. “First. Who was that girl in Charleston?”
“The girl? Jenny, that was a mistake. I'm sorry.”
“It was definitely a mistake. And then you decided to attack me here. That was a mistake, too.”
“I came to rescue you.”
“Rescue me?” Jenny smirked as she dragged the blade down across his chest, slicing open flesh and muscle.
“Jenny, stop!” Seth yelled. “What's wrong with you? What happened to you?” He looked at Alexander.
“There's nothing wrong with me,” Jenny said. “I remember so many past lives now. Alexander remembers all of his, too. He showed me how. I remember what I am, and what all of us are.”
“I know what I am,” Seth said. “I'm the person who loves you.”
Jenny snickered. “You're the charmer's tool. She sent you to seduce me.” Jenny slashed the blade diagonally across his stomach, and Seth gasped in pain. “You thought you could trick me.”
“What are you talking about, Jenny? I've always been honest with you. I'm not playing any trick.”
She scowled. “Maybe that's what you think, healer. But sometimes, you can hold such a strong intention when you incarnate that your little incarnated personality works to carry out your purpose, without really knowing why. So maybe you are still caught in the illusion of being Seth Barrett, as I was caught in the illusion of being Jenny Morton. But you are not him, and I am not her.” Jenny moved closer, lifting his chin with the tip of the blade. “Don't you remember anything?”
“I remember all the time we spent together,” Seth said. “I remember that we loved each other. You're the one who's forgotten.”
“That was only a game,” Jenny said. “The charmer wanted you to get close to me. That's why you think you love me. That was a plot etched deep in your soul. But our kind don't truly love, Seth. We don't have human souls. We are older than love itself.”
“That's not true!” Seth said. “We love each other. We're learning to be human.”
“We cannot learn to be what we are not. You are a serpent, trying to play monkey.”
“That's not true, either,” Seth said. “I don't know what you think you remember—”
“My memories are very clear,” Jenny said.
“And they tell you...what? That you belong with this guy?” Seth nodded to Alexander. “He's my great-grandfather. Did you know that? Jonathan Seth Barrett I. He made his first fortune with plantations worked by zombies. What are you doing with them this lifetime, Gramps?”
Alexander smirked.
“Is that true?” Jenny asked Alexander.
“Fallen Oak was my sandbox first,” Alexander said. “I left my mark.”
Jenny thought of the picture of the first Jonathan Seth Barrett shaking hands with Woodrow Wilson, his eyes like dark steel. The man who'd built the family graveyard and so obsessively laid out instructions for how he was to be remembered by succeeding generations, and how they were to act. It was a pathetic echo of how an Egyptian pharaoh created his own glorious funerary complex and priestly cult, all to maintain his memory and encourage people to worship him after death. All to avoid being forgotten.
“Cheap zombie labor,” Seth said to Alexander. “I'm guessing you have zombies growing drugs for this cartel you've joined. Cheap zombie labor. That's how you keep margins up on a plantation, am I right, Gramps? That's what you told my dad.”
Alexander answered with a short, cold laugh, and his dark eyes did not look amused.
“When you look at the big picture, you're just stuck doing the same thing, over and over again, one lifetime to the next, aren't you?” Seth asked. “Caught in the same loop. Can't do anything new.”
“You don't know what you're talking about, healer,” Alexander said.
“I think I do, zombie guy,” Seth said. “I was dead for a while. Maybe I don't remember everything, but I saw enough to realize the past isn't worth remembering. I don't want to go back and be who I was before. I'm alive now, I make my choices now. And leaving the past behind makes us better than what we were.”
“You can't leave it behind. Your past is what you are,” Jenny said.
“No, it isn't,” Seth said. “What you do right now, that's what you really are.”
“Just kill him, Jenny,” Alexander said. “I've had enough of this conversation.”
“You take orders from him now?” Seth asked.
“No one gives me orders,” Jenny said. “And I'm in no hurry to kill you. I want to watch you suffer first. Your punishment for tricking me into loving you.”