“Ashleigh Goodling?” he asked.
“How did you get in here?”
His eyes locked onto hers. “I can get into anyplace I want.”
Ashleigh felt uneasy. Her fingers drifted toward the SECURITY button on her desk phone. “You have the wrong person,” she said. “My name is Esmeralda.”
“I don't think it is.” He dropped into the chair across from her and leaned back, swinging idly from side to side like a bored child. “Esmeralda Medina Rios was a funerary cosmetician. I kept tabs on her. She didn't care for politics. The love-charmer, though—politics are an irresistible nectar to her. The power. The blood. That's why I believe you are not Esmeralda Rios, but Ashleigh Goodling, riding Esmeralda's body like a horse. And if I know you, love-charmer, you're not sharing. You're possessing. Because that's what you love to do most of all, possess.”
Ashleigh gaped at him. “Who are you?”
“Esmeralda is my opposite. It's always interesting to keep tabs on your opposites, isn't it, love-charmer? And how is your Tommy? Using his abilities in the most unfocused and unproductive ways, as usual?”
Ashleigh couldn't help but laugh.
“They can require such guidance and hand-holding, can't they?” he asked. “So few of us are masters. So few of us remember what we truly are.”
Ashleigh, completely caught off-guard and a little frightened, could only stare at him.
“You may now reply,” he said, with half a smile.
“Oh!” Ashleigh was feeling flustered. “Then, what do you want with me?”
“Don't be afraid,” he said. “I'm not going to cast you from Esmeralda's body like Christ and his demons. I could, though. Opposites have special influence over one another, as you know.” He reached across her desk, and Ashleigh shrank back from him. She covered the bracelet on her hand, the one that contained pieces of Ashleigh-bone, keeping her connected to Esmeralda's body.
“But I won't,” he continued. He reclined in the chair and put his hands behind his head. “Esmeralda is as useless to me as your Tommy is to you. No imagination. No ambition. Forget her for now. It's your help I would enjoy, Aphrodite.”
“Cute,” she said. From her large swaths of past-life memory, Ashleigh was beginning to recognize who this man was. A brutal conqueror, an iron-fisted ruler of humans, whom he regarded as cattle. He had been her enemy often, though not always. She needed to be wary. He seemed to radiate power.
“What is your name, this lifetime?” she asked.
“Alexander. You may remember the wars we have enjoyed waging against each other in the past, with our armies of human pawns. But, regardless of our previous conflicts, we now share a common problem,” he said. “The healer and the plague-bringer.”
“Jenny? Do you know where she is?”
“She has been with me these past months,” he said. “Until, as is increasingly the problem in recent lives, she ran off with your servant, the healer.”
“She's with Seth?” Ashleigh sat up. “You know where to find them?”
“Of course, with him,” Alexander said. “They grow closer together each lifetime, and further from us. We must reclaim our slaves. Our property must be returned to us.”
“I don't want to reclaim Seth,” Ashleigh said. “I want him dead, maybe, but not back in my life.”
“Of course, they must be punished for their insulting disloyalty in this lifetime,” Alexander said. “That is understandable. But we have eternity to think about. Countless lifetimes when they could be serving us. Or we can let them draw together and become our enemies.”
“What did you have in mind?” Ashleigh asked.
“I want to destroy them. I want to give them both a death so horrific it leaves them scarred for lifetimes. And if there is anyone who knows how to maximize the suffering of others, it's you, charmer.”
Ashleigh stood and walked around the desk. She leaned against the front of it, looking down at him. “I like how you think. We'll punish them with the worst death we can design.” She offered her hand.
Alexander drew on a black glove. “Sorry, I don't feel like getting charmed today.” He shook her hand.
“There's just one little loose end I need to tie up,” Ashleigh said.
Alexander had arrived in a cab, so they left in Esmeralda's mother's car, an old Toyota Corolla. Ashleigh had lovingly convinced Esmeralda's mother that she should start taking the bus to work, leaving her car for her daughter to use. After the election, Eddie was supposed to buy her a new BMW convertible. Until then, it was best to avoid anything that might draw attention to the congressman's affair with her.