Alexander Death(9)

“Darcy, language!” her mother said.

“You tell Mr. Fancy-feathers I expect to get paid back for them charges on my credit card, too,” Darcy’s dad said. “What was you thinking, Darcy? We don't stay nowhere nicer than the Motel 6, since I lost my foot. We don't own a bank like some folks.”

Seth just looked at Darcy, hoping for some kind of explanation from her, but the girl looked like she was tottering toward a nervous breakdown.

“Darcy!” her dad said. “Wheel me on out of here. I'm gonna whup you good when you get home.”

“Okay, Daddy.” Darcy was blubbering as she turned his wheelchair and rolled him through the crowd toward the door.

Seth watched them leave, more puzzled than ever. Why had Darcy swiped her dad's credit card and rented a separate room, when Seth had rented a two-room suite for them to share? And why had Darcy come to orientation at all, if she wasn't going to college?

Altogether, it had been a terrible and senseless weekend.

Seth returned to the hotel, gathered up his overnight bag and the little suitcase in which Darcy had packed her things for the weekend, and then he checked out.

He climbed into his blue convertible, lowered the roof, and drove home through the stifling heat and humidity. The packet of orientation papers sat on his passenger seat, weighed down by his overnight bag. He wasn't looking forward to college. He wasn't looking forward to much of anything these days. Jenny had grown increasingly distant from him, and angry at him, over the last several weeks—even before last night's events—and he didn't understand why.

He drove home to Fallen Oak, feeling very cold inside, and very alone in the world, just the way he'd felt after his brother died. He still missed Carter a lot—without him, there had been nobody he could talk to, until he met Jenny.





CHAPTER FOUR





The Cessna soared through the night over the Gulf of Mexico, which lay like a black chasm below. Though Jenny was tired and sore, she found the night sky around her dazzling, and she was feeling giddy at her impulsive choice to run off with Alexander. The narcotic pain medicine he'd given her was helping, too, putting a nice warm and fuzzy halo around everything.

She gazed at Alexander, the boy who'd stepped out of her dreams and into her life, just in time to rescue her from the mob whipped up by Ashleigh's opposite—whose name was Tommy, according to Alexander.

Alexander stared straight ahead as he piloted the small aircraft.

The mystery of where he'd come from and where he was taking her thrilled Jenny. She felt like she knew him very well—in her dreams of one of their past lives, he'd been an ancient king of Sparta, someone who had protected her and cared for her. He had found a purpose for her deadly touch. Life must have been easier, Jenny thought, in those past incarnations when she could attribute her deadly touch to some god or demon, some easy myth where she could fit. The modern world had no such comfort to offer.

“Alexander,” she said. “Tell me more about the past.”

“Which past?” He grinned at her. He had a nice smile, and his dark eyes glittered, framed by his shaggy brown hair. His clothes were simple—a white shirt, tailored jeans—yet seemed terribly expensive. His shirt had felt soft and smooth to her touch, like it was made of cashmere. Maybe it was. Jenny wondered what a cashmere T-shirt must cost.

“Any of them,” Jenny said. “Greece, maybe.”

“You know about Greece already,” he said. “I should tell you about Egypt.”

“I had a glimpse of Egypt,” she said. “But it was all mud huts then. No pyramids or anything, not yet. They thought I was some kind of goddess. My job was to decide if people were guilty of crimes, and then punish them.” Jenny paused, trying to recall the scrap of past-life memory. “I think I believed them, when they said I was a goddess. What else was I supposed to think?”

“Oh, that's primitive,” Alexander said. “There's a more interesting one a couple thousand years later. I was a pharaoh called Netjenkhet. And your name was Hetephernebti. It was an age when people had time for really long names like that.”

Jenny laughed.

“We conquered north into the Sinai, south into Nubia, expanding Egypt in both directions,” he said.

“Was it always about war?” Jenny asked. “All of our lives?”

“The humans make war constantly. As long as we live among them, we must be like them. When they discover the things we can do, they either kill us or worship us. It's difficult to live in peace among them. They don't love peace enough for that.”

Jenny thought about the mob Ashleigh had raised against her in Fallen Oak. It had been a slow build, really—from the time Seth healed her dad in front of too many witnesses. He'd saved her dad's life, but it had really fired up the town on the subject of witchcraft. With plenty of help from Ashleigh, of course.