“Anything you want to do is fine with me.” Juliana beamed at her while they left the lab. She was already forgetting all about the dead man on the table behind them.
The next morning, an hour before sunrise, Juliana woke in her bed shaking and drenched in freezing sweat. Alise’s spell had worn off, and she understood that she’d killed a man in cold blood. Alise had thoroughly enchanted her with her dangerous power, the one that made people mindlessly obedient to her.
Juliana sobbed as the full impact of what she’d done slammed into her. She’d spent her life avoiding everyone as much as possible, trying to keep the demon plague trapped inside her while it was eager to flow out and infect others. She’d never killed anyone when it wasn’t self-defense...except for her mother at birth. Now she’d taken another innocent life, and she could never undo it. The idea that the scientists would have brought Sebastian in after her was a lie—they wanted to study the dead man to understand her powers, and healing him immediately would have made the entire test pointless.
Juliana clutched her pillow tight. She looked across the dim room at Mia, sleeping soundly. How could she ever face her friend again? How could she ever face anyone again? Juliana felt she deserved to die for what she’d done.
She’d wanted to leave before Alise had ensorceled her—now she would insist on it. She promised herself she would never fall under Alise’s spell again.
Chapter Thirty-Two
A guard appeared at the narrow window in the steel door to Seth’s cell. “You have a visitor,” the man’s voice said over the intercom. “She’s eager to see you.”
Seth stood up and started for the door, but the guard ordered him to sit back down. Seth returned to the edge of his bed. It had been a long, slow day, broken only by the arrival of breakfast (toast and canned pineapple) and lunch (toast and beans). The guards slid his food trays through a very narrow panel at the bottom of the door, shoving it deep inside his cell with something like a broomstick. Seth always had to catch his tray before it hit the wall and spilled all over his floor.
The days were otherwise extremely long and slow—he kept refusing to cooperate with the secretive government agency that had captured them, and in return he had nothing to read, no television, nothing to do except sit in his cell and wait for nothing to happen. His only diversion was looking through all of his new past-life memories, learning about times he’d lived in nineteenth-century London, in the Italian Renaissance, the Middle Ages. He’d often been cast as a kind of sorcerer or witch doctor. He’d also spent a number of lives as a nearly invincible warrior, leading armies into conquest, quickly recovering from countless arrow and sword wounds, which his men naturally saw as a sign of divine favor, spurring them on to fight harder.
Seth and Jenny had both resolved to never to be used as weapons again.
Now, he waited anxiously as the door slowly opened, hoping that they’d sent Jenny to see him for some reason. He was disappointed when Mariella entered instead, and the guard slammed the door behind her.
“Seth!” Mariella ran toward him, and he stood and awkwardly accepted her hug as she pressed herself against him.
“Have you seen Jenny?” Seth asked.
“No...they wouldn’t let me see her.” She looked up at him. “But I’ve been doing their tests, and they’re happy enough that I could ask for one privilege. I told them I wanted to see you.”
“You did?”
“Of course. I needed to see you....I needed a friend. And you always make feel so safe.” She looked up at him and brushed her fingers through his hair. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“I’m glad you’re okay. I just wish I knew what they were doing with Jenny.”
“I’m sure Jenny’s fine.”
“How can you know that?”
“We’re fine, aren’t we?” Mariella smiled and touched his cheek. “They haven’t hurt us, so I don’t think they’d hurt her, either. If they wanted us dead, they wouldn’t have bothered bringing us all this way.”
“And I wish I knew how the baby was doing,” Seth said. He’d worried constantly about Jenny losing this one, just as she’d lost all of them in past lives. He knew it was useless to hope, but he hoped more than anything else for a better outcome this time. He needed the baby to live—he could not imagine what life would be like if they lost it.
“You’re under a lot of strain,” Mariella said softly, tracing her finger down his cheek to the corner of his lip. “So am I. That’s why I begged them to let me see you. I need you, Seth.” She rose up on her toes and tried to kiss him, but Seth dodged it.