Jenny Plague-Bringer(72)

“Warfare, murder, and deception,” Seth repeated, arriving with their food. “Is that near the cheese chalet?”

“More like the merry-go-round,” Jenny said. “Over and over again, life after life.”

“Oh, sorry, didn’t know we were having a heavy talk.” Seth sat down next to Jenny, scrunching her in the middle between him and Mariella. He passed out their food, which smelled delicious, fresh-baked bread and warm tomato bisque to fend off the cold.

“Apparently, I’ve been giving Mariella nightmares,” Jenny said.

“Oh, you, too?” Seth asked Mariella, and Jenny nudged him playfully. “No, seriously,” he said. “All these jumbled memories from the past. I keep dreaming about them, but they don’t make any sense. Like nothing happens in order, it’s just random scenes. Real horror-movie stuff, too.”

“I guess I’m helping you remember,” Jenny said. “Mariella, can you see anything else about Seth’s future yet?”

“I’ll look.” Mariella slipped off a glove and reached across Jenny’s lap to take Seth’s wrist. She looked deep into Seth’s eyes. Seth made faces back at her. “Stop it!” Mariella snickered, and she closed her eyes instead. “He’s there. Taking Seth into the dark. Everything’s still confused, covered in a fog...But the danger is there. He’s coming.”

“How soon?” Jenny asked.

“I still can’t tell.”

“Should we stock up on guns? What do we do?” Seth asked.

“I don’t think we can buy guns in France,” Jenny said.

“That’s too bad. In South Carolina, you could practically buy them at the gas station.”

“I can’t say what to do,” Mariella told him. “We can better prepare if we know more about him. We all need Jenny’s memories.” Mariella looked at her. “Jenny. Did you not say that someone helped you remember your past lives?”

“Alexander,” Jenny said.

“Could you not do this for us? For Seth and me? So that we can all be prepared?”

“I don’t know. We ate these mushrooms, psychoactive mushrooms. He guided me. I couldn’t do that now, with the...baby.”

“But Seth and I could.” Mariella had a pleading look in her eye. “And you could guide us without taking them.”

“I could try, but I could mess it all up,” Jenny said. “Besides, where are we going to get magic mushrooms around here?”

“I am an art student,” Mariella said, which made Seth laugh. “Tell me what these mushrooms looked like, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“It’s risky,” Jenny said. She thought about it for a minute. “But so is knowing that General Kranzler is coming for us, and not doing anything about it.”

“General who?” Seth asked.

“Gruppenführer Kranzler,” Jenny said. “A general in the Nazi S.S. Yep. I’m pretty sure that’s who’s after us. The question is: what does he want this time?”

“What did he want last time?” Seth asked.

“Supernormals. That’s what he called us. He thought we were on the front edge of human evolution. He thought our powers came from our DNA.”

“But they don’t?” Mariella asked.

“They’re in our souls, not our bodies,” Jenny said. “But, like everyone else, Kranzler tried to fit us into his own myths. In the ancient world, it was easy, because everyone believed gods and demigods were everywhere, so we fit right in. By the Middle Ages, we had to watch out for witch trials. But the Nazis were crazy about eugenics—I mean, they were crazy about a lot of things, but that was their biggest obsession. So they saw us in terms of biology and evolution, instead of anything supernatural.”

“But supernatural is more correct?” Mariella asked.

“Definitely,” Jenny said. “So they got more frustrated the more they studied and tested us...”

“I remember!” Mariella sat up as if she’d been zapped with electricity, and she gripped Jenny’s hand tight. “I remember...oh, the poor goats.”

“The poor goats,” Jenny agreed.

“What goats? I think I saw some marshmallow goats at one of the candy chalets,” Seth said.

“Maybe we should let Mariella tell you,” Jenny said.

“I don’t know that I could remember it all correctly,” Mariella told her.

“I’ll help. We’ll start by telling Seth what happened after we met. Just tell what you remember, and I’ll fill in the rest.”

Mariella drank her hot wine, then closed her eyes and concentrated.