“Because she hates me,” Ashleigh said. “If she knows I’m back, she’ll come and kill me, and she’ll kill anyone who gets in her way. That’s exactly what happened last time.”
“That’s scary,” Esmeralda said.
“Very,” Ashleigh agreed.
“But this French toast, it’s amazing,” Esmeralda said.
“Thank you! So, Tommy, killing her is more complicated than it seems. Then her soul gets free, she gets incarnated again. Then she’s a newborn baby somewhere on the Earth, and I have no idea where.”
“So we do reincarnate,” Tommy said. “All of us. Right?”
“All of us,” Ashleigh said.
“I don’t believe in that,” Esmeralda said.
“Well, I wouldn’t either,” Ashleigh said. “Except I just recently died, and now I remember the past lives.”
“Do you remember me in any of them?” Tommy asked.
“Bunches!” Ashleigh said. “All three of us. We’ve been friends for thousands and thousands of years. We always help each other. But some of our kind are evil, like Jenny and Seth, and we end up fighting wars against them. That’s why it’s important we stop them now, while we’re all young, before they can get too powerful and kill a whole lot of people. Like millions of people.”
“What do you mean by ‘our kind’?” Esmeralda asked.
“We’re old,” Ashleigh said. “Older than any human soul. But we were cast out from where we originated, and we found our way to Earth, and we learned to incarnate as human beings.”
“Like fallen angels?” Esmeralda asked.
“I don’t know,” Ashleigh said. “It’s hard to even remember things clearly. That’s the bad thing about being human, we have to focus so hard to incarnate that we forget everything that came before. The good part of being human, of course, is we get to use our powers. Plus, all the other pleasures available in the flesh. But you two know all about that, don’t you?” Ashleigh winked at Esmeralda, who blushed and looked down at her plate.
“So.” Ashleigh slapped the table, as if calling a meeting to order. “It’s time we get on with the old game. What I want to do is have Jenny Mittens kept alive, but in deep captivity. For the rest of what will hopefully be a very long, very boring life. We need her out of the way before we can hope to do anything else of significance.”
“What do you want to do?” Tommy asked. “Keep her in the basement?”
“No,” Ashleigh said. “And I have to say, my respect-o-meter did just drop a notch. I will not ‘keep her in the basement’ so that she can kill me in my sleep. I want her locked away, underground, maximum security, fed through a slit in a door. That is my dream for Jenny’s future.”
“Sounds expensive,” Esmeralda said.
“I’m not going to pay for it,” Ashleigh said. “I’m going to arrange it.”
“How?” Tommy said.
“I need your special power for the first thing, Tommy. You’ll have to drive down to Charleston, though. You can just take your bike.”
“What am I doing there?” he asked.
“You can go down there tonight,” Ashleigh said. “Talk to somebody for me. Then grab a hotel room. I have a list of errands for you.”
“We’re going tonight?” he asked.
“No,” Ashleigh said. “You’re going tonight. Esmeralda and I are staying here.”
“She’s staying with you?” Tommy asked.
“It’s okay with me,” Esmeralda said. She gave Ashleigh a big smile. “I’m really starting to like it here.”
“I like having you!” Ashleigh said. She took Esmeralda’s hand and held onto it. “Anyway, I’ll keep on Jenny with the whole poor-Darcy-needs-a-friend act. And I need Esmeralda to help me with a few things.”
“You really have it all planned out,” Tommy said.
“Of course,” Ashleigh said. “That’s what I do. I’ve made you into powerful men before, Tommy. Kings. Emperors. Think of how much fun we’re going to have in this crazy modern world.”
Tommy grinned.
“I’m so glad we all found each other again!” Ashleigh said.
“Me, too,” Esmeralda sighed, beaming at Ashleigh and holding her hand.
Chapter Thirty-One
Seth was in the library again late Saturday night, trying very hard to focus on Beowulf for his English final. He was relieved when his cell phone rang, because he thought it would be Jenny. He needed a break.
It wasn’t Jenny, though. His Blackberry identified it as WOOLY. That was Chris Woolerton, one of Seth’s friends from Grayson Academy. They were friends on Facebook, but Seth hadn’t actually spoken to him in person in a couple of years. Wooly’s family lived in Charleston.