moment, his breath warm in her hair and against her scalp. “I couldn’t bear living without her after waiting so long to touch her again. And then she was with me … and we had a week. Just one week in two hundred years. A hundred before and a hundred after. I don’t know why it takes us so long to come back, but it does. And then suddenly it’s like our eyes are opened, and we can sense souls that are leaving the living world as they brush against the Ether. Then we reach out and grab hold of them and we come back if they agree to live with us.”
“It’s almost unfair, to ask someone if they want to die or live with you. Does anyone ever choose against you?”
“All the time. Or we realize we aren’t going to be compatible souls. There are no absolutes. I think you’ve learned that lately.”
She yawned and nodded. She felt herself drifting. Almost floating and spinning.
“Jackson?” she said softly.
“Mmm?”
“I’m going now.”
“Yes, love, I know. I’ll be here waiting for you.”
“Okay,” she said.
And then she fell asleep.
Blue. The misty fog of the Ether was the most beautiful cerulean blue. Like a vast fluffy ocean, mist scudding to and fro. She felt as though she were in her own body, living, breathing, touching, and feeling, but she knew she had no substance. It was just her. No frills. No clothes. No words to define herself as a woman or a professional. All of that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was finding Hatshepsut and going back to Jackson.
“I am here,” a soft, dulcet voice said, the accent so beautiful and rich with a culture completely alien to her. “I am here. Has Menes sent you to me then?” An apparition appeared in the form of a tall, dark-skinned and dark-haired woman. Her hair was dressed up in braids, coarse beads woven within. “Have you come to give yourself over to me? Will you let me show you a new life and a new world?”
It was odd how off-puttingly dramatic it sounded. Was this the woman, the soul Menes loved? Now that she was incorporeal, all she had was the senses of her soul, and something told her the woman before her was not complementary to her. It felt wrong. So when the woman reached out for her she pulled back and moved away.
“What’s wrong with you, mortal female? If you do not accept me and bring me to my king you will die. You will not come back to the man your heart broadcasts love for.”
“I …” It was weird speaking without a mouth, lips, and tongue expression on his face. vg. to do so. It was more an emanation of thought, like telepathy. “I don’t believe you!” she burst out. “You cannot be the woman that man professes to love!”
She smiled then, softening her approach. “I am sorry. I have been here so long and my last lifetime was not a good one. I didn’t wish to be born again. But Menes has talked me into it. Now come. Touch your soul to mine and we will fulfill this love story you so aspire to. I will let you know how a queen should be revered and how a king should beg for her love.”
She reached for her again and Marissa wavered with indecision. If she refused this woman she would lose her life. She would lose Angelina and Jackson and everything that meant anything to her. She will have let go of all of it for nothing. She didn’t see what choice she had. Perhaps, with time, Hatshepsut wouldn’t seem so harsh. So … cold and autocratic. But Jackson had told her that the Ether made things feel strange. Perhaps she was making harsh judgments because she was still scared of what was about to happen to her.
Enough, she told herself. You committed to this course, now finish it.
Slowly she reached out to touch the other woman’s soul.
“No!” The scream raced in on the mists, screeching from the left all the way to the right. “Do not touch her!”
Marissa jerked back, barely in time, all acceptance leaving her and blocking her soul from this other one. Permission, she remembered. They couldn’t join without the host soul’s permission.
“Do not touch this false beast,” a powerful feminine voice said, belonging to a second woman, stunningly beautiful and bald. Gold and tourmaline earrings flashed in her ears, a golden collar sat at her throat.