betrayed her. The last thing Jenny wanted was to meet another of their kind.
Mariella apparently lived in Paris, too, so this problem wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon.
Jenny hurried to hide the girl’s information, as well as the pregnancy tests, before Seth returned home.
* * *
“You okay? You look like you saw a ghost,” Seth said as he closed the front door behind him. “Not like a Casper-type ghost, either. More of a Headless Horseman kind.”
Jenny sat on the sofa in the living room, rereading a vampire book by Anne Rice that she’d loved as a kid. She’d always identified with Louis, the moody vampire who didn’t really want to kill anyone. Now she was staying in Paris, as Louis had for a while.
“I’m fine.” Jenny followed Seth into the kitchen, where he set his cloth grocery bag on the marble counter. He unloaded tomatoes, three kinds of cheese, and a long, crusty baguette, which had been baked very recently, judging by the delicious aroma that filled the apartment.
“You’re sure?” he asked. “Nothing happened today?”
“Sometimes you just have a bad day.”
“I’ll cook dinner, then. That’ll make you feel better.”
“Um...I doubt it. You should let me do it.” Jenny approached the stove.
“Are you questioning my cooking skills?” Seth asked. “Who poured you that awesome bowl of Chocos cereal yesterday? Tell me that.”
“You’re a master at adding milk.”
“As long you acknowledge that, I’ll let you cook. There’s pasta, there’s organic chicken...”
Jenny reached for the bottle of wine Seth had brought home, then hesitated. She could really use a glass just now, but the idea of drinking while pregnant bothered her. It was ridiculous. One night, she knew, she would wake up to find her thighs painted with blood and gore, and that would be the end of that. There was no reason to worry about the well-being of a fetus destined to die from the pox. Still, she resisted her desire for a drink.
“There’s really nothing wrong?” Seth twisted the corkscrew. “Something feels different today, doesn’t it?”
Jenny worried what he meant by that. Those of her kind who had powerful emotional bonds with each other, positive or negative, could sometimes sense and be drawn to each other. Alexander had become aware of Jenny’s location the night she flared up and killed the mob in Fallen Oak.
Now, this strange girl had found her way to Seth...and Seth might be feeling her energy, too.
“Just a regular, boring day,” Jenny said.
“Then tell me what’s on your mind.” He started to pour her a glass of wine, then gave her a puzzled look when she shook her head.
“I was just thinking about past lives,” Jenny told him. That was one topic guaranteed to lose Seth’s interest right away. He only had random fragments of past-life memories, and they were wicked enough that he didn’t want to learn more. He would usually change the subject immediately.
“What were you thinking about?” Seth asked. “Were we raping and pillaging our way across the ancient world or something?”
“No...we weren’t really together until our last couple of lives, actually. We were enemies before that.”
“So tell me.” He leaned against the counter, sipping wine. “Tell me about our last life.”
“Seriously?” Jenny hadn’t expected that. Again, she worried he could sense the girl who’d been searching for him...and maybe his sudden interest in the past had more to do with her than with Jenny, even if he didn’t consciously realize any of it.
“Why not?” Seth asked. “We never talk about it. I think I’m ready to learn about our past.”
“You’re sure?”
“You keep thinking about it, I want to hear about it. I bet I was a cowboy, right?”
Jenny took a deep breath. “It was the Great Depression.”
“That figures. We wouldn’t want to miss a time of worldwide misery, would we?” Seth said. He refreshed his wine glass.
Jenny placed a ripe tomato on the wooden cutting board. As she sliced it, she began to tell him.
“I was in the carnival,” she said. “I had a stage name, in the carnival. Juliana Blight.”
Seth spat wine as he laughed. “Were you a stripper?”
“Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Oh, I’m listening. This already sounds good.”
Chapter Five
Juliana waited on the low, narrow wooden stage, separated from the small dirt-floor audience pit by a wooden rail and a ragged curtain, which hadn’t yet opened for the evening. Out in the tent, customers who’d paid a few pennies could see Alejandro the sword-swallower, Zsoka the tattooed lady, some creepy marionette puppets, a knife-throwing act, and Punchy Pete,