Death and the Girl Next Door

I balked in frustration. “I have visions of nonsense. They’re meaningless.”

“But they come true.”

“Not always.”

“What about when Tabitha backed into Mr. Davis’s SUV?”

I closed my eyes. “Brooklyn, do you honestly think the heavens would create a member of the Nephilim to protect a girl whose most realized prophetic vision involved a psychotic cheerleader behind the wheel of a Nissan?”

“Well—”

“He’s right,” Cameron said, polishing his gun with a ripped edge of his T-shirt. “You’re the prophet whether you want to be or not.” The bitter sting in his words was impossible to miss. “They make the rules, run us through their mazes, whatever they want whenever they want, and we have no choice.” His cool resentment made me shiver. “We’re pawns, Lor. Game pieces for them to play with. You may as well get used to it.”

“Who are they? Who makes the rules?” I asked, panic threatening to overtake me.

With an index finger, he offered one, solitary explanation. I followed his finger up and looked toward the heavens, his meaning so clear, so powerful.

I didn’t know what to say. For some reason, coming from Cameron, it sounded more believable, and yet surely God would never have placed such a gift in my bumbling hands. Surely there was someone more qualified. “I just—” I backed to the far wall. “—I just don’t feel very prophet-able.”

Jared’s expression was one of sympathy when he continued. “I should explain. But first, let me ask, have you studied the witch trials in history?”

I tilted my head and nodded, wondering what that had to do with anything.

He backed to the wall opposite me and leaned against it, watching me with a stony curiosity. “Long before the most notorious period of witch hunts, twelve centuries before the year of our lord, during the dawn of the age of iron, there was a woman named Arabeth who lived in a small village in Europe.”

Stuffing my hands in my coat pockets, I leaned against the wall and listened. Brooklyn sat on the crate and Glitch stood beside her, suddenly very interested in what Jared had to say.

“She had visions like you, a gift that risked her life, but her parents protected her, kept her visions a secret. She grew up, married, and had children of her own. Then one day, she had a vision she could not deny. The water from the main well in the village had been tainted, and she knew if people drank it, an illness of epidemic proportions would spread throughout the countryside. She ran to the well and tried to warn the villagers. But no one listened, naturally.”

I didn’t like where Jared’s story was going. Of all the history I had to learn in school, women and men being executed for witchcraft was among the hardest for me to wrap my head around. I recoiled every time I thought about the injustice, the stark brutality one human could visit upon another in the name of religion.

“When people began dying, their families panicked and blamed Arabeth. Even her own husband accused her of being unclean. And in the maelstrom of fear and superstition, she was dragged from her home and executed on the streets of her village. They claimed she cast spells and raised the dead, a misconception of the disease.”

I sank inside myself and shook my head, reluctant to hear any more.

“By that time, Arabeth’s husband knew that his three daughters also had the gift. He took them to Arabeth’s parents, threw them into the couple’s yard, and made his in-laws a promise: If they were still there at dawn, he would kill them all.

“Left with little choice, they took their granddaughters and fled into the night. Your ancestor, Lorelei McAlister, was the first woman in human history ever to be burned as a witch.”

I siphoned a sip of cool air, my heart aching for Arabeth. For her parents and daughters.

“What happened to the girls?” Brooklyn asked.

“The couple was elderly and they knew they couldn’t care for them much longer, so they gathered every cent they could and sent the daughters of Arabeth to three separate corners of the world. The eldest daughter was adopted by a wealthy couple and later had a daughter of her own. Her lineage continued for six centuries and ended with the last prophet in her line. Though her gift went unrecognized, her talent did not. She was the celebrated poet Sappho.”

“Sappho.” Brooklyn looked back at me in awe. Sappho was a Greek poet, her work greatly admired and sought after. And she was one of Brooke’s heroes.

“The youngest daughter,” Jared continued, “was taken in by poor farmers, but she grew up happy and healthy. Her lineage continued much longer and ended with the anointed one, the woman you know as saint Joan of Arc.”

This time, even Glitch and Cameron turned to look at me, the shock on their faces apparent.

Brooklyn turned back to him, her eyes wide with wonder. “So, in a roundabout way, Lorelei is related to both Sappho and Joan of Arc?”

Jared studied me as though I were a new life-form before answering, as though trying to judge my reaction to the current events. “She is.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had never been so humbled in my life. To know that I shared a common ancestor with such heroines, such absolute champions.

“That’s … amazing,” Glitch said. For once, he seemed to struggle with what to say.

I knew how he felt. When I finally found my voice, I asked, “What about the middle daughter? What happened to her?”

Jared’s features softened, his eyes glittering in the faint light. He seemed glad for my interest. Even relieved, perhaps. “Her name was Lara Beth,” he said, the soft consonants falling easily off his tongue. “She grew up a slave yet was revered and cherished by those around her. When she was sixteen, she had a vision that saved the life of a local landowner’s son. Indebted, he freed her and offered her a place in his household. Soon, she and the boy fell in love and were married. They had three sons, one of whom is your ancestor as well. Lara Beth became a respected healer and advocate for the slaves. She also thwarted a civil war, but that’s another story,” he added.