Intuition (7 page)

Rayne slumps down and sits on the low wall of the porch. “Wow. So you're saying he's one of you? I thought you said there weren't that many Akhet in the world. Seems like every time I turn around you're telling me about another one.”

“I know. Griffon and Janine said that the same essences are often drawn to each other, like planets orbiting each other over many lifetimes. The fact that I'm remembering now seems to be bringing around every Akhet in Northern California.” I look at Rayne. Even though she's my best friend, I wonder how she can possibly help me with this. “Promise me you won't tell Griffon. Or Peter.”

“You said that Peter doesn't know about you guys.”

“He doesn't. But don't even bring up Drew's name. I'll figure this out, but I don't want Griffon hurt.” I remember the unrelenting pain and emptiness I felt during those days without Griffon, after I'd found out the truth about him. About who he'd been to me. “After all we went through before, I can't stand even the possibility of losing him again.” I grab her hand. “Promise?”

“Promise,” she agrees. “But I saw the way he was looking at you. I don't think this Drew guy is just going to go away. What are you going to do?”

“I'm not sure,” I say. “But for right now, avoiding him is a good place to start. I'm not going back in there.”

“You want me to go get Griffon? Tell him you have a headache and need to go home all of a sudden?”

I sit down beside her. “Would you? He's up on the roof with Kat and Owen. The stairs are at the end of the hallway.”

Rayne leans over to give me a hug. “Look at you and all this drama. What happened to the boring, cello-playing geek from a few months ago?”

The craziness of the night boils up inside and I feel a tear escape down my cheek before I can brush it away. “I wish I knew.”

“Come in,” Janine calls from behind her door.

I poke my head into her office, surprised to see that she's not alone. An older woman is sitting in the upholstered chair next to her desk, and she gives me a welcoming smile as I glance at the two of them.

“Sorry! I'm early. I'll come back in a half hour.” I've been so anxious to talk to someone about the Drew situation that I couldn't wait until our normal time to see her. I have no idea how I'm even going to bring it up, but I figure if anyone will understand, it's Janine.

“No, it's okay. Come, sit.” Janine motions to one of the empty chairs at the small round table that takes up most of the room in her small office. “We were just wrapping up. This is Sue Takami. She's going to be a guest lecturer here in the fall, so I was just giving her some tips on the ins and outs of the university.” Janine
nods to me. “This is Cole. We've been working together for the past few months.”

Sue smiles in my direction, her black eyes looking at me with a friendly curiosity, although she doesn't seem to want any more explanation about what kind of work a sixteen-year-old girl would be doing with a renowned university professor. “Nice to meet you.” The name is familiar, but it isn't until she speaks that I recognize her—Natsuko Takami. The latest book she wrote won all kinds of prizes and is being made into a major movie; she's been on all the talk shows Mom likes to TiVo.

“You too,” I say, trying not to get flustered and say something stupid. I reach out to shake her hand, and just before our fingers touch, I feel Akhet vibrations filling the space between us. I glance at Janine in surprise.

Janine's eyes open wide, but I can't tell if she's teasing me or not.

I look at Sue. “So you're . . .”

Sue looks quickly at Janine, and I feel a conspiracy in the room. “I'm a writer, if that's what you mean. I'm also a teacher. And a wife and mother.” Her eyes almost disappear as she laughs and shakes her head. “I'm sorry, Janine. I can't stand to see the confused look on her face a minute longer.” Her laughter turns into a grin. “I'm also Ahket. Like you. You're not wrong.”

I exhale and try not to be annoyed. Janine likes to pull these little tests on me, and I always hope she's laughing with me and not at me. I smile at her. “I'm never sure if I'm imagining things, because it seems like Akhet are everywhere lately.”

Janine's dark eyes blaze with interest. “Really? Who else have you met?”

Instantly I regret my words. “Nobody. Just, like, Veronique. And you guys.”

“I think it's like learning a new language,” Sue says kindly. “Suddenly, it seems like you hear it on every street corner.”

I smile gratefully. “Yeah,” I agree. “It is like that. Are you really coming to teach here?”

She nods. “I really am. Spirit Stories in Modern Literature.”

“Sue is an old friend,” Janine says. “I've been telling her all about you.”

Sue tilts her head to look at me. “Janine says that you have budding abilities as an empath. That's fascinating, and a skill the Sekhem will be champing at the bit to use.”

I shrug, slightly embarrassed. “I'm not very useful right now,” I say.

“No room for false modesty here. Soon Cole's going to outgrow me as a teacher,” Janine says. “She's picking things up so quickly that I've almost reached the limit of what I can show her. Pretty soon I'm going to have to pass her along up the ladder.”

“Really?” Working with Janine has been so comfortable that the thought of trying to stretch my abilities with another teacher is a little scary. “I thought we'd just keep doing what we've been doing.”

Janine laughs. “I'm like kindergarten as far as empathic abilities go. Within a few months, you'll be coming back to teach me what you've learned.”

“Are you enrolled at the university?” Sue asks. “My seminar is usually for upperclassmen, but I can try to pull some strings if you're interested.”

“That would be great,” I answer. “But I'm still in high school. I'm going to be a senior.”

“How exciting! Do you know what you're going to do after? Will you apply here?”

I glance at Janine. My future has changed so much in the past few months that I have no idea what I'm going to do. “I'd always planned on going to Juilliard. But . . . things have changed.” Not only is Juilliard completely off my radar, but no music school is likely to accept an extraordinarily talented cellist who can barely play a note. “I had an accident and can't play anymore.”

“A lot of Akhet don't even go to college these days,” Janine says. “It's not like the Sekhem are going to turn you away if you don't have a degree. If you decide to go that route.”

I stare at her. “Nice. A university professor telling an almostsenior that she doesn't have to go to college. My parents would love that.”

“I'm just saying you have a lot of options now.”

I consider that. I've never really thought about anything other than college. “Anyway, I have a few months before I have to really start worrying about it.”

“Well, I'll be glad to help in any way I can,” Sue says. “It's been so long since I've met an Akhet who wasn't Iawi—rather exciting to have someone new in the ranks.”

I can tell from the way she's talking that Sue must have transitioned more than a couple of centuries ago. “Thanks,” I say. In a rush, I remember what I wanted to talk to Janine about. “Listen, if you guys are in the middle of something, I don't want to interrupt.”

Janine looks at me full on for the first time, and I force
myself to look at the floor. Even though she says she doesn't have many empath abilities, I can never lie to her. “Is that all you came for? Our usual session? Because I'm getting the feeling that there's more.”

I glance at Sue. I'm going to try to keep Griffon out of this whole conversation, but I don't want it to be awkward for Janine. “It's . . . kind of hard to talk about.”

“Sue was my mentor when I first transitioned. If anyone can help you with a problem, she can.”

Griffon said that Janine isn't as Iawi as he is, but I know that this isn't the first lifetime she's remembered. “You guys were together before? That's part of what I wanted to ask about.”

They exchange looks, and even though I know that telepathy isn't part of the abilities of even the oldest Akhet, sometimes I wonder. It seems as though the two of them are saying volumes with just their eyes. “It was many years ago,” Janine says. “Centuries, actually. We've managed to maintain contact for the past four lifetimes.”

“How?” I ask, amazed. “I mean, how do you manage to find each other again? Griffon said that it isn't like all the movies make it out to be.”

“It's not,” Sue answers. “Many times there is an extreme age difference, or geographical separation. The past fifty years or so, things have gotten much easier.”

“What do you mean, easier?”

“Technology, for one,” Sue says. “Computers, the Internet.”

“Like some kind of Akhet database?” I ask. “You just put in your information and find people you've been connected to in the past?”

“That's not too far off,” Janine says. “These days, we take advantage of the tools we have. In the past, the Sekhem kept the records. Traveling on foot and by boat to get around sometimes made reaching the Sekhem center impossible, particularly if you were part of a social class that couldn't easily travel.”

“But if you were lucky, you could reconnect with people you'd already had a relationship with?”

Sue smiles at Janine. “The first time I met her, Janine was my grandson.”

“And Sue was my grandfather,” Janine adds, laughing at the look on my face. “Oh, come on. You must realize that Akhet reality means crossing gender, race, and class boundaries. Sue and I have been connected, just not in the way you might think; it's not like you can seek out your lost love through every lifetime. I already told you how things worked out between Griffon's father and me. No matter how strong your memories are of the other person, if both people don't share them, it won't work emotionally, even if it is physically possible.”

My mind is racing as the two of them talk about finding other Akhet as if it's as ordinary as sending a text. “But what if two people had a relationship in the past, and it ended . . .” I search for the right word, remembering my feelings at the memory of Connor being dragged out the front door by the soldiers. “Tragically. Does that mean they're fated to be together if they find each other in the next lifetime? And, you know, if one of them isn't a grandparent or something.”

“I've known some that have made it work in more than one lifetime,” Janine says. “But it's not all that common; the odds are against you.”

The fact that it's not common makes me even more convinced that Drew is wrong. He's not Connor. He can't be. “So if they're together again, and sort of the same age in the same place, does that mean that they should have the same relationship they had before?”

Sue watches me closely as I speak. “Are we talking specifics here, or just hypothetically?”

I can't look at Janine, because I know if I do, I'll tell her about Drew. I don't know if there's some sort of Akhet code, or just that mother-son bond, but I'm afraid that if I tell her the truth, she'll tell Griffon I was asking. “Hypothetically,” I say, and force a short laugh. “I'm just trying to figure out how it all works.”

“There's not a lot of data on it.” Janine turns to Sue. “But it would be a fascinating study. I'm not sure that there's some outside force called ‘fate' or ‘destiny' that makes people act a certain way. I think you have to work out each individual case on its own.” She turns the full intensity of her eyes on me. “What's his name?”

I look back at her, determined not to give it away, but I can see from her expression I've already lost. “Drew.” I say it so softly that I can barely hear myself speak, but I can tell by the look on Janine's face that the name reached her just fine.

Sue sits up straighter in her chair. “And he's someone you met recently?”

“Yes. He knows my sister. And I saw him at a party the other night. He keeps trying to tell me that we were together in England in the sixteenth century.” I look at Janine. “The same lifetime where I met Griffon.”

I'm almost rewarded by the fact that Janine looks surprised. “So what does Drew want from you?”

“He said it was fate that we're together now. I could tell he was hurt that I didn't believe him. I was married to someone named Connor . . . before . . . and I remember parts of it. I have a strong memory of him being taken away by the king's soldiers. Something about treason. I think it was just after that that he was killed.”

“And you're sure of these memories?” Sue asks. “This Drew person isn't imposing his memories on you?”

“I'm sure.” I pull the ankh out of my shirt, the dark red ruby in the center almost glowing, despite the fact that we're inside under fluorescent lights. “I remember Connor giving me this back then. Griffon returned it to me after all this time.”

Sue gets up and takes a step toward me. “May I see that up close?”

I nod, and she lifts the ankh up, examining the front and the back. “This is definitely from that time period.”

“He had it made for me. I remember him saying that in a memory I had early on.”

Sue looks at Janine and then back to me. “If he had an ankh made for you in the sixteenth century, then that means Connor was probably Akhet back then. It's not a common symbol for that time, at least not in England. He must be Iawi.” She sits back in her chair and looks at the two of us. “How did the ankh end up with Griffon?”

I hesitate, but don't see any reason not to tell her the truth. “He'd gotten it as payment. For executing me.”

She looks confused. “An Akhet executioner? I can't imagine.”