21

Obviously the old woman had slipped a cog.

Jamie had sat in silence letting it drag out, waiting for Nan to explain herself. She couldn't possibly know who her father was, or her mother. Nan just looked at her though, her expression both sad and angry.

"Hey Nan." Randy's voice came from the stairway. The two women looked as if they were deep into conversation, and for some reason it made him uncomfortable. So he'd decided it was time to butt in. "Lucy didn't scare you with her driving?"

Nan smiled at him. "Of course not. How are you, hon?" She accepted a hug from him and motioned to the chair. "Why don't you sit here and tell me your version of what's going on here?"

Randy shrugged and did as she asked. While they spoke quietly, Jamie got up and walked to the windows, peering out. She saw the SUV, her Jeep and presumably Lucy and Randy's car. It was the only vehicle not covered in snow.

"Jamie?" Her name made her turn to look at Randy. He'd apparently asked her something that she hadn't heard.

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it." He smiled. "Nan thinks we should go outside. Are you up for that?"

Was she? After Mark and Glen had stressed over the last few days that she shouldn't go out, after the wolf had taken a chunk from her leg, after being told that some weird presence outside might possibly be her father? "Yeah. I'm tired of being inside." She spoke while still in mid-thought, surprising herself. She would be with Randy, and Nan. Maybe even Lucy. She would be safe. If Mark wanted to give her hell over it, oh well. It wasn't like he owned her.

She went to get her coat and pull her boots on while Randy helped Nan. Jamie wondered if the old woman would be all right out there in the snow, but shook her head. She probably would be. Any woman responsible for raising Lucy had to be tough. She had that figured out.

Randy and Nan led the way outside. "Lucy not coming?" Jamie asked, zipping her coat and tucking her hands in her pockets.

Nan shook her head. The cold air was already turning her cheeks rosy. "She's got some errands to run in town. You'll be all right, hon." She stepped off the porch into snow that went above her knees. To Jamie's surprise, Nan didn't need help. She plowed through the snow with a lot more ease than either she or Randy could muster.

"So what did you mean?" Jamie asked, after they'd entered the line of trees.

Nan glanced in Randy's direction and sighed. "You don't care if he knows?"

"Of course not. They know everything else."

"Listen, it was a long time ago. If you are who I think you are...I used to work with your mother. She was like a daughter to me. I helped to train her." Nan looked at her once more. "I know I'm old and my memories are not as sharp as they used to be, but you resemble her. Her name was Sophie Reynolds."

"Was?" Jamie asked, feeling sick. Could Nan be right? Could she have known her mother? It seemed farfetched, but she seemed so certain.

"She passed away. Over thirty years ago." Nan sighed. "Its a long story, dear. She was one of the best hunters I'd ever trained. It came so naturally to her that I wondered why she even needed me at all. She was gentle and loving...and the spirits were drawn to her like nothing I'd ever seen. She had a...a...light. That's the only way I can put it that would even remotely describe it. Like a lighthouse, guiding them to her. Her problem was that she tended to get too attached to them. She cried for every soul she sent. Especially children. She had an affinity for them from the start."

"Nan...you need to rest?" Randy asked, taking her elbow as she wiped at her eyes.

"No, no. Its just...she was sad, so everyone else was sad. She had that effect on people." She patted Randy's hand and continued. "She met a man. Jackson. He was such a sweet person himself, and he cared for her deeply. It was obvious. If you can sense spirits, sometimes you can sense the sway of human emotion. Their love was mutual. There was talk of a marriage. Two weeks before the date they had set, something changed."

Nan reached for Jamie's hand. She took it without giving it a second thought. Randy still had her elbow. Jamie worried she was tiring herself out, talking and walking through the snow. "What happened?" She asked softly, unable to keep the question back.

"Something in Jack had changed." Nan spoke with a tremble in her voice. "He was not cold to Sophie, not at all. In fact, he seemed more clingy than loving. She was tired all the time, like he was keeping her up all nights. When I asked about her, she said it was pre-wedding issues, that Jack was afraid she'd change her mind. None of us knew then..." She took a shaky breath. "It was a gradual thing. By the day of the wedding, most of us invited knew that something was wrong. There were no spirits attending the ceremony. There wasn't even a sense of them. There was just...nothing. Spirits love happy occasions like a wedding, or the birth of a baby. They gather. It's something that no one quite understands, but everyone with the gift agrees with. As if they are there to bless the union. To our circle, if you have a wedding or a birth, the more spirits drawn to it, the better the outcome."

"Guests. Instead of spirits. Mom always called them guests." Randy spoke up with a smile.

"Yes. And it was a good thing. But at Sophie and Jack's wedding there were none. That was when I started to get suspicious. What I didn't know was..." She shook her head again. "Sophie came to me a week after the wedding. She was afraid. I'd never seen anyone so scared. She said that Jack wasn't Jack anymore. That there was something inside Jack that was controlling him. To any other person she would have sounded crazy, but you have to remember, I've been dealing with the dead all of my life. I believed her. I asked how she knew, and she said that he had told her. Had said his name was really Odin, and that he had killed Jack and taken over his body. He told her that he would kill her without so much as a blink of his eye. She was terrified. Because she had found out a month before the wedding that she was pregnant. At that point she was three months along. And Jack...or Odin...did not know. Sophie told me she thought that was the point of things anyway...he had kept her in the bedroom as often as he could as if trying to get her pregnant. He wanted children. She said it was his mantra, and the longer she went on pretending not to be pregnant, the angrier he got."

"But...what happened to Jack?" Jamie asked. She realized they had slowed their walk to the point of stopping.

"Died. I'm sorry, dear." Nan squeezed Jamie's hand. "Not long before the wedding. From what I could gather, it was a car accident. Jack couldn't pass. His unfinished business was Sophie. So this Odin got inside him and took him over. He was sucking the energy out of everything and everyone, including Sophie, to keep himself looking solid and real. And the thing was...we never suspected it. He's not a spirit like the rest. He's something else, something we didn't know how to deal with." She cleared her throat. "Sophie decided her only choice was to hide from him. We did the best with her that we could...but we're not experts, Jamie. She was safe for six months, nearly to her due date when he found her again."

"Odin..." Randy muttered. "Isn't that the Norse god?"

Nan smiled. "I'm sure that wasn't his real name either. He lied, of course. He confused himself and gave his name as Claudio to Sophie once when she questioned him about it." She looked to Jamie. "Sophie gave birth. Odin was there, watched as she delivered twins...a boy and a girl. It was the girl that Sophie worried about, because Odin had said if the children belonged to Jack, the girl would belong to him. At that time, there was no way to tell. Except for one thing."

"What was that?" Jamie managed to ask.

"The eyes. Jackson's eyes were beautiful. And unique. I haven't seen another person with gray eyes...until now." She smiled at Jamie. "Sophie waited two weeks after the birth. Odin was torturing her with thoughts of what he was going to do to the girl. The boy he did not even care to mention. It was as if he didn't exist." She coughed again, this time not merely clearing her throat. "The first chance she got, she grabbed the babies and ran. He was gone, presumably resting and gathering strength. She knew he would find her again, but she also knew that he was not linked to the babies. Not yet anyway. She did the only thing she could. She went to a nearby church and left the children there. When Odin found out...he was furious." Nan walked to the nearest tree and leaned on it, catching her breath. "But Sophie was still one step ahead of him. She knew that he would find out from her what had happened to the children, you see. He could pry at her, torture her, and even though she wanted to protect the babies, she knew that under constant torture she might slip and tell him. So she did the only thing she could. She killed herself to keep her secret from him." She pushed a hand through her short hair. "I got a letter from her two days after she had done it. It explained everything. I was told what to do about the children. I sat down and wrote out the letter that day, explaining to the church that had taken them that their mother had passed away, that she had no family, and that the children were to be adopted. Odin rampaged. For two days. Then he disappeared. As if his steam had run out. I myself helped Jack to the afterlife...Odin left his spirit there to suffer. He did not realize the whole time that Sophie had been pregnant, had the children, and died. Odin had somehow kept him from seeing any of it. He did not want to let go, but finally he saw that it was time."

"How?" Jamie asked, trying to process the story. She believed it. Every single word.

"How what, hon?"

"How did Sophie kill herself?"

"Is it important? That's not something that..."

"It might be." Jamie persisted.

"She jumped from a building." Nan finally conceded. "A new construction in town. The police found her body..."

"In the waste ditch pierced by metal poles and glass?" Jamie finished for her. Nan's eyebrows rose.

"How do you know that?"

"Because that's exactly how my brother died. Only in his case...he was pushed." Jamie bit her lip thoughtfully. "And you think Sophie was my mother? And Jack my father?"

"I'm almost positive." Nan nodded.

Jamie felt her eyes water with tears. Randy stepped over and looped an arm around her shoulders, comforting her. "Do you...can you...hell I don't even know what I want to ask."

Nan offered her a concerned smile. "If Lucy remembers what I asked her to do, I'll be able to show you pictures of them both when she gets back. But I already know. You're Sophie's daughter, there's no doubt in my mind."

The thought made Jamie cry harder. Of course she had a mother and father, she wasn't just hatched from an egg. But maybe knowing who they were, seeing their faces...on top of everything else that had happened, she just did not know how to take it.