62. Syssi

62

SYSSI

S yssi sat on the floor next to Allegra, watching her daughter playing with a shape sorter but not engaging as she usually did. Her mind was preoccupied with thoughts about the upcoming lunch with her mother-in-law.

What was she going to tell Annani? That she had seen someone who looked like Jasmine standing on top of a sand dune and some ruins?

Shai hadn't found any record of ruins matching what she had seen in the vision, so she was not even sure that it had been the Arabian desert. For all she knew, it could have been the Gobi or Sahara Desert.

Doubt crept in, as it had been doing all morning. What if her wish not to see Khiann dead had influenced the vision?

What if she had seen what she'd wanted to see rather than a hint of the truth?

Syssi shook her head. That was not how visions worked, and she knew that. Whatever she'd been shown was real. The problem was interpreting it.

"Mimi?" Allegra asked.

"We are meeting Auntie Amanda later in the playground. She is at work with Daddy now, and when they are done, we are going to see Nana. After that, we can go to the playground."

Since Amanda was attending the council meeting, she had suggested that they both take the day off. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a welcome treat. Today, however, it just gave Syssi more time to stew in her uncertainty.

The change in schedule had Allegra a little off-kilter, but the visit to her grandmother's would get her in a good mood.

"Nana!" Allegra's eyes sparkled with excitement, and she pushed up to her feet.

Syssi laughed. "Not yet, sweetie. We need to wait for Daddy to get home."

The sparkle in Allegra's eyes dimmed, and she sat back down, choosing to pass the time with one of her many board books. She liked to pretend that she was reading out loud and making out sounds along with the facial expressions appropriate to the story she was narrating in her own way.

Usually, it was hilarious to watch, but today Syssi was having a hard time thinking about anything other than the vision she'd summoned the previous day.

The vast desert landscape, the mysterious woman with the golden-flecked eyes, the ruins half-buried in the sand—it all swirled in her thoughts, a kaleidoscope of images that refused to settle into a clear message.

Allegra babbled on with a string of nonsensical sounds that brought a smile to Syssi's face.

"What do you think, sweetheart?" she asked. "Is your granddaddy out there somewhere?"

Allegra looked at her with a puzzled look in her eyes. "Gaga?"

That was what she called Syssi's father.

"The other granddaddy, sweetie."

Khiann wasn't Kian's father, but he was Annani's husband, and Syssi had no problem referring to him as Allegra's granddaddy.

Besides, Annani believed that all her children were fathered by Khiann's spirit and that the human men she had used had merely been the physical vessels for his spirit to occupy.

The problem was that, at the time, the goddess had believed that her husband was dead, and she'd been searching for his reincarnation. If he had indeed survived and was in stasis, his soul was still trapped inside his inert body, so it couldn't have entered the bodies of the men who had fathered Kian and his sisters.

Then again, what did she know about the metaphysical world of spirits?

Before meeting David and hearing evidence that reincarnation was real, Syssi had been undecided about the existence of a spirit that survived the body's death.

But now, she not only believed in the soul's survival but was more inclined to also believe related stories, like the one about the soul leaving the body every time a person fell asleep and returning upon waking.

Maybe Khiann's soul had left his sleeping body from time to time to wander the world during the past five thousand years. Perhaps Annani was right, and his spirit had possessed the bodies of the men who had fathered her children.

Closing her eyes, Syssi wondered whether Jacob had been reincarnated already. Thinking of her brother always brought tears to her eyes and stupid, irrational guilt.

What if he was still wandering the spirit world and waiting for her or Andrew to have a boy so he could reincarnate in the family?

Did the soul care about keeping the same gender in its next incarnation?

Was it given a choice?

According to David, it depended on what the soul needed to accomplish in its current incarnation and what faults it needed to fix.

Jacob's only fault had been his impulsivity, and in the end, that was what had killed him.

Fates, how she hated motorcycles. Even as an immortal, Syssi couldn't look at one without thinking it was a death trap.

Opening her eyes, she glanced at the clock on the wall and sighed. It was still early, and as much as Kian wanted to keep council meetings short, they had a tendency to drag on, especially now that Kalugal, Toven, and Jade were also members. Jade wasn't a problem because she was even more curt than Kian, but Kalugal and Toven had big egos and liked to talk.

Nevertheless, Kian would make sure to be home on time so they wouldn't be late to his mother's.

Annani did not appreciate tardiness, even if it was justified.

Syssi wasn't looking forward to the visit. Her vision hadn't definitively shown that Khiann was alive, and it hadn't shown him dead either, so basically, it hadn't provided them with a definitive answer.

Annani would be disappointed.