Blood of the Sorceress. Maggie Shayne

it embedded in some magical tool?” Tomas asked.

      “No. It’s in my heart. Where it’s always been. I’m bound to him through it. I can find him anywhere he goes. The rest of his soul cries out for it, the way the moon pulls at the Earth. It’s a constant effort to resist. But as I said at the hospital, I must give him some time.”

      “And what else?” Indy asked, getting up from the table and beginning to gather the plates, since everyone had finished eating. Selma got up to help, as did Bahru, who handed Ellie to her mother first.

      “I’m immortal, impervious to illness or injury—as long as my body isn’t destroyed—just as he is.”

      Everyone went silent and just stared at her. It was Indy who finally spoke. “Uh, in case you’ve forgotten, baby sis, your impervious immortal is in the hospital right now.”

      “He’s most likely fully healed by now. I imagine this was the Gods’ way of making sure he and I have time enough here in the physical realm to fulfill our destiny. If one of us were to be killed before Demetrius has the opportunity to make the decision he must make, it would be a terrible waste of all our efforts.”

      She pressed a hand to her throat. “If I die before Beltane, in a way that prevents me from reviving, with his soul-piece still inside me, it will die forever. The rest of his soul-pieces will die slowly without it, and he will expire into a death from which there is no return. He will simply cease to exist.”

      “That’s unbelievable,” Ryan said, getting up to help with the cleanup. Lilia did likewise, but as she passed her sister’s chair carrying the lasagna tray, Lena gripped her arm.

      “What about the baby?” Magdalena asked. “Demetrius wouldn’t have any reason to want to hurt her, would he, Lil?”

      “No. None. And you needn’t worry about his powers, either. Once he receives the final part of his soul he’ll return to being an ordinary mortal again, to live out an ordinary lifetime without any extraordinary abilities. And so will I. And so, I imagine, will each of you.”

      “Right,” Indy said. “So what’s the catch?”

      “I don’t—”

      “She means it sounds too easy,” Lena said as Bahru returned to the table. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? Otherwise you’d have given him back the final piece already.”

      Lilia lowered her head, nodded once. “Yes. First he has to be given time to experience life, as he is now. And then I have to offer him his soul-piece back, explaining that he must give up his powers and immortality if he accepts it.”

      “You mean he gets a choice?” Ryan asked.

      Lilia nodded. “Yes. The choice has to be his.”

      Everyone looked at each other, and then Indy said, “Who in their right mind would accept if it means giving up immortality, immunity to illness, rapid healing and superpowers, sis? I mean, what’s the upside for him?”

      “Oh, so much,” Lilia said softly. “He’ll be able to experience being human—fully. His senses will no longer be dulled. Being human is a highly sensual experience—we don’t get that when we’re in spirit form. The tastes and smells, the sounds and visual beauty. The sense of touch, of physical pleasure, none of that exists where there’s no body, and for him, they’re mere shadows compared to the fullness and richness he’ll experience with his soul intact.”

      Tomas set his napkin on the table, chewed his lip for a moment, and then said softly, “What if he chooses not to accept?”

      Of them all, Lilia knew, he was most familiar with their story, with the curse, the legends and mistaken interpretations, the history. Clearly he understood that all of it, the entire three-thousand, five-hundred-year cycle, was coming to an end with her arrival and Demetrius’s decision.

      “If he chooses not to accept his soul-piece, then at the precise moment of Beltane, he will die. He’ll be released into the afterlife, and it will go there to join him. There he’ll process all he’s learned, rest and understand, and reincarnate again if he so desires.” She lowered her head, not wanting to finish, but knowing they had a right to know the whole of it. “And so will I.”

      Her sisters shot to their feet, shouting denials, but Lilia held up her hands. “I’ve been allowed to linger all this time to right the wrong that was done so many years ago. The Gods allowed that as a way of correcting the imbalance, righting the dreadful wrong committed against us. But you all know it’s not the natural order. We’re supposed to live, to die, to rest, to live again. We’ve been allowed to circumvent the natural order. For three-thousand, five-hundred years, you have reincarnated lifetime after lifetime with the same names, with the memories ready to return to you—with the same loves you lost then reincarnating with you to give you a chance to find each other again.

      “And I’ve been allowed to linger between life and death, to watch over you, to call you to action when the time was right. None of that is natural. And it all comes to an end now, with me. But we must not—cannot—tell Demetrius that part of it. He has to make his decision out of the desire to be fully human, to embrace life and love again, not out of fear of death. We all know death is nothing to fear, anyway.”

      Selma was using her napkin to dab a tear from the corner of her eye, and the others were looking shocked and afraid.

      Lilia realized she’d risen to her feet in the fervor of her speech. She got hold of herself, took a deep breath and sat down again. “I will know when the time is right to go to him,” she said softly. “I’ll feel it. But until then, I’m here. We’re all here, together. Let’s enjoy this time while we have it.”

      Tomas looked troubled but nodded in agreement. “She’s right.”

      “I know that look,” Indy said, staring at her husband. “What are you thinking, hon?”

      “That Father Dom waking up from a coma on the same day your sister arrived is … too unlikely to have happened by chance,” he said. “Lilia, do you think there’s a connection?”

      “I’m certain of it.”

      Tomas lowered his eyes, and Lilia realized he’d been hoping she would give a different answer. “I’ll go see him,” he said. “I had no intention of ever talking to him again, not that I expected it to be an option. When the hospital called to tell me he was awake and asking for me, I—” He broke off, then took a breath, cleared his throat and went on. “But maybe I need to see what I can find out.”

      “It wasn’t his fault, what he did,” Lilia told him, watching his face, knowing this was a sore subject. Father Dominick had been like a father to him and then betrayed him bitterly.

      Anger rose in Tomas’s dark eyes. “He tried to kill the woman I love. He drugged my sister. He lied to me about who and what I was. He—”

      “He was playing his part in a complex story far too old for him to have understood fully, Tomas,” she told him. “I know you feel betrayed, but … you’re a spiritual man. Don’t you understand that things happen the way they’re supposed to, and that sometimes even bad things, things we hate and curse, we later realize happened for very good reasons? To move us on toward where we want to go. To make room for better things to arrive.”

      He blinked twice and shook himself as if she’d hit him between the eyes with a mallet.

      “I think it might be a good idea if I go with you to see him,” Lilia said. “Chances are he’s still a part of this. Possibly being manipulated by unseen forces, even now.”

      He nodded. “I’ll call the hospital, make the arrangements. We can go first thing in the morning.”

      They all continued clearing until the table was bare and gleaming, and the dishwasher was chugging softly. As everyone but Tomas gathered in the living room, sitting comfortably around the fireplace, Selma brought around coffee and dessert, eventually taking a seat herself. Tomas had gone