“Mikola had expected her half of his soul to migrate to him, to bring him strength, to cure his deformities, but with her dying breath, Chavi pointed a bloodied finger to the center of his chest and said a single word:
“Mine.”
The old woman lowered her head as if weakened by the telling of the story.
Anna stared at her, waiting for more, but nothing came. It looked as if she had fallen asleep.
Then she stirred. “This is, of course, a story that was told to me as a young child. There have been embellishments over the years, but the essence of what I’ve said is true.”
“But you haven’t told me all of it,” Anna said. “Where does it go from there?”
“I think you know.”
“Mikola went looking for Chavi and found her in the next life, taking what he felt was rightfully his.”
The old woman nodded. “He was convinced that the last word she spoke was a final curse. If he didn’t take his soul from her, she’d surely take it from him.”
“But how did he know where to find her?”
The old woman tapped her nose. “He relied on his instincts. With every new life, our souls naturally seek out those we have known in our previous lives. If he couldn’t find her directly, he would search for those who had been close to her. Like a lover. Or a friend.”
“The photographer,” Anna said. “O’Keefe.”
“Among others.”
Anna turned, looking at Pope. Then she thought of Susan and it all made a kind of twisted sense to her.
He’s always watching, Susan had said.
Could Mikola have been watching them? And what about the Worthingtons? Did he watch them, too? Had their lives somehow intersected with the Fairweathers, causing him to zero in on Kimberly, thinking she might be the one?
It was like some cosmic game of hide-and-seek, and Mikola sometimes got it wrong. Perhaps the eyes of those chosen were close, so close that he had to take a chance, only to discover that he’d made a mistake.
I’ve made many mistakes, he’d told her.
How many people, she wondered, had he killed? How many innocents? All of it on Chavi’s shoulders. Her shoulders.
“I don’t understand,” Anna said. “If he wants my soul so badly, why didn’t he just take it from me the first time and get it the hell over with?”
“Chavi’s curse,” the old woman told her. “Because of her refusal to let it go, he could take only a piece at a time. One new spoke for every successful kill. He started with eight, but he needed eight more to complete the wheel.”
Sixteen spokes, Anna thought. Hadn’t Jillian Carpenter been the fifteenth? And didn’t this mean that she, Anna, represented the only remaining piece?
“I’m the last,” she said.
The old woman nodded.
“But if he’s been hunting me from life to life, why doesn’t he get older? He should have been long dead by now.”
“Ahhh,” the woman said. “According to the story, this is exactly what Chavi believed would happen. In that final moment, she thought she had outwitted him. But he began to study the black arts and came to know them intimately.” She paused. “He grows older, just as any man would. But to you and me, he does not seem to age because he is not of our time.”
“What?”
“He spends much of his life moving in the spaces between time. As we might travel from continent to continent, he moves from year to year, decade to decade.”
“Wait a minute,” Anna said. “Are you telling me he’s some kind of…”
She couldn’t complete the sentence. It was too absurd.
“Is it so hard to believe?” the old woman asked.
“Frankly, yes.”
“He’s a powerful soul. And with each new spoke, he becomes more powerful.”
Anna felt light-headed. This was too much information, too fast. She was still trying to assimilate to this new world of blood rituals and gypsy witches and multiple lives. And this was one step she wasn’t sure she was willing to take.
“But how?” she asked. “How is it possible?”
“The mirrors,” the old woman told her. “It’s said that they are his pathway through time. That if he stands before them and looks beyond his reflection, when he ceases to see himself, he sees the world, all the way back to its very beginning, and forward, to eternity.”
“ Through the Looking-Glass,” Anna said softly, remembering the book she’d seen in the Fairweather house. “But how can that be? If all it takes is a mirror, he’d be popping up all over the place.”
The old woman shook her head. “Not just one. They say he needs the strength of a thousand mirrors to make his passage.”
Anna balked. Another ridiculous notion.
Then it hit her.
The house of mirrors. He had dragged her toward Dr. Demon’s House of a Thousand Mirrors.
And hadn’t Jillian first felt his presence when she and Suzie were near the Miner’s Magic Mirror Maze? And what about the previous victim? Mary Havershaw? Hadn’t she mentioned seeing him at Coney Island?
That was how he was doing it. What other explanation could there be?
“When he was a child,” Anna said, “the sideshow he was caught sneaking into. Was it the house of mirrors?”
The old woman nodded. “Such places have always fascinated him.”
Anna stood up. “I have to go to Big Mountain.”
“Yes,” the old woman said. “That is where you will find him. And you must find him and kill him and take back your soul. But it must be you who kills him. Only you.”
“Why?” Anna asked.
“Anyone else, and the soul will move on to the next life without you, forever fragmented. And as you must know by now, a fragmented soul is not a healthy soul.”
Probably better than anyone, Anna thought.
“But he’s wounded and weak,” the old woman continued. “Perhaps more vulnerable than he’s ever been.”
Her eyes took on a faraway look, as if she were listening to some inner voice.
Then she smiled again. “And he doesn’t know you’re coming.”
4 5
“ I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” Pope said.
They were back in the Pathfinder, Anna staring at the sinkhole in front of them, wondering if it was a preview of things to come. It was certainly a commentary on her life. On all of her lives.
“Did you hear what Madam Zala told me?”
“Every word of it.”
“Then what choice do I have? We got exactly what we came here for, and if I don’t go after this guy, he’ll come after me again. I think I like the idea of being first this time.”
Pope took his cell phone out. “At least let me get Jake in on this.”
“No. Leave him out of it.”
“Why? He has resources. He can-”
“No, Danny. This is my battle. Between me and Mikola. I have to be the one who does this.”
