Deja Who (10 page)

“I
thought you were murdered in your other lives.”

Leah braved a peek at Archer, who didn't seem a) horrified, b) revolted, or c) bored. Just interested, and concerned.

“The ones where I'm not an impotent observer, yes.”

“What are you talking about, impotent? You—”

“It means—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Archer had his hands up. “I know what impotent means. From the dictionary, not from any, uh, personal issues. But how can you say you're just a watcher—you got arrested with the entire French royal family! You tried to help them escape, it's not your fault you all got caught. I mean it wasn't your fault.” He squinched his eyes shut and rubbed them, hard. “Argh, hate talking about past lives, all the verb tenses get weird.”

Leah hadn't considered that. “Well . . . I cared about them and they all died. I couldn't do anything.”

“Except learn from it and bring that knowledge into your next life?”

“Except I'm not. I just end up in the middle of some incredible terrible event in world history and can't change anything or do anything.” Cripes, it had been so difficult to share this with them and she wasn't sure they were getting it. Which was fair, because she wasn't sure she was, either. But still: frustrating.

“So, what?” the mayor asked. She and Archer were sharing Leah's carrots. “You were always on the sidelines. Or you think you were, which can be the same thing in some cases. So?”

Nope. They don't get it. Should have kept my flapping mouth shut. Tight.
“That isn't—”

“You were back then, and way back then, and way way back then, and you are now, because Insighters are always on the sidelines, it's pretty much a job requirement, and if no one's ever told you, you're a bit of a chilly bitch. So?”

“So maybe
that's
the problem.” They had been in the park long enough for the sun to begin to set, and deep golden rays slanted across Cat and Archer's faces. Leah couldn't help but be pleased that the only two people in her life she cared about

(you haven't even known him a week! how is that “in your life”?)

seemed to be getting along. Sharing carrots, even. (Ugh.)

“What, being a chilly bitch?” At Leah's arched eyebrows, Archer added, “I'm just using the mayor's term! You didn't object, so it's agreed-upon. Unless you never want me to say it again. In which case, the term ‘chilly bitch' is dead to me.”

“That's not necessary,” she said dryly, and hoped he couldn't hear the smile lurking behind her tone.

“Were you an Insighter in any of those lives?”

She shook her head. “No. Or not officially.” Though around since man first clubbed his first caveman girlfriend and later felt conflicted about it, Insighters had only been officially a thing (with accepted, industry-wide salary ranges, job protection from the government, and HMO coverage) for the last few decades. “If I ever was one, I don't remember that part. Or I'd get a flash of something from another life and put it down to nerves or superstition or being stressed out by the French Revolution.”

“It certainly sounded stressful,” Archer agreed, and ate a carrot.

They'd only interrupted her tales of woe twice: Archer to ask what happened to Marie Antoinette's daughter (
Madame Royale
Marie-Thérèse, later dauphine of France, survived the Reign of Terror, was the queen of France for twenty minutes, and lived into her seventies), and Cat to comment that Leah's past lives definitely proved that no matter when you lived or what you lived through, job security was paramount.

“Really?” Archer asked, leaning back to look up at Cat, his eyebrows arching in amusement. “That's what you're taking away from all this? When the peasants come to cut off your head, be glad you at least kept your job?”

“It's tough out there,” Cat replied, unruffled by the teasing. “Job hunting sucks. Can't take steady work for granted in this economy. Or any other economy, come to think of it. I mean, jeez, even being a member of the ruling family isn't a guarantee. Education is key, y'know.”

“
Anyway
,” Leah continued, “I think that's the thread. I think maybe I keep getting murdered because I can't
not
be passive.
Or,” she added when Archer and Cat opened their mouths, “when I try to do something, anything, and it not only fails, people die. So I've basically taught myself never to get involved, never to interfere.” She shook her head in frustration. “Insighting is the perfect job for me. Like Cat said: part of my nature.” Her horrible, prickly, bitchy nature, which, incredibly, neither Cat nor Archer seemed to mind. So far. She turned to Archer. “Speaking of natures, have you ever seen an Insighter? Professionally?”

“Uh . . . no.”

That was an odd pause. Almost like he was worried she'd be offended. But Leah, who confronted former serial killers, rapists, child killers, dictators, monarchs, and disgruntled postal workers, and had been insulted by the best (and the worst) was almost impossible to offend. When you knew you were going to be eventually murdered, it was hard to work up a state of pissed-off if someone called you a bitch.

She frowned down at him; he was still sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the bench. “You've never seen an Insighter? Not even once? Most parents bring their kids in at least once, so they can be on the lookout for . . . well . . . anything, really.” Unless, of course, they were too busy hauling their preschooler to cattle calls for juice commercials and catalog shoots for back-to-school clothes and runway tryouts for designer swimwear shows.

The flip side of parents like Nellie, who had no use for Insight and refused to acknowledge anyone's view but her own, were helicopter parents. Choppers were obsessed with their children's past lives, and diagnosed same on their own. “She was born on September 11, two hours after the second tower fell, which
totally explains her fear of heights! And possibly her fear of fire, planes, and OSHA regulations.”

“But she isn't afraid of heights or fire or planes or OSHA regulations.”

“Yes, but she
will
be. It's inevitable; she can't fight her past. It will eventually devour her!”

“I'm not sure that's—”

“So what are you going to do about it? Huh? What? Huh? You take Blue Cross/Blue Shield, right? Right?
Right
?”

I think in my baby's past life I was there, too, except I was Joan Crawford and that's why my baby is scared of wire coat hangers.

My preschooler has the attention span of a four-year-old! Obviously he had ADHD in a past life, so you'd better get him started on Ritalin ASAP.

My teenage son is moody and hates me, but when he was little he was nice and he loved me. Something has gone terribly wrong in his past life and we have to fix it because it's not normal for teenagers to fight with their parents like this!

It was a little like patients studying the Internet to diagnose themselves, then telling the doctor the diagnosis and expecting him to fall in line and whip out the scrip pad.

“Nope,” Archer was saying. “I've never needed an Insighter.”

“Oh. One of those, hmm?”

“Ah, man,” Cat sighed.

“What, ‘one of those'?”

“Don't do it, Archer,” Cat added.

“You know what ‘one of those,'” Leah replied. “Are you?”

“It's nothing personal.
You're
great. It's just, your job sucks.” He shifted his position. “I think, in general, people can solve their own problems. Or at least be able to try. I think looking
back and having regret after regret, being
reminded
of regret after regret, isn't helpful and . . . and that's all, I guess.”

“You might as well finish,” Cat said kindly as Leah stared fixedly down at him.

“Well, basically, most Insighters are delusional snoops. ‘Only I can fix you! Only by beating you over the head with all the fuck-ups you can do absolutely nothing about can you get your life in order, so let's hop to it. That'll be $149.72, by the way.'” At the look on Leah's face, he added weakly, “No offense?”

“We never tell a client to hop to it.” She plopped down on the ground in front of him. “Well. I can't say I've never heard that before. Which explains why I can't see you. You're
rasa
, yes?” Slang for
tabula rasa
, the blank slate. Or, to put it another way . . . “I can't see your past lives because your brain isn't wired to access them. You're . . .” She paused and groped for the appropriate phrasing.

“Pure as newborn snow?”

“You stop mixing metaphors right now,” Cat warned. “Hate that shit.”

“—life-blind,” Leah finished.

“Hey!” Archer was pointing at her. “You can't use that phrase, that's
our
phrase. Also, it's bullshit.”

“Mmm.” Leah had never met a
rasa
; now there was one right in front of her and there wasn't much she could do for him. If Archer couldn't see his past lives, she could not, either. “Am I the only Insighter you've stalked? Um, spent time with?”

He flashed her a wounded look. “My cousin's one. She explained why she gets kind of edgy around me.”

“That's good, but what does that have to do with Insighters?” Cat asked, grinning. “There's gotta be lots of reasons people
get edgy around you. I'm thinking of half a dozen without even trying.”

“Hilarious, Your Honor. Anyway, she told me that Insighters can't see my past lives and it
really
freaks them out.”

“Life-blind, huh?” Cat was looking at him thoughtfully. “Jeez. That's gotta be like . . . I dunno . . . missing a limb or something. Sounds wicked hard.”

“It's actually wicked fine. Suits my personal philosophy pretty perfectly.”

Leah managed a sour smile. This was awfully close to people who weren't alcoholics being unable to understand why alcoholics can't control their drinking.
Look at me! I just say to myself, Self, don't have a drink tonight. And I don't. See? Easy. Now you try.

She had another theory about this puzzling, interesting man, and it wasn't that he was life-blind. A most-likely ridiculous theory, but this wasn't the time to bring it up. And she was probably mistaken. But if she wasn't . . . she'd never known someone like him before, in all of her lives (that she knew of, at least) and maybe . . .

Hmm.

“My sister saw an Insighter every month for years, and it sure as shit didn't save her. But I never translated that to ‘my sister died anyway, ergo Insighters are useless.' It's like telling a cancer patient that because chemo didn't work for so-and-so, it won't work for them, either.”

Leah said nothing. Cat never talked about her family. Ever.

“I'm sorry,” Archer said after the awkward pause. “How did she die?”

“Drowned.”

Another pause while Leah watched Archer scan the older
woman's face. Cat seemed almost preternaturally calm, but then, she often
was
almost preternaturally calm. “If you don't mind my asking, how'd it happen?”

“She was underwater too long.”

Ohhhhh, boy.

Archer went from concerned to annoyed back to concerned, shaking his head at the grinning Cat. “I figured
that
. God, my heart. I feel like I'm tiptoeing across land mines here. I assumed she was a little kid at the time—”

“Nope. Seventeen.”

“And?”

“Drunk.”

“Ah.”

“Also high.”

“Okay.”

“My point is, sometimes something shitty happens and it doesn't have anything to do with what happened before.”

“Correct,” Leah said, “but sometimes it does.”

M
y name is Isabella Mowbray.

Mother is desperate and angry, and hides both behind tight smiles, and so it's time for the nasty treats. Isabella doesn't mind; she has been waiting for such things.

Isabella had eight siblings; they are dead. She had two stepsiblings. They are dead. Her grandmother is dead. Her father is dead. Her stepfather is dead.

They had weak stomachs. All her brothers and sisters and her father and her grandmother, and her stepfather and stepsiblings, who were no blood relation, which made Isabella wonder if weak stomachs were contagious, they were all cursed with weak stomachs and they are dead, and Isabella's stomach has hurt for two weeks and she bleeds when she pees.

She doesn't mind. It's lonesome and nerve-racking with just Mother; her strained smiles are terrifying. So is her belly, which is bigger every month. For a while Isabella thought the family
stomach weakness had finally caught her mother, too, but eventually realized what was happening and felt better.
She's growing my replacement. When I die she won't be lonesome.

So that was all right.

Isabella knew what was happening to her more or less from the first headaches. She was only ten, but she had always been an observant child. “Owl's eyes,” her mother teased, “always watching me.” Dreadful pounding headaches like someone was sitting on her chest and hitting her on the top of her head with a rock over and over and over. At first, her greatest fear was that the headaches would kill her, kill her and leave Mother alone. Then her greatest fear was that they would not.

Head pain, nasty poopies, and tired, all the time tired. Even thinking was exhausting; it was so much easier to lie there and wait for . . . for whatever. Her hair started to fall out, her lovely long dark hair just like Mother's, and sometimes her body would flail and shake out of her control and that would leave her even more drained, and if she wasn't so tired she might be scared.

It would be more frightening if she hadn't seen it before. This would all be so terribly terribly frightening if she hadn't seen it before. Like Father, like Daddy George, like Grandmother, like Michael and Jenny and David and Laura and John and Leah and the little ones whose names she no longer remembered.

If only it didn't
hurt
so much. That's the only thing, really the only terrible thing. Not the smell or the mess or the weakness: the pain.

She hasn't been able to leave the bed for two days; she messes the sheets again. She sees the blood in her mess; she calls her mother over. “It hurts,” she says. Not a complaint. More like an explanation.
Here is my problem. I thought you would like to
know.
And it seems Mother
does
know. She nods and she bustles back to the kitchen and returns with another small plate of nasty treats: homemade donuts—the whole house smells like hot frying fat and cake dredged through lots of powdered sugar. Isabella's favorite treat, once upon a time.

“These will make you feel better.”

Isabella knows this for a lie, she knows Leah and Jenny and David and Laura and the little ones were told the same lies. But what to do? Not obey? Unthinkable.

Like the rest of her dead family, she eats.