Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (17 page)

The gray-eyed lady and her husband reclined
on couches near the fire. Her husband had the same gray eyes that
she did, as if husband and wife were somehow related.

Euanthe and the other slave girls stood near
them, ready to serve food and drink on demand.

“Your plans are too bold,” the man said to
his wife. “Pericles remains popular, despite all the talk we’ve
spread of corruption and impiety. We have removed a few of his
supporters, but the man himself remains in power. The moderates in
the assembly will not turn against the leader in a time of
war.”

“Pericles is weaker than he seems, Cleon,”
the gray-eyed young woman said. She held out a cup for a slave girl
to fill it. “People will blame him for the Spartans ransacking our
countryside. This is the opportunity we’ve sought for years. We
have undermined his support in the assembly, we have gathered
embarrassing information on his most powerful friends, and soon we
will topple him. Athens is nearly ours, whether you see it or
not.”

“Athens may soon belong to King Archidamus
and his barbaric Spartans,” the man called Cleon said. “And then
the internal politics of Athens, whether Pericles rules or I rule,
will no longer matter.” He bit into a meaty leg of lamb.

“Cleon, that is why you should lead Athens,”
his wife said. “This will be our argument. Pericles is too weak,
too old, too much a lover of peace. Athens needs a man with fire in
his blood. A man who can make the Spartans quake in fear.” She took
his hand and smiled.

Euanthe tried to wear a bored look while
listening carefully to the conversation. The politician against
whom these two were plotting, the man named Pericles, had been
leader of democratic Athens for decades. He was Euanthe’s target,
too. Her instructions were to keep herself quiet and invisible
until she had an opportunity to infect him.

She knew how to make her plague
contagious—the old priest Kyrillos had helped her discover this,
using both sheep and convicted criminals. Pericles would die, and
then Athens would follow.

The gray-eyed lady gestured to Euanthe and
opened her mouth. Euanthe approached and fed her an olive, careful
not to touch her lips.

The lady stared up at her, holding the olive
between her teeth. Euanthe tilted her head forward, so that her
hair covered her eyes, and she looked down at the floor. She knew
the lady didn’t like her, and she didn’t want to draw more of the
lady’s wrath.

“These olives are of poor quality.” The lady
spat the olive on the floor, having never bitten into it. “Go and
feed them to the swine.”

Euanthe pretended not to understood her
words, so one of the Athenian slaves snapped her fingers in front
of Euanthe’s face, and Euanthe followed her out of the room.

As she departed, she heard the lady say to
her husband, “I do not want that slave girl touching our food
again. She has an evil look about her.”

Jenny and Seth hiked through the woods,
towards a place they liked to go, while Rocky bounded on and off
the trail around them.

“Have you had any weird dreams lately?” Jenny
asked.

“Um...there was one where I was standing at
the counter at Hardee's, and I had to order something, but I
couldn't remember what. And I couldn't read the menu. And then I
realized I was naked and everybody was pointing at me. And then I
ordered a cheeseburger.”

“That's sort of not what I meant,” Jenny
said. “Anything flashing back to past lives? Like we saw when we
were dead?”

“Not that I can remember. I don't usually
remember my dreams for long after I wake up, though.”

“I’ve had some strange ones,” Jenny said.
“Weird ancient history stuff. I actually looked it up at the
library—”

“—because you're the last person on Earth who
doesn't have Internet at home—”

“—anyway, some of it checks out. Especially
the name 'Pericles.' There's a lot of stuff about him.”

They rounded a bend in the trail and arrived
at a high, sprawling rock formation, nestled in a valley of the
hilly, stony Morton land. Jenny climbed up the biggest rock, using
the rock beside it for leverage. When she reached the top, she
looked down at Seth, who was just standing and staring off into the
trees.

“Come on, don’t be a turtle,” Jenny said.

“Sorry.” He shook his head and began to climb
after her.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Just my dad. He’s really being a dick.”

“Because of me?” Jenny asked.

“No...” Seth reached the top of the boulder
and brushed dirt from his hands. “They don't really know I'm still
seeing you.”

“That's probably best.” Jenny sat down on the
rock.

“He says I have to major in international
business, economics, something like that.”

“I thought you wanted to do physical therapy,
so you could heal people.”

“Not good enough for him. Also, he says I
have to learn to speak Mandarin. Or Hindi. My choice.” Seth gave a
thin smile. “I barely made it through Spanish.” He sat down and put
an arm around her, drawing her close to him.

Jenny leaned against his strong, warm body
and listened to his heart. She didn't want to think about him
moving out of town, or about the future at all. She was having
enough trouble figuring out the past. “So, Pericles,” she said.

“Yeah, sorry,” Seth said. “What’s up with
Pericles?”

“He was like the ruler of Athens for years
and years,” Jenny said. “In ancient Greece. I looked him up, and
they say he built up the city, the Parthenon, all kinds of stuff.
And Athens kind of ruled the ancient world while he was in
charge.

“But then Athens got into a war with another
powerful city, Sparta. And there were all these rumors and
accusations about Pericles and his friends, religious crimes and
embezzling gold. And then the Athenians weren't happy with how the
war was going. Another politician named Cleon accused Pericles of
some crimes, which knocked Pericles out of power. And then Pericles
died of the plague. And then Cleon took over Athens, and he
controlled the city for years, until he died.”

“That's totally interesting.” Seth kissed
her. His hand drifted down to the hem of her shirt, then began to
pull it up. “I know you didn't sneak out in the woods with me to
talk about ancient Greece, though.”

“Yeah, actually, I did.” She laid back on the
rock, out of his reach, and tucked her hands behind her head. “In
my dream, there was this gray-eyed woman who was Cleon’s wife. It
seemed like she was behind a lot of the rumors and accusations, and
basically destroyed Pericles’ reputation behind the scenes. And
then I read today that Cleon, her husband, ends up as the most
powerful man in the city.”

“Sounds like Ashleigh,” Seth said.

“Exactly like Ashleigh. I think it
was
Ashleigh. You see what I mean?”

“Okay,” Seth said. “Ashleigh was a
manipulative bitch in all her lives. Gotcha. And who were you, in
ancient Athens?”

Jenny didn’t want to say it. “I helped
destroy Athens.”

“You should put that on your college
application.” He lay down beside her and kissed her. Jenny wanted
to just give in and let him do what he liked to her, but this was
too important. She fought down her feelings and nudged him back
from her.

“You’re the one going to college, not me.
Anyway, I was working for the king of Sparta. His name was
Arky…Archidamus. He sent me to Athens to spread a plague there, and
to kill Pericles. And I looked it up, and Athens really was hit by
a huge plague during that war, and Pericles died from it, too. And
Cleon and his people took over Athens, and they were vicious. And
eventually Athens lost the war against Sparta. It was called the
Peloponnesian War. After that war, Athens stopped being a powerful,
important kind of city.”

“Okay,” Seth said. “But I don’t see how it
matters now. That was like hundreds of years ago.”

“Um, thousands,” Jenny said. “And it matters
because of this guy Cleon. You know that guy who had Ashleigh’s
eyes?”

“Old spooky-touch?” Seth said. “I don’t think
I’ll forget him.”

“That was him, I think. I’ve got it worked
out here.” Jenny leaned up on her elbow. She took a folded sheet of
notebook paper from her pocket and spread it out on the boulder
between them. “This is what I’ve figured out so far.”

The page had two columns of names:

Euanthe = Me

Cleon’s wife = Ashleigh

Cleon (politician, takes over Athens) = that
scary guy (Ashleigh’s opposite)

Archidamus (king of Sparta) = Seth (???)

“Hey, how did I get on the list?” Seth
asked.

“The king of Sparta,” Jenny said. “When he
touched me, the Jenny pox didn’t infect him. He was immune. So it
had to be you. Right?”

“I don’t know. It’s your dream.”

“I don’t know, either,” Jenny said.

“So who was Pericles?” Seth asked.

“I don’t know if he was one of us or just a
regular person,” Jenny said. “Anyway, who else is there for me to
recognize, besides you and me, and Ashleigh and her guy?”

“So…what does any of this mean, Jenny?”

“I just wanted to tell you. That guy and
Ashleigh have a long history together. And he knows I killed her.
So I think he’ll be back.”

“After that nasty infection you gave him? I
bet he’ll stay away.”

“What if he brings a gun and shoots me?”

“Then I’ll heal you,” Seth said. “After I
kill him.”

“I’m serious, Seth.”

“Me, too.” Seth folded up the paper and
tucked it in his pocket. “I’ll study this stuff later, when I’m
stuck at home. Right now, I’d rather talk about you.”

Seth kissed her again.

This time, Jenny didn’t resist him.

Tommy drove them out of the city, into the
vast lonely universe of the Mojave desert, where the air was clear
and the sky was a bottomless blue overhead. She gripped him tight
with her arms and thighs.

He followed a narrow unpainted spur road up
the top of a bluff, and then he stopped at the edge of the cliff,
looking down over a sea of sand and rock.

“That was a long ride,” Esmeralda said.

“You loved it.”

“Maybe.”

She got off the bike and stretched her arms.
He dropped the kickstand and killed the engine, then stood beside
her, looking over the cliff.

“Why did you come looking for me?” she asked.
“Why now?”

“I should have come years ago,” he said. “I
keep thinking about you.”

“Thinking what about me?”

“Take off your helmet.”

Esmeralda took it off and shook her long
black hair. She smiled at him.

“I have a magic touch like yours,” he said.
He took off one glove.

“What do you mean?”

“You can talk to the dead when you touch
them,” he said.

“Maybe when I was a kid. It kind of faded
away as I got older.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You shouldn’t. I’m lying. But I can’t really
talk to the dead.”

“Then how did you find out about the old
man’s money?”

“What I do is more like listening,” Esmeralda
said. “It’s like all their memories are left behind in their
bodies. And I can find them. But it’s not like talking to dead
spirits or anything. Their souls are gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Wherever souls go.” Esmeralda shrugged.
“What do you do?”

“I can make people feel fear.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Everyone is. Let me see your hand.”

“Don’t do anything creepy.” She held out her
hand to him.

“Everything I do is creepy.” He took her hand
and watched the inevitable chill bumps spread up her arms. She
trembled and pulled away.

“You see?” he asked.

She touched her fingers to her lips, staring
at him.

“I did warn you,” Tommy said.

“No…it’s okay,” she said. “It’s like a shock.
I remember from when I was a kid. When you…” She blushed. “Let me
try again.”

She took his hand in both of hers. She
shuddered, but she kept looking him in the eye. Tommy felt his own
heart move faster at her touch. She was going to drive him
crazy.

“How scared are you?” Tommy asked.

“It’s kind of a rush,” she said. “It makes
you feel alive.” She stepped closer and looked up at him. “I want
to scream. But I like it. I want you to touch me more.”

She reached up and laid a cold, sweaty palm
against his neck.

“I need you to do something for me,” he
said.

She pushed closer against him. “What do you
want?”

“I have the body of a third person. Like us.
I need you to read it, or whatever you do.”

She took a breath and stepped back, releasing
his hand. “Is that why you came?”

“I’m trying to understand more about what we
are. Don’t you want to understand?”

“It can’t be understood,” Esmeralda said. “We
are as God created us.”

“I’m not sure God did,” Tommy said. “We
aren’t like normal people.”

“So who is this person?”

“A girl,” Tommy said.

“Oh. And what do you want to learn from
her?”

“I saw her on television,” he said. “She
seemed very together, very in control. And I can’t stop thinking
about her.”

Esmeralda looked over the cliff and said
nothing.

“I think she’s like us,” Tommy said.
“Whatever we are. Only she knew what she was doing.”

“And you could see all this on the
television?” Esmeralda asked, still not looking at him.

“I just felt it. I keep dreaming about her. I
keep seeing her face and hearing her voice, all the time.”

“So you did not come out here for me,”
Esmeralda said. “You came for her.”

“It’s all the same thing,” Tommy said. “It’s
all about figuring out what we are, and what we can do—”