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The time has come for you and your daughter to go your separate ways. Assume a new identity and leave no trace of your former self behind. A way will be shown to accomplish both. Be ready, the time is nigh. Farewell.
How courteous of the book, though cryptic. Was the book bidding her mother goodbye or signing off forever? Curious. Still, it was proof the mother more than likely lived. Sorrel was a liar, but he had to lie about his own family too. Pretend he had brothers instead of a father and grandfathers. A grandmother in place of his insane mother. He rubbed his temples. On one hand he desperately wanted Sorrel to be an evil liar; on the other he wanted her to be who he had seen with his own eyes.
So many questions, and her book was giving him more instead of answering any. Why didn’t her book work for her? She obviously possessed all the powers of a daughter of the earth. Well . . . that wasn’t exactly true. He thought back to today and the child she’d helped—no, healed. Her touch seemed to heal. Even he had felt it, only he hadn’t recognized it at the time. How could that be? The gift of healing by touch was an Aelius family trait. What a crazy thought. Or was it? He played in his mind all the times he’d observed her at the bakery and even when they had visited people to drop off tea. Sorrel left each person she touched happier. Was it because she was making them feel better?
How could that even be possible? The Aelius family and their book had been destroyed. His own ancestor had witnessed their queen dying. It was the reason they were in this awful hell.
Eric furiously began to search her book for any instructions on how to heal people by touch. For hours he scanned each page meticulously, making sure not to leave any stone unturned. Page after page, there was nothing except instructions on how to use plants to heal or induce feelings of pleasure, even inflict pain. There was a nasty concoction meant to give the recipient gastrointestinal issues to make them dehydrated enough to die. He couldn’t imagine Sorrel being so cruel.
Around midnight he finally returned to the last page, not finding any evidence of how Sorrel was able to heal by touch. Yet he knew she could. She’d healed that baby’s ears today and caused her fever to break. How, damn it?
In his frustration, Eric carefully went through the book’s instructions to Sorrel’s mother. There didn’t seem to be much out of the ordinary, until a particular date and the following message struck him. It was twenty-one years ago on the third of March. Make haste, cremate your husband’s remains, take Sorrel and flee to Tahiti.
The date and the urgency seemed unusual. He pulled out his own book and flipped to the back page. Twenty-one years ago on the same date, his family was told to flee for Prague. If that wasn’t odd enough, the date reminded him of something from his investigation of Sorrel. He scrambled off his bed and ran into his living area. On the coffee table he had left his notes from the investigation. He frantically searched the papers until he found David Black’s coroner’s report. His day of death hit him like a freight train—March third. Hadn’t his father said there were no coincidences when it came to the book and the curse?
It wasn’t lost on Eric how both families had lived in California at the time, only miles from each other. There had to be a correlation between all of it—the dates, locations, and her father’s death. But what? The curse seemed more perverted than ever.
Eric paced the small cluttered room in the semidarkness, the curse’s warning running through his head. In the end there could only be one family. Though which one? And why hadn’t the curse just run its course in California? Why continue the torture and the cat-and-mouse game? And why had Sorrel’s book stopped communicating? Most importantly, what about Sorrel? He rubbed his heart.
With each step he took, he envisioned Sorrel. Her smile, the way she felt against his body, like she belonged there. Her soft lips and the way she tasted. The way she made him feel about himself. Why boost him up only to kill him? He thought about the way she used her gifts. He’d only ever witnessed her using them for the good of others. Even when she was “drugging” people to tell the truth, it was for the benefit of their potential spouse. She was beloved by many. On the other hand, he was beloved by none, except perhaps her. Yet that was more than likely the curse’s doing.
