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“I’m not really sure what Wiccans are,” Savannah said with a smile. “Witches of some kind, I guess, but I don’t believe in any of that.”
“I’ve been careful not to add to the rumors. My sister was promiscuous. That’s a documented fact. She had many lovers and many children from those lovers. She was indiscriminate . . . and she was also touched by madness.” Catherine looked past Savannah, toward the fire, but her gaze was clearly down some hallway to the past. “At that time when Mary’s mind was failing, I took matters into my own hands. I radically changed the way things were handled here. I wasn’t about to let Mary turn Siren Song into a brothel. She had young daughters growing up around her, and she didn’t even notice.”
“What about sons?” Savannah asked.
“Not many.” Catherine stopped, and Savannah realized she had interrupted her train of thought. She determined not to speak again unless asked a question, because she wanted to hear everything Catherine had to say about Siren Song and her nieces who lived there.
When Catherine spoke again, however, it was in a completely different direction. “What do you know about genetics, Detective Dunbar?”
Savannah lifted her palms skyward. “Uh . . . well . . . I know we get our traits from our genes and that genes are collected on chromosomes.”
“Very good, Detective. To be exact, there are twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in the human body, and each chromosome is packed with genes, and e
ach gene holds myriad genetic information,” Catherine explained. “My family has the same genes as everyone else, as far as I know, but there are genes that scientists don’t really know the complete functions of. Some appear to be cancer inhibitive, and others can give doctors a clue that a patient has a susceptibility to a disease. I don’t know all the particulars, but I’ve done some reading on the subject.”
No kidding, Savvy thought. In her long dress, with its throwback design to another century, Catherine was the last person she would have expected to be in a conversation with about modern science, technology, and genetics. This time she remained quiet, however, waiting for the older woman to make her point.
“Have you ever seen pictures of chromosomes?” Catherine asked.
“Well . . . they kind of look like Xs. . . .”
“Yes, they come in pairs. Two Xs. Except for the sex chromosome, which can be XY if it’s male.”
Savannah nodded, not sure what else to do.
“There are twenty-two autosome chromosomes and one sex chromosome. The sex chromosome combines to form XX or XY, a girl or a boy. An ovum has only half of the pair, that is, one X rather than two, and the sperm has the other half, one X or one Y. An X from the mother’s ovum and an X from the father’s sperm produces a female child, whereas an X from the mother’s ovum and a Y from the father’s sperm produces a male child. Are you with me so far?”
“I think so.”
“If you look through an electron or magnification microscope at the sex chromosome pair for a female, you’ll see two Xs. If you look through the microscope at the chromosome for a male, you’ll see an X and a Y, because the bottom tail of the X is shortened in the male. That’s why it’s called Y. Again, you end up with XX for female, XY for male.”
“So, that’s why they’re named XX or XY? Because of the way the chromosome actually looks?”
“Generally speaking. The women of Siren Song have two Xs, as all females do,” Catherine said, finally getting to the point she was making with her talk on chromosomes. “Most of us here at Siren Song have something a little extra, part of our own particular genetic brew. One or several of our genes seem to be . . . different. Some of us also have physical anomalies, like an extra rib bone.”
“Don’t women have extra rib bones, anyway?”
“Yes, but some of the women of our clan, for lack of a better word, have even more. And there are other differences as well. Some not so physically obvious. Mental changes.” She stared pensively past Savannah. “The results of our gifts can sometimes be a little dangerous, it seems.”
“Gifts?” Savannah questioned, ignoring her earlier advice to herself.
“We’re different, Detective. I’m sure you’ve heard. We do have special abilities, which can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it. It’s not something I care to go into in depth, but be assured those abilities are real.”
“Okay.”
“Mary possessed a dark gift. A gift that ruined her.” Catherine pursed her lips and shifted in her chair. “She entranced men.”
Savannah was inclined to believe many women had that same gift, often to their detriment as well, but declined to say so. “Do you have a gift?” she asked cautiously.
“Not that you’d notice. What I have is my sanity, which is cold and hard.” Now she did smile, but there was no humor in it. “You knew my ‘cousin’ of sorts, Madeline Turnbull.”
Mad Maddie. Savannah kept the moniker to herself, but she said, “We met.” A psychic with a surprisingly accurate track record, Madeline Turnbull had predicted that Savannah would have a boy before Savvy was certain she was even pregnant. Shortly after that meeting, Savannah was called to the nursing home where Maddie resided, and arrived to learn that she had died. Her death was later confirmed to be a homicide.
“There is madness sometimes,” Catherine said. “Sometimes the stronger the gift, the closer you dance to the edge of that madness.”
Savannah didn’t know if she believed fully in these “gifts,” but there had been a number of inexplicable incidents concerning the women of Siren Song, and it was clear that Catherine believed completely, and, well, she didn’t want to piss her off. Besides, what did she know, really? The world was full of the unexplained.
Catherine looked down at her clasped hands, which had turned white under the pressure, and she slowly released them. “But it’s the Y chromosome, the missing piece, that seems to intensify the effects in the males. They do feel their gifts more strongly. Luckily, there aren’t many males born to us. But when they are, it’s just . . .” She lifted a hand and let it fall into her lap.
