Spades to Earth, Diamonds to Fire
an excerpt

Leon sits at the other end and waits for me to look up at him before beginning his story. “All these years, I’ve been looking for her the same way I looked for you. Last year I decided to change. I started surfing the web looking at things that I know she liked. Then I began looking at art, looking for things she might have chosen to paint. I finally realized I might be able to find her if I looked for her signature, and that’s how it happened.”

“So, who is she?” I ask.

“Honestly?” He lets out a heavy sigh. “I’ve been afraid to look into it further.”

I laugh. “Why?”

“Because I’m not really sure it’s her. You’re the only one who’ll be able to tell.”

“Well, do you know anything?”

“Her name is Alexandra Loraine Guillory. She’s a student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. We’ve been looking for her in the wrong decade, Jacque. She’s twelve years younger than you, and she doesn’t know who she is.”

“That’s impossible,” I argue. “She’s been aware of who she was from the very beginning of each incarnation. Her memory goes back farther than mine. How do you know she doesn’t remember?”

He hands me a thick file. I open it, take one look, and shut it. “This is not her.”

He smiles as if he was expecting me to state that. “Prove it.”

“She is a sator. She would never let herself suffer from a prolonged illness…” I pause to open the folder again. “Let alone several. She’s on four medications. This isn’t her.”

“She doesn’t remember. That’s why she’s this way,” Leon reminds me.

“No.”

“Maybe she wasn’t able to cope with the—“

“Don’t!” I order. I know what he’s going to say in this stranger’s amnesia defense. “That was traumatic for all of us, but we got through it. We agreed rebuild. I was with her at the end, Leon. You weren’t. I know for a fact that Celine incarnated the same time I did. She would be 37 right now, not 25. This girl is not her!”

Without replying, he gets up and walks to the corner of the room to stands in front of what looks like a draped canvas.

“What’s under there?” I ask.

“My counter argument. It’s a painting Alexandra had up on deviantART. I bought it from her. You’re the detective, Jacque. I would have argued everything the way you just have if I hadn’t seen this first.”

He pulls the drape away from the canvas, and I stare at it in shock for a full five seconds before turning away and letting out a sob that can only be produced by a tortured soul. I sit down on the wooden coffee table with my back to the painting. I don’t need to look to see it because the scene was etched in my memory long ago. It is from the summer of 1889 when Celine and I were reunited after an incarnation that kept us apart for the first time—twenty years. That was the same year the Eiffel Tower was completed. We were hungry for each other and the painting is exactly the way it happened. Leon is the only person alive who would recognize those two faces. He tried to pick my pocket in the winter of 1898 on the streets of Montmartre, I brought him home with me, Celine fed him dinner, and he was our son until 1937 when the roles reversed and he helped Celine reincarnate into the new century. He has lived a strange life. When she was murdered in 1969, he lost a woman who was both mother and daughter to him.

“There’s something else I need to show you.”

I remember the signature and stand up to look at it again. There is a swirl, an incomplete infinity sign bisected by a dab of black paint, and underneath it is a dot of red as if it were a fallen drop of blood. A moment in time. That is what the signature means. “Time is incomplete, and this pulse of my blood is just a moment.” She had an explanation for everything.

“How did you find her?”

“By looking for that signature. She uses the screen name Sator online.”

I laugh. If she uses that name then she knows who she is and her medical records are faked. I am a coercer and redactor, Leon is a farsensor, and Celine is a sator. It has taken us hundreds of years to become what we are. It is too impossible to accept that she has forgotten her life.

“I need to show you something,” Leon says again.

“What?”

“She published a commentary to go with the piece when she put it up on the site. You need to see something else before I let you read it.”

I stand in front of the painting and he does something with the lights. A bath of soft red light covers the canvas. I catch my breath because the scene is a rape. She is terrified, raised up slightly on her back. Her right arm is pushing against my chest and her left hand is positioned between her legs, wrapped around my cock in an effort to stop me. The pain on her face breaks my heart. Why did she paint this? Is this why she is hiding? I notice the expression on the face that I wore two incarnations ago. He—my face—is consumed with lust, an impulsive hunger, rage, madness. They are emotions I hope to God I have never expressed to her. I don’t know why she painted me like this because I have only ever touched her in love.

“This is sick. Did she know the painting would do this if she changed the light?”

“Yes. She has always been a brilliant creator.”

“Switch the lights back. I can’t stand to look at that.”

A blue glow takes over the scene when I expect the white light of the room to replace it. The painting changes again. It is the most beautiful painting I have ever seen in my life. We are radiant together—the emotion of love is so potent. My dark hair is hanging down slightly in my eyes, but I am staring straight at her. My left arm is braced above her shoulder while I hold my balance above her. My other arm is holding her thigh against me. Her hand is guiding me into her body, and her lips are parted to let out a moan of satisfaction instead of a cry of terror. The panting has not changed, only the light. She has crafted it to reveal a different memory that we share. The conception of our son. We watched out bodies create his body and our souls create his soul.

“She knew about this scene too?”

“Of course. She’s the painter.”

He changes the light again without warning. Blue remains on the right side while red takes over the left half. This is when the real terror occurs. It looks like I am raping her and she is enjoying it. “That is beyond sick,” I hiss.

“It’s amazing how light can change the meaning we perceive in what we see.”

“Are you done?” I ask impatiently.

“I have one more.”