The Necromancer's Daughter

|| sixteen ||

"What exactly did you see, Rebecca?" Lucille asked, holding the girl's shaking hands.

Rebecca narrated what they discovered during the vision quest. She started with finding her mother after her soccer match when she was a kid, then her father on the hospital nursery, and her brother after his swimming lessons.

"I remember their names now, their faces..." Rebecca said, "but I still can't remember our address, or their workplaces, anything that'll help us find them." The frustration in her voice was distinct.

"It's okay, Rebecca... those names and faces, they're enough to begin with." Lucille told her.

"And then there was the last vision..." Kaven said and shuddered. He looked at Rebecca, seemingly wanting to tell the story for her, to make it less difficult for her, but Rebecca told it herself.

"Yes, the one where we watched me and my car got hit by a truck." She said and tried not to cry. "It was just like my earlier vision, Lucille, but this time I was outside, watching it unfold. I saw it hit my car! I saw it kill me!" Rebecca buried her face in her hands and finally let the tears fall.

***

The next morning, with all of them sitting around the breakfast table, Rebecca broke the silence by asking a question all of them seemed to be avoiding. "What do we do now?"

Each of them shared blank looks at each other. Even the wise Grandma Vai didn't have a ready answer. Instead, she asked a question back to the girl. "What did you think the Vision Quest meant to you, Rebecca?"

"I've been thinking about it all night, and I think I've been sent to those moments specifically because my identity was anchored to my family." Rebecca replied with a calmness that masked her growing anxiety well. "Does that make sense? I don't know if it was the goddess who chose them for me or not, but I know better about myself now, I know better about my family even if I still do not remember all of it."

Jili smiled at her and Rebecca genuinely felt a little better.

"Rebecca," Lucille asked, "Did you notice anything unusual in the scenes the Quest took you to? Anything...supernatural?"

"Hmm, nothing seemed different. Although maybe I was focusing too much on finding myself that I didn't catch on anything out of the ordinary." Rebecca said. "Maybe Kaven picked up on something. He has more knowledge and experience in magic. Also he was a cat and they're supposedly more keen to feel these things. Why was he a cat again?"

Jili giggled. "We couldn't send him with you because he wasn't a girl." She said and lightened up the mood in the dining room.

"Jili's right. The Padureani's magical line goes thrugh the women of the family only. As the Vision Mistress' familiar, though, Mr. Gainsboro had supplementary connection to it. Lucille deduced we could send Kaven's consciousness through the cat instead." explained Grandma Vai.

"It was weird being Mr. Gainsboro, even for a while, I'd tell you that." said Kaven. "I know I came in a few visions late, but in the ones I've been to, everything felt normal. I've sensed nothing magical or unnatural."

Grandma Vai nodded, to Kaven and then to Lucille. "Then this would rule out your theory on Rebecca."

"Yes, it seems so."

"What theory?" Rebecca asked, looking between the women.

"I was thinking maybe the Necromancer picked your spirit on purpose if you had magical inclinations prior to all this. Remember, he is always hungry for power and would act solely upon that greed. But it seems your resurrection was an honest mistake on his part. We did hear him say he'd 'pluck Lilian's soul out of heaven that time at the Vision Room." Lucille consciously left out saying what the Necromancer was doing in the vision they saw. She didn't want to bring up Masilda's death this early in the morning.