“And you think Nick Jarrett is any better suited to it?” There was bitterness as well as argument in her voice.
“I think he’ll be on the road a lot. But he’s younger, smarter, less resistant to change. I’m not talking about doing this tomorrow.” An edge had entered his voice. “Nick will come in to head recruitment, and I’ll train him to replace me in a year or so.”
Jeannine lowered her voice. “And what about Numina? I thought we agreed not to bring anyone else in on this until we had a better handle on what we’re dealing with.”
Numina? Riley had never heard the word, but the context gave it a sinister essence.
“The bigger it gets, the less comfortable I am keeping it to ourselves.” John had lowered his voice, too, and the combination of what they were saying and the hushed-but-urgent way they were saying it sent shivers of apprehension through Riley. “Others will have to be involved before too long.”
“Probably. But I won’t let you walk away.” Footsteps came closer. Riley hoped there wasn’t steam seeping through the crack in the door.
The steps halted suddenly. “Make no mistake, Jeannine. You have no say in this. I may work in this building, but the Protectorate is and always will be a separate entity. I know you don’t like that I’m not under your thumb, but I refuse to let you try to put me there, even now. If I want Nick to take over, Nick will take over.”
Riley could almost feel the fury radiating through the hall. “It’s not up to you, either. Nick has to agree. He might not.”
“Then I’ll find someone else. But you won’t resist this.”
“Whatever. Be ready in five minutes.”
And with that, the woman stalked down the hall. Riley only had a glimpse of beige flashing past the skinny gap in the doorway. She waited, hearing nothing from John. He’d probably gone back into his office, which was in the opposite direction.
Riley bit her lip. She had only been part of the Society for a couple of days, but she already knew tension between it and the Protectorate was a bad thing. John was upset that they were keeping things from…whom? Everyone? It sounded like Numina was new to everyone, not just her. Old fears and suspicions reared up, and for a second she was ready to run again, but the feeling was short lived. Stronger was the urge to learn more, to join in the fight.
John and Jeannine knew more about what was going on than they’d told Sam. Whatever Numina was, it must connect to Millinger and Anson’s plans.
Maybe Jeannine’s secrecy should feed Riley’s reservations about the Society, but everyone had been welcoming and helpful to her so far, and now she was torn between old fears and new loyalties. She couldn’t just walk away and leave Sam and Marley and anyone else to be affected or harmed by this whole thing, especially when she seemed to be part of it. She had to do more.
Since she had no idea what, however, she’d start with the original plan and see what they could come up with in the archives about her family. Maybe tonight she’d be able to talk to Sam and tell him what she’d heard. He did say he’d call. She smiled at the thought.
Marley looked up from her computer when Riley reached her office. “Oh, crap, I lost track of time. Come on in. I just need to finish this e-mail real quick.”
Riley pulled the guest chair around to sit next to Marley behind the desk. She had to lift the chair up and over, since there wasn’t room to slide it past. “Thanks again for doing this. And for everything else.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m not doing much.” She typed furiously for a couple of minutes, hit send, and pulled up another program.
“You’re doing a lot.” Riley was acutely aware of that and very grateful. “So what are we looking for?”
“Well, I already looked up your mother’s maiden and married names in the database and searched the archives. There’s no mention of her. What was your grandmother’s name?”
Riley thought hard. “When you looked for my mother’s last name, would my grandmother have come up in the search?”
“She should have, if she was part of the Society under that name. She didn’t, though.”
“So we have to look up my grandmother’s maiden name. God, that’s…” She put a hand over her eyes and went deep, struggling to remember a name she’d never had any reason to store. It popped into her head. “Freeman?” She looked up. “Yes! Nessie Freeman. I guess that would be short for Vanessa or something.”
Marley typed in the name. “We’ve been digitizing old records for a few years. They go back centuries, so it’s going to take us forever, but we’ve processed beyond a few decades, at least. It’s not all organized, though. I have to dig in a few different places.”
It took a while for Marley to search in the main archives database, then use the references to locate various files and the relevant documents within them. Finally, they had it all compiled for the three names the search had given them: Henrietta, Nessarina, and Beatrice Freeman. After clicking several documents open, Marley whistled. “Wow. There’s a lot here. Mostly meeting attendance records, though. Let me print some of it.” She clicked another link, and Riley skimmed the page with her. It looked like a genealogy breakdown.
“So Nessarina was my grandmother, and Henrietta was her mother, Beatrice her sister. I never knew about Beatrice. Not really.” The page displayed a date of death before Riley was born. She remembered her grandmother mentioning a sister, now that she thought about it, but not very often.
Marley handed her a sheaf of pages. After shuffling them into what appeared to be chronological order, Riley read while Marley kept working on the computer.
Her great-grandmother, Henrietta, had been married to a man named Earl, owner of a company she recognized as part of a huge conglomerate now. He’d sold it before he died, apparently not willing to leave it to his daughters or their husbands. Back then, goddesses probably weren’t as open about their existence or as interested in using their abilities commercially. Witch burning had peaked centuries before, but its effects had lasted a long time.
A membership roster listed rock and soil as the source for both Nessie and Beatrice, but Henrietta’s listing was odd. Hers was wood, with a notation of “depleted” after it, and a date when Henrietta would have been… Riley did a quick calculation. About fifty years old. Five years before her husband died. She’d followed within a year.
“What does depleted mean?” she asked Marley.
“Depleted?” The color drained from Marley’s face. “You mean like leeched?”
“Maybe.” Riley grimaced. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. What does it say?”
“Just a notation next to my great-grandmother’s source. Wood. Both her daughters had rock and soil. Is it weird that neither one has their mother’s source?”
Marley shrugged and took the page from her. “Weirder that they had the same one. There’s no genetic component to source affinity. They might have misrepresented their powers to the Society—that could explain disassociation. Let me see if I can find something about the depletion.”
Riley kept reading. Birth notices for her grandmother and great-aunt, then nothing until they each got married, one at age eighteen, the other at nineteen. Nessie hit twenty-one a year before Beatrice, and Henrietta reported their power sources within a month of their birthdays. But after that, letters repeatedly requested that both girls attend a Society meeting or come to Boston to demonstrate their abilities for the official record. The letters got more forceful until one said their continued membership in the Society was contingent upon such demonstration.
The last letter was short and to the point. It revoked both of their memberships.
Marley was right. Someone, whether Riley’s grandmother and great-aunt or their mother, had lied about their abilities. Maybe they’d hoped the Society would take them at their word, but they obviously hadn’t. What had happened?