Page 87 of Dark Awakening: Hidden Currents

Mia winced. "There is more to the story, but I think you should ask Margo about it."

"I can't." He threw his hands in the air. "Your fiancé took my phone and my laptop, which I need to do work. I have to put at least several hours in."

"Toven will bring them back after our tech guys secure them. He's in a council meeting right now, but he will do that as soon as it is over."

"Yeah, you told me so." He sighed. "I'm sorry for unloading my frustration on you. It's not your fault that my sister lied to me, my fiancé lied and cheated on me, and I was too dumb and naive to doubt their stories even though deep down I knew I should have."

62

SYSSI

Syssi sat on the floor next to Allegra, watching her daughter playing with a shape sorter but not engaging as she usually did. Her mind was preoccupied with thoughts about the upcoming lunch with her mother-in-law.

What was she going to tell Annani? That she had seen someone who looked like Jasmine standing on top of a sand dune and some ruins?

Shai hadn't found any record of ruins matching what she had seen in the vision, so she was not even sure that it had been the Arabian desert. For all she knew, it could have been the Gobi or Sahara Desert.

Doubt crept in, as it had been doing all morning. What if her wish not to see Khiann dead had influenced the vision?

What if she had seen what she'd wanted to see rather than a hint of the truth?

Syssi shook her head. That was not how visions worked, and she knew that. Whatever she'd been shown was real. The problem was interpreting it.

"Mimi?" Allegra asked.

"We are meeting Auntie Amanda later in the playground. She is at work with Daddy now, and when they are done, we are going to see Nana. After that, we can go to the playground."

Since Amanda was attending the council meeting, she had suggested that they both take the day off. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a welcome treat. Today, however, it just gave Syssi more time to stew in her uncertainty.

The change in schedule had Allegra a little off-kilter, but the visit to her grandmother's would get her in a good mood.

"Nana!" Allegra's eyes sparkled with excitement, and she pushed up to her feet.

Syssi laughed. "Not yet, sweetie. We need to wait for Daddy to get home."

The sparkle in Allegra's eyes dimmed, and she sat back down, choosing to pass the time with one of her many board books. She liked to pretend that she was reading out loud and making out sounds along with the facial expressions appropriate to the story she was narrating in her own way.

Usually, it was hilarious to watch, but today Syssi was having a hard time thinking about anything other than the vision she'd summoned the previous day.

The vast desert landscape, the mysterious woman with the golden-flecked eyes, the ruins half-buried in the sand—it all swirled in her thoughts, a kaleidoscope of images that refused to settle into a clear message.

Allegra babbled on with a string of nonsensical sounds that brought a smile to Syssi's face.

"What do you think, sweetheart?" she asked. "Is your granddaddy out there somewhere?"

Allegra looked at her with a puzzled look in her eyes. "Gaga?"

That was what she called Syssi's father.

"The other granddaddy, sweetie."

Khiann wasn't Kian's father, but he was Annani's husband, and Syssi had no problem referring to him as Allegra's granddaddy.

Besides, Annani believed that all her children were fathered by Khiann's spirit and that the human men she had used had merely been the physical vessels for his spirit to occupy.

The problem was that, at the time, the goddess had believed that her husband was dead, and she'd been searching for his reincarnation. If he had indeed survived and was in stasis, his soul was still trapped inside his inert body, so it couldn't have entered the bodies of the men who had fathered Kian and his sisters.

Then again, what did she know about the metaphysical world of spirits?