Page 21 of The Seeker
“What am I doing here?” The shadow compressed into a smaller form, and a little boy with gold eyes and dark hair stomped up to her, his hands fisted on his hips. “Why areyouin America, Meera Bai?”
Meera walked over and sat on the porch steps, bracing her chin in her hand. “Don’t be cross. And don’t pout.”
The child transformed into an eerily handsome young man with long black hair and a trimmed beard. His hair shone with reddish-gold stripes not unlike a tiger’s coat, and the arms he crossed over his bare chest were covered in raisedtalesmthe same golden ochre of his skin. Unlike Irin scribes, Vasu’s magic was inherent. The spells were part of him, not tattooed on but rising from beneath the surface.
It was not an unfamiliar figure. Meera guessed this form was as close to his truest self as Vasu ever showed in human presence.
“I’m not pouting,” he said.
“You are.”
“The last time I saw you, you were in your aunt’s compoundwhere you belong.”
Parrying with Rhys had taken too much out of her. “It’s not for you to say where I belong. And the last time you saw me was four years ago.”
Vasu frowned. “No.”
“Yes, Vasu. Four years. A lot has changed.”
“I know. That’s why you should be back in Udaipur.”
“I have work to do here.”Knowledge to find. Peace to pursue.
“Is four years a long time?” He cocked his head. “You don’t look older. Are you going to get old like Anamitra? That was a choice, you know. I didn’t approve of that.”
The Fallen angel truly didn’t understand time. Meera often wondered if Vasu still saw her as the child he’d played with so long ago within the fortress walls of Udaipur.
He’d speak of things a hundred years before as if they’d happened yesterday, and he’d speak of the morning as if eternity was contained within hours. Anamitra had told her once that Vasu was a child and an ancient contained in the same body.
“Can you just…?” Meera sighed. She was soul-deep exhausted from her time with Rhys, and she needed to drive to the haven in the morning. “I need to sleep.”
Vasu crouched in front of her, unperturbed by silly human conventions like personal space. “You’re tired?”
“I’m weary.”
He touched her temple, and Meera felt the penetrating flood of his presence in the delicate touch. “Youareweary. I’ll stay.”
“Not necessary.”
He ignored her. Before she could register it, he had transformed again, this time into a large house cat with dense black fur and amber eyes. He waited at her door as Meera retrieved her key and opened the house before he slipped into the darkness.
As always when Vasu was nearby, Meera slept like a rock.
She started earlythe next morning, leaving the city before rush hour traffic started. Vasu had disappeared in the night. She might see him in an hour or it might be three years. Both were equally likely.
It was simply the way he was.
“He’s not like the others,”Anamitra had told her when Vasu had first appeared.“He never will be. He was newly born when the angels fell. His home is earth, not heaven.”
For centuries, Vasu had a relationship with Meera’s aunt. She couldn’t say it was an alliance—that would imply Anamitra had some influence or sway over Vasu. It would be closer to say that Vasu considered Anamitra—and Meera by extension—a loved and familiar pet. An amusement and comfort. Anamitra kept Vasu’s secrets… to an extent. And she never revealed her knowledge of him to any singer or scribe until Meera had been presented to her as an heir.
“Don’t ever mistake Vasu for anything but what he is.He is an angel. He can be as terrible as he likes. He could take anything he wants. The power we cultivate with labor and study is as easy to him as breathing.”
Meera never forgot it. She never forgot anything Anamitra had told her. That was her gift and her curse. Her memory was a perfectly formed prism stretching back centuries, long before she’d been born. Anamitra had spent hundreds of years conveying the knowledge of Irina power and history to Meera before she’d surrendered to the heavens.
Anamitra’s power belonged to Meera; one day she would pass it on to another. A daughter. A niece. A singer of her own blood. The heir of Meera Bai.
She felt the weight of history and legacy bearing down on her as she spotted the old house in Saint James Parish that sat in a bend of the river and marked the edge of haven land. For as long as anyone could remember, that house had existed. No one lived there but an old man who usually sat on the edge of a small dock, hanging a fishing line into the water. No matter what time of day she arrived, no matter what the weather, he always seemed to be sitting there. Something about the old man always struck Meera as odd, but no one, not her mother, her father, or any of the other Irin at the haven, could find anything unusual about him.
