The neighbor had been broken. His hostility to Mrs. Erickson had come, in the end, from Azoria, even if that hadn’t been her intent. Whatever her intent had been, it had been garbled in the neighbor’s head. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He knew that it was in Mrs. Erickson’s home.

Maybe he wasn’t looking for the same thing the possessed bodies of the dead children had been looking for. Maybe Azoria thought it was somehow still in the house, unused, unseen. Maybe he’d intended to do something with the painting—take it off the wall, make Mrs. Erickson look at it—Kaylin didn’t know.

“Jamal believes that when my mother passed away, I was to have whatever jewelry she’d been given. That I might wear it in memory of my mother, to whom I was quite close. But...he says she did sell it—he heard her talking about it with my father. So...I was meant to wear it. I was meant to sit in the room with the painting. I was meant to...” Her brows rose.

“Mrs. Erickson?”

“I was meant to become a vessel, he says. I was to become like the children—and Azoria would become me.” She looked down at her wrinkled hands. “I don’t understand. What would she want with me? She has forever. She has power. She clearly had wealth.”

Kaylin and Teela exchanged a glance; neither answered the question. But in the room, the answer suggested itself: Mrs. Erickson was a Necromancer. She could control the dead.

Sanabalis had called her a shaman. Someone who could see the dead, communicate with them, possibly help them disentangle themselves from the land of the living.

Why would Azoria want a shaman—or even a Necromancer? What did she intend that she wanted that power?

It was Severn who answered. He said what Kaylin couldn’t quite put into words, solidifying the threat: If she destroys the Lake, the Barrani are essentially dead.

And she would rule them.

26

“She probably never expected the High Halls to rise again,” Kaylin said out loud. “And she probably wanted to see what Mrs. Erickson was capable of before she made her decision.” She turned to Teela. “Do you think she could take over the body by forcing the soul out?”

“You don’t think that’s what she did with the children?” Teela asked.

Kaylin considered the one ghostly woman Mrs. Erickson had recognized. “I think she might have. But if she did, she wasn’t entirely in control, given the way their actual bodies died. The ghosts here—the ones that emanated light—were clearly under her control; she possessed one of the bodies in order to create the painting we found in the sitting room.