The Nix took a few steps down the road, sampling the passing humans, tasting the thoughts of each. The men’s minds were now closed to her. She’d learned that soon after her escape. Having died in the form of a woman, her powers were now restricted to that gender.

Her gaze slid from face to face, looking for the signs, searching the eyes first, then the mind. Sometimes humans hit on a moment of profundity more complete than their dim minds could comprehend, and they took that nugget of truth and dumped it in the refuse for the bards and the poets to find, and mangle into yodeling paeans to love. The eyes were indeed the windows to the soul. Clear eyes, and she passed by without pause. A few wisps of cloud behind a gaze, and she might hesitate, but likely not. Storms were what she wanted—the roiling, dark storms of a tempest-tossed psyche.

She made it halfway down the street, finding nothing more than a thundercloud or two. Then she had to pause before a woman with downcast eyes. In her late twenties with a plain, broad face, the woman waited on the sidewalk outside a store. A man exited the store, swarthy and rough-skinned, dressed in the clothes of a working man. As he saw the woman, a smile lit his face.

“Miz Borden,” he said, tipping his hat. “How are you?”

The woman looked up with a shy smile. “Fine, thank you. And how are you?”

Before he could answer, a tall man with white whiskers strode from the store, his eyes blazing. He grabbed the woman by the arm and propelled her to the street without so much as a glance at the other man.

“What were you doing?” he hissed.

“Saying hello, Father. Mr. O’Neil greeted me, so I—”

“I don’t care what he did. He’s a farmhand. Not good enough for the likes of you.”

What man is good enough for me, Father? None, if it means you and she would have to hire a second servant to replace me. The thought ran through the woman’s mind, spat out on a wave of fury, but only the barest tightening of her lips betrayed it.

Her gaze lifted enough for the Nix to see eyes so clouded with hate they were almost black. The Nix chortled to herself. So she wished her father dead…just like Marie-Madeline. What an appropriate start to this new life.

The Nix reached out and stroked her fingers across the woman’s pale cheek. Would you like me to set you free, dear one? With pleasure.

Chapter 6

6