The visions the three of them saw seemed to intertwine, but were they seeing the same things? She and Jean and Hope had come from the same compound, had been taught the same images, so they had that much in common when they described their visions. But now their lives were so different. Jean lived on a farm. Hope lived in a terra indigene settlement in the Northwest. And she lived in the Lakeside Courtyard. Each of them was absorbing new images every day, but not the same images. That was true of all the girls who had been freed from benevolent ownership. Would the younger girls, growing up without that rigid training, be able to communicate at all when they saw the visions of prophecy? Would it matter?

Meg clenched her teeth as the skin over her entire head suddenly filled with that pins-and-needles feeling.

It would matter. Maybe not here, maybe not right now, but it would matter.

So how could girls living outside the compounds achieve the same kind of image consistency in order to communicate with one another?

She needed to find another, already available, source for images. Wasn’t that part of her job as the Trailblazer, to help the other blood prophets find the tools they needed to survive?

The prickling beneath her skin faded. Going to the doorway between the back room and sorting room, she hollered, “Nathan? I’m going to the Three Ps. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Arroo?”

Yes, it was unusual for her to leave the office during her work hours, but if another delivery arrived, Nathan—and Jake Crowgard, who was perched on the wall between Henry’s yard and the delivery area—would let her know.

She hurried out the back door and across the access way. She’d been inside the Three Ps only once and had been overwhelmed by the amount of paper products Lorne Kates managed to carry in the small shop. She kept her eyes focused on the counter and rushed toward it as Lorne came out from behind the chest-high wall panels that separated the computers and printers from the retail part of the shop.

“Morning, Meg.”

“Good morning.” She braced her hands on the counter.

“You all right?”

Meg nodded. “I’d like some postcards.”

“Do you want to take a look at what I have in the spin rack?” Lorne asked.

“No. I need sets of pictures, images. If I see Talulah Falls in a vision and need to convey that I’m seeing that particular waterfall, I want another cassandra sangue to pick up the same image so she knows exactly what I mean.”

“Haven’t you been creating a binder of images to help identify things in your visions?”