LITMIR.BIZ

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      Turning back to Henry, I reached out to him. “Help me up?”

      Henry looked to Marie then back at me. “Sure.”

      Nurse Lucy handed me a pair of wooden crutches and I winced as they pinched Ally’s skin, but Henry’s arms stayed around me until I could balance properly. “Feel better soon and remember your appointment next week with the doctor to check out your leg,” the nurse said cheerfully before walking back into the hospital.

      “Okay.” Too bad for her I wouldn’t be making that appointment.

      Hopefully.

      Marie and Jamie put the flowers into the trunk. I watched them, remembering Ally’s mistreatment of Jamie. I leaned Ally’s body against the car and Henry took the crutches, putting them with the flowers and closing the trunk.

      Jamie started toward the hospital, not looking back.

      I opened the car door and slid onto the backseat. Ally’s skin melted against the buttery leather and I found the sensation divine. This whole feeling thing was seriously underrated.

      “Enough,” Cooper said gruffly from next to me.

      Lifting my hands I looked at him defensively. “Give a girl a break here; I haven’t touched or felt anything in a century.”

      Someone tapped on my window. A man with curly blond hair waved at me. “Who’s that?”

      Henry shuffled to the other side of the car with Marie hot on his heels, along with the three Guard, including Cooper. I rolled down the window so I could listen.

      “Can I help you?” Henry demanded, standing between the car and the man.

      “I need to speak with Ms. Greene, sir.” The man indicated my window.

      “I’m afraid not,” Marie said. “She needs her rest; she just had an accident.”

      “I am well aware of that.” His eyes found mine. “That’s exactly what I need to speak with her about.”

      Even though Marie was a small woman, when she puffed up her chest and turned her glare on him, the man wilted. “Were you listening?”

      “I just need—”

      “No!” Marie said. “Get out of here. We already have a lawyer and don’t need your services.”

      “I’m not—”

      Henry put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “If you don’t leave now I’ll call the police for harassment.”

      The man looked between Marie and Henry, who were not messing around, and nodded. We watched the man walk across the lot until his form disappeared inside a car.

      I rolled up the window and snuggled into the seat. “That was weird.”

      “Not as weird as you look caressing that seat,” Cooper said.

      I crossed Ally’s arms over her chest, restraining myself.

      Marie and Henry slid into the front seats. Marie turned around and smiled at me. “I am going to make your favorite for dinner tonight Ms. Ally.”

      I gave her a weak smile but at the thought of Joseph Bonds’ last meal Ally’s stomach turned. A vibration reverberated from her stomach and I slapped a hand over it. “What was that?” I said under my breath.

      “Humans do need to eat to survive.” Cooper grinned.

      Her stomach grumbled again. “Great.”

      On the ride home, Cooper and I sat in silence. I was too nervous to speak and say something wrong. But Marie and Henry were content chatting to themselves. He flipped on the radio and I winced, expecting to hear the raucous music Ally had played the other day. But instead, smooth jazz gently wafted through the vehicle.

      Now this was music.

      I’d Collected a jazz pianist several years ago, and I was grateful to have watched his last performance. His spider-like fingers had danced over the keys in a haunting, yet beautiful melody. I’d have liked to keep him around longer if I had the choice.

      Cooper chuckled and I looked at him. His eyes scanned the road, even though I knew Calliope was behind us.

      “What?” I murmured.

      He looked at me, grinning. “Nothing.” And turned back to the window.

      I crossed Ally’s arms, as I’d seen her do the other day. I added that to my million questions I needed to discuss with him when we had some alone time. One of the top ones being how I had called up Henry’s name and the memory of Jamie.

      There was only one way to find out.

      I glanced at Cooper, his eyes trained outside the window. I shimmied her body closer to the other door, and leaned her head against the cool window. I wasn’t sure of the mechanism behind the memories but I tried to recall the one I had pushed down in the hospital. Without much effort, it floated from the depths of Ally’s mind.

      A younger Ally bounded down the stairs to the kitchen. She held a pink shirt in her hand. Heat flamed her cheeks.

      “Marie!” she yelled.

      Marie turned around and saw the shirt. Her face paled.

       “I asked you to wash this separately. This was a two hundred dollar white blouse. Now look at it!”

       “I’m so sorry, Ms. Ally. I will bring it to the dry cleaners.”

       “They won’t be able to get this out. How hard is it to follow simple instructions? You do speak English, right?”

      Ally shoved the shirt in the garbage and stormed from the room.

      I gasped, throwing myself out of the memory, shivering and shoved it away. Did Ally have any happy memories, or at least some without her screaming at someone? I was regretting taking on the task of Collecting Ally with each passing second.

      I hesitated, wondering if I should be digging deeper into her memories since they were all we had left of her. Maybe one of them could indicate who took her. But those memories didn’t come forward; they were probably attached to her soul. Yet, if that were true, then how much damage did her body and soul suffer when she was taken?

      “We’re here,” Cooper said softly beside me and I sat up quickly, clenching Ally’s hands together.

      Henry pulled the car up to a wrought iron gate about twenty feet high, rolled down his window and pressed several numbers into a keypad. The gates unlatched and opened, revealing a long driveway. Both sides of the cobblestone path were covered with clipped plush green grass that ended against tall, and equally manicured, shrubs that hid the estate from neighbors’ eyes.

      I leaned forward, craning her neck to see past the borders of the window and called up a blueprint of the place, making a mental picture of the house Ally grew up in.

      “Sit back, Maggie,” Cooper said. “Ally knows what her house looks like.”

      Now I do too, I thought.

      The driveway extended past the house toward the garage but Henry stopped the car at the front door’s archway, held up by towering stone columns.

      My breath fogged the window as I studied the house that I’d be living in. Actually, the word “house” didn’t encompass the monstrosity. Mansion was more like it. The exterior walls were white stucco with a hint of gray. Tall doubled windows broke up the front of the house into sections. I could see through them into a living room and dining room on either side of the front door. On the second floor, two balconies with French doors extended from the Master and Ally’s bedrooms.

      My door opened, revealing Henry and the crutches.

      Those were going to get old real fast.

      I put out Ally’s

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