LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Seventeen

      “Maggie!” Cooper’s voice broke into the vision. Pressure against Ally’s shoulders dug me deeper into the bed. “Wake up!”

      Ally’s heart raced, and a pressure on her chest prevented the oxygen I needed. Opening my eyes I realized it was Cooper holding me down. Our gaze met and he stepped back.

      “You were thrashing around,” he said, a little breathless himself.

      An interesting feat since he didn’t need to breathe.

      “Did you have a nightmare?” he asked.

      Each detail of the vision came to the forefront of my mind. “She was here,” I said. “I saw her.”

      “Who? Ally? She wasn’t here; I would have felt her.”

      “You feel her body, Cooper; you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

      His jaw clenched. “Okay, so how do you know she was here? I’ve been in this room the whole time you were sleeping.”

      “I don’t know how to explain it,” I said. “It was like I had a dream, but it wasn’t. It was similar to experiencing her memories but different—”

      “Wait,” he interrupted. “Back up. What memories?” Cooper said.

      “Oh, those. I uh— yeah.” I opened Ally’s hands up on her lap. “I meant to tell you that I can access some of Ally’s memories.”

      “When did you intend on doing that?” he asked.

      I slapped Ally’s hands on the bed. “Well, you don’t tell me everything!” I excused.

      “Because I can’t! There are secrets that I can’t share with anyone who isn’t on the Guard. I have no choice. But gaining access to her memories? Memories that could help with the investigation; you should have told me. I thought we were on the same side.”

      “We are on the same side!” I hissed, throwing the covers off her body. “I just couldn’t find the right time to tell you.”

      “How convenient! We’ve had a lot of alone time but you couldn’t find the ‘right’ time.”

      I stood in front of him, heat burning Ally’s face. “I’m sorry! I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Until now.”

      “What did you see?” he said through clenched teeth.

      I wriggled Ally’s toes into the carpet. “I was her. She was with someone in David’s office. He kept taking her away from the door. Maybe we are connected and she felt it too?”

      “Anything is possible at this point,” Cooper said. “What else happened? Did you see where they went? Who was she with?”

      “I didn’t see his face but the voice was familiar; I just can’t place it. He took her away but I didn’t see where. Then you woke me up.”

      “What else are you not telling me?” Cooper asked.

      I held up my hands. “That’s it. I swear.” That was all I knew about Ally. Jackson, on the other hand…

      “Do you sense her now?” he asked.

      “No,” I said.

      He shook his head slightly. “Okay then. We need to get in that office.”

      “This is not your best idea,” I said to Cooper, watching Marie shuffle down the hallway.

      “If you remember correctly, it was your idea,” he said, staring at the housekeeper.

      “I suggested we use a human, not Marie specifically.”

      His fingers flicked at his sides. “Do you see any fresh humans nearby?”

      “What about Jamie?”

      “We don’t know enough about her gift to trust her, and we are running out of time. There might be a clue in there,” he said.

      “But how are we going to find what we need? We might be able to get the door open but do you think David would just ward the door and not the room?”

      “You underestimate my power of influence,” he said.

      Too bad he hadn’t influenced Ally away from the mall that day.

      “I heard that,” he said, not looking over at me. “Prognatum are different. Each day they get stronger. By the time Ally was thirteen I could barely keep a hold on her. The best I could do was protect her and hope that Marie and David brought her up well.”

      Or just Marie. I doubt David was around enough for Ally not to forget what he looked like if he didn’t come home every few months.

      Marie stopped at the top of the stairs, swaying back and forth.

      “Shh,” Cooper chided. “I need to concentrate.” His mouth tightened and his eyes squinted until they were practically closed.

      She started moving again towards the office holding a set of keys.

      “Stay here,” Cooper said, then he appeared behind her further down the hall. His hand moved and hers mimicked the movement. Cooper held his fingers together as if he held the keys in his hand and brought it close to the keyhole. Marie did the same, but, instead of pretending, she pushed the key into the hole and twisted.

      I heard the door squeak open and, without another thought, bolted down the hallway.

      “Maggie,” Cooper muttered.

      I stopped in my tracks. We both looked at Marie, who stood like a scarecrow in a field, still and lifeless.

      “Do you have a good hold on her?” I asked. He’d gone over the procedure of influencing a human as we’d formulated the plan earlier. He hadn’t gone into the specifics but it had something to do with accessing the part of the soul that the True Soul would attach to later in a human’s life.

      “Yes,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

      I brushed past Marie into the room. Or at least I tried to. Ally’s body hit something hard, yet there was nothing in front of me. I tried to move Ally’s hands in front of me but something pushed back. I shoved at the air but the resistance was thick, as if an invisible wall stood before me.

      I peered into the room and it was exactly like the vision I’d had of Ally, down to the exact positioning of the couches and desk. “This is it,” I said. “She was here.” I leaned as far as I could to see if there were any clues but I couldn’t do anything without actually going inside. Yet something on the bookshelf caught my eye. A familiar leather-bound book tugged a memory forward. I’d seen it in Ally’s memory of her seventeenth birthday.

      “Ally?” Marie mumbled before I could ask Cooper about the book.

      I turned around and she blinked her glazed-over eyes once… twice. “I think she’s coming to.”

      “Grab the key,” he said.

      I took the key from Marie’s hand and unlatched it from the key ring, putting the rest back in her hand.

      Marie shivered and looked up at me. “Ms. Ally, what are you doing here? Your father says you aren’t allowed in his study.”

      I placed a hand on her shoulder, hiding the one with the key behind my back. “You called me out here to help you with something.”

      “I did?” she asked, her thick eyebrows furrowed.

      I

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