LITMIR.BIZ

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bus driver may have never noticed the casualty.

      Zenia strode down the sidewalk, a long floral skirt flitting between her legs. Her pink T-shirt was encrusted with rhinestones in the shape of a heart. She loved anything that sparkled. That much she did know about herself.

      Summer sun warmed her skin and she flipped her long, midback hair over a shoulder. She brushed at an insect that briefly landed on her arm, and took note of the faint design on the inside of her elbow. Barely there, it looked as though someone had taken a white marker and drawn an arabesque. It was also on her other inner elbow, and had faded, but perhaps still needed a few more showers to completely wash away. It resembled the mehndi designs she knew were a Vedic custom in India.

      How she knew about that baffled her. She seemed to know quite a bit about many things—except personal details. Had someone drawn these marks on her? Or perhaps she’d scrawled it during a lazy afternoon doing...what?

      She wanted to know what she’d done in life, if only so she could resume doing that for survival. It had been a week since the accident and she had no money, had stolen clothes from a donation box on a street corner, and had only managed a handful of meals by chatting up lone men in the local diners and then dashing before they could ask her out.

      And while remembering who she was would be terrific, perhaps she didn’t know for a reason?

      Weird thoughts. But what else was there to think about?

      A lot actually. Everything. From the solid feel of the sidewalk beneath the pink flip-flop sandals she wore to the warmth of the air embracing her shoulders. The sensory details were immense in this world. And it was almost as if she was experiencing touch, sight, smell and sound for the first time. There, a bird chirp sounded like a song she must know the words to, but unfortunately had—like her identity—forgotten.

      Forgetting was frustrating. So she had returned, determined to trace her steps to learn where she had come from and what she had been doing before the accident.

      Zenia stopped walking. A warm sensation blossomed in her chest. A visceral feeling of memory. She studied the pink, two-story house in front of her. White paint decorated the window frames and front door as if it were a confection under glass at a bakery. It looked familiar.

      She walked up to the picket fence and darted her gaze over the yard, which was overgrown with brushy emerald grass and dotted with yellow dandelions. It smelled lush and wild. Didn’t look as though anyone lived on this lot. Did she live here?

      “I walked through this yard,” she said with definite knowing.

      She turned and eyed the street. The bus stop sign was thirty yards to the left, and the grass around the sign had been worn to dirt where she assumed people waited while sipping their morning coffees. “And there is where I got hit.”

      Turning and wandering into the yard, she had to lift her skirt so that she didn’t get tangled in the long grass. Had she been walking out from behind the house? She could see an open backyard. No trees. And beyond that a field stretched quite a distance before it ended at a forest’s dark, jagged tree line.

      Paralleling the side of the pink house, she walked around to the back and let out a gasp when someone stepped right in front of her. The woman couldn’t be younger than ninety, and her posture curled her spine forward so she had to lift her head to look up at Zenia. She smelled smoky. And a little too ripe for Zenia’s heightened senses.

      “I’m sorry,” Zenia said, stepping back a pace. “I didn’t mean to trespass. I’m trying to track down a path I took a week ago. Would it be all right if I walked through your backyard to that field?”

      “Never seen you before, young lady. Why would you walk through my yard?”

      “I don’t know. I’ve lost my memory. I’m trying to piece things together, and I recall walking from back here. Maybe even through that field. Though I’m not sure why I would be in a field. I won’t do any harm to your property. I’ll walk straight through and on to the field.”

      “Very well. You go find yourself. And I’ll go, uh...find myself.”

      The old woman gestured dismissively with a swing of her arm then made a surprisingly hasty retreat into her house through the back door.

      “Yes, find myself,” Zenia muttered. “But out in a field?”

      And the old lady needed to find herself? Curious. But old people were some kind of curiosity, for sure. If not badly in need of a shower.

      Zenia strode onward, her sandals stomping down the grass until she landed on the soft black earth of the freshly plowed field. Didn’t feel familiar to walk across the uneven surface. Hmm...

      “This is the closest I’ve come to finding myself. I won’t give up.”

      She walked onward.

      * * *

      Blade Saint-Pierre shoved the Craftsman toolbox into his truck box and pushed up the creaky metal gate to close it. He’d helped old man Larson fix the trellis that had come detached from the back of his house. Squirrels had been nibbling at the trusses. Now it was secure and the violet morning glories that reminded Larson of his dead wife, Gloria, showed through his bedroom window.

      These neighborly fix-it stops were fast becoming an enjoyable way to spend the day for Blade. It made him feel better to help someone he didn’t know. But he was sure it would never counter all the guilt that weighed down his heart. It certainly wouldn’t grant him redemption.

      But neither would slaying a rage of demons. He hadn’t seen the stranger, Sim, since that night in the forest a few days ago. Probably for the better.

      Opening the driver’s door, he paused to eye the stunning beauty walking down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. He’d not seen her in Tangle Lake before. Blade had seen a lot of pretty women pass through this tiny Minnesota town. Most visitors hailed from the big city. Some liked to do an antiques run through the smaller towns along the highway that stretched from the Twin Cities north to the shipping harbor of Duluth.

      So he was unusually curious about this beauty who looked as out of place as a demon in a salt factory.

      Long red hair spilled down her back. He wouldn’t exactly call it red, more like copper that caught the sun in glints much like polished metal. Her skin resembled creamy caramel. A flowery skirt flitted between long legs as she strode the sidewalk, her attention taking in the house fronts and tidy yards. A faded T-shirt with an obvious hole at the back hem topped off the bohemian look. She scampered through an overgrown yard, which Blade wondered if he should offer to mow the lawn. Could be a hazard to an elder person trying to navigate the long grass.

      He observed the sexy bohemian chick speak to an elder woman who seemed a bit too spry as she bounced back into her house. Blade could see the old woman’s shadow through the front window that wasn’t obscured by drapes. He kept her in peripheral vision while he satisfied his need for beauty.

      The woman in the skirt scampered toward a dirt field. Did she have something to do back there? It was a big empty expanse. And across the stretch of black dirt was forest, which, after dozens of acres, backed up to Tangle Lake. Maybe she owned a strip of the black earth and intended to plant a garden? It was a little late in the season for that and she hadn’t any gardening tools on her.

      An odd commotion inside the house made Blade turn his attention to the front window. The old woman’s silhouette was...changing. One moment she stood hunched, her head hanging and shoulders curved forward and down. The next moment, she’d grown another head. And another.

      Instincts kicked in and Blade tugged out the silver bowie knife he kept stuffed in his combat boot. He closed the truck door. He knew better than to doubt his instincts.

      The silhouettes in the house were now three separate entities, and big, and...

      Blade sniffed. A faint trace of sulfur curled into his nostrils.

      “Demons,” he muttered. “I do hate demons.”

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