Barb Hendee: Blood Memories

"Derek says you want to talk to me?"

"Yeah," I answered quietly, "but it's private."

Christopher, the anthropologist bartender, slammed our glasses down on the bar. Derek looked miserable. Brian paid for the drinks and motioned with his head toward an empty table.

"Over there."

With the sounds of Journey still rolling through my ears, I made a point of following, not leading, Brian to the table.

"What's up?" He was still playing the unshakable uptown boy. Poor thing.

"I'm in some trouble. I need a place to stay for a few days."

His eyes lit up like candles in a dark room. If I had said «weeks» he might have balked. Taking advantage of some frightened girl's situation and letting her sleep in his bed for a few nights was his style. Any longer than that and he'd get bored. Of course, as soon as he unlocked the condo door, I was going to kill him, steal his keys, dump his body, and go get William.

"What kind of trouble?" Brian asked.

Maybe he wasn't so gullible. I crossed my arms as though shivering and stared at a knot in the wooden table.

"I moved in with this guy a few months ago… and then he got mean. I just need someplace to stay. Please."

He was almost hooked. "Why not stay with Derek?"

"Because he can't take care of himself like you."

That did it. Catering to the male ego is so easy it sometimes scares me. They lap that shit up like a cat turned loose on a dairy farm.

"Okay." He nodded, and I could see a lecherous-father speech coming on.

I look about seventeen years old, and he looked about twenty-eight, but he was going to warn me about the evils of the world anyway. I had phony ID under six different names. Nobody believed I was twenty-one, not even Christopher, but nobody really cared as long as the ID looked real.

"Listen, Eleisha," Brian began. "You got to watch out for people. Most of the crowd here would eat someone like you for breakfast. You don't just ‘move in' with some guy you just met."

I nodded, still staring at the table. Of course, his gallant words wouldn't stop him from coming on to me the minute we were alone.

"Stay here," he said. "Let me get my coat and take you home. Don't worry about anything."

Yeah, right. For about a week.

God, he was a pig. I almost didn't feel sorry for him.

Watching his broad back move through the crowd, I wondered how long it would take me to move William in and get him settled. Since his memory was so short, he had probably already forgotten that Edward was dead and we were in danger. I glanced at my watch: ten forty-five p.m. I'd have to hurry.

What happened next is hard to describe. My mind was drifting in several directions when something touched it. The invasion was not subtle or gradual. It hit me like icy water in a sharp, sudden splash. I lost sight of the table and saw through someone else's eyes. It was definitely a man. I felt the random movements of his thoughts.

Shock.

Confusion.

His name was Wade.

I tried to tear away, but I couldn't get him out of my head. The tabletop shifted into focus, and I looked up. Two men were moving across the room toward me. In stunned fear, I recognized both of them-they had been out on the lawn at Edward's. The tall, blond man leading was the one who'd collapsed from the impact of Edward's psychic life force pouring out. He was Wade. The stocky man following was a cop. No one here could help me. Not even Derek would get between me and the police.

I bolted for a back door.

Fear kicked my instincts into motion. I slipped through bodies without touching them and ran down the back alley so fast that Wade's thought waves grew faint.

He was running. He had seen me. His partner's name was Dominick. Pictures passed through his head for me to see: bodies in Edward's cellar, the framed photograph of me over the fireplace, and an oil painting of me he'd found in the storage room. The portrait perfectly matched the photograph, but it had been painted in 1872.

How could I have forgotten the painting?

Even knowing I could outrun both of them, I was so panicked I didn't slow down until Wade was gone, until he had completely lost me, and I was no longer tangled in his thoughts.

What was he? How could he push into my head like that? How much had he seen? It couldn't have been much. He'd felt almost as startled as me, his thoughts rapid and scattered.

Now what? Staying at Brian's was out. If Wade had actually tracked me down telepathically… How could he?

"We've got to get out of here," I whispered to myself all the way up the back stairs of our house. Simply relocating to another part of Portland wouldn't help us. We'd have to go much farther.

Ten minutes later, I was sitting in a chair by the fire, wondering what to do. William was absorbed in painting the red checkers that he'd carved out but not sanded properly. For the first time in my memory, I wanted him to talk to me, to offer me some sort of advice.

"What are we going to do, William?" I whispered absently, voicing my wish.

"You should call Julian."

His answer surprised me. Not because of the suggestion itself-he always wanted to solve problems by calling Julian-but because he was vaguely aware that we had a situation to deal with.

"We can't call him. If he finds out the police are involved, he'll kill me."

"Then call someone else."

Call someone else? Who? I'm sure that I would have remembered Edward's address book sooner or later, but William's suggestion jolted it to the front of my thoughts. Why had Edward kept an address book?

"Stay here, William. I'll be right back."

My clothes were still lying on the bathroom floor. Kneeling by the bathtub, I reached into my soiled jean jacket. The book itself was quite lovely, decorated in blue and black quilted Chinese letters. I'd never seen it before last night.

The first name my eyes hit upon, when opening the cover, was my own: Eleisha Clevon, 2017 Freemont Drive, Portland, OR 97228. I didn't want to believe it. For a minute I didn't. My full name and correct address. It was impossible that Edward could have done this. I started flipping pages.

The list wasn't alphabetical. The next name was Marquis Philip Brante, with his address in France. I felt numb, but kept reading. My stomach lurched when I turned the page and read its red-penned entry: Lord Julian Ashton, 6 Chadstone Road, Milesfield, Hudder-smith, HD7 5UQ, Yorkshire.

"Oh, Edward."

They would have murdered him for this. Of all the unwritten, unspoken rules we followed, protecting each other's identity was the most important. I mean… I knew several phone numbers and addresses, but I would never write one of them down. Edward must have been mad. Why would he do this? I had to burn it quickly.

Then the name on the final page caused me to stop: Margaritte Latour, 1412 Queen Anne Drive, Seattle, WA 98102, (206) 555-8401. Maggie. How long since I'd seen Maggie? She lived as a vague image in my past. I remembered the sight of her in a dark red dress, holding on to Philip Brante's arm shortly before I left Wales with William in 1839. Would she help us? Could she?

I carried the book back into the study and picked up the phone. For all I knew, she might have moved seven times since Edward had written this phone number down.

"Are you calling Julian?" William asked from his little worktable.

"No."

"Ask him to send me a new smoking jacket. This one is wrinkled and chewed by moths. We have moths, you know. And mice. I keep telling you to get a cat, but you don't."

Cradling the phone between my shoulder and ear, I read Maggie's number again and murmured to William, "I'll get you a new smoking jacket, and we don't need a cat."

The line rang twice. I tried to keep calm.