Barb Hendee: Blood Memories

"Hello," a deep female voice answered. Even in that one word, I could hear a hint of her French accent.

"Maggie?"

The line was silent for a moment, and then, "Who is this?"

"It's Eleisha. I need help. William has to be moved."

She hung up.

I should have known better. We don't make a practice of calling each other. We don't visit each other. Everyone who knew that William and Edward and I actually lived in the same city thought we were twisted aberrations.

"What happened?" William asked.

"Nothing for you to worry about. Just be quiet for a few minutes."

I dialed the number again and let it ring nine times. I heard a click when she picked up, but I jumped in before she could say anything.

"Listen to me. I'm in the middle of something here, and William's got to be moved. If you don't help, I'll have to call Julian, and I'll tell him you left us to rot. That should put him in a good mood."

She didn't speak for almost thirty seconds, and then asked, "Where did you get this number?"

What should I have told her? And how much? It would be foolish to make her more afraid of the police than of Julian.

"I've got to get William out tonight."

"Is it that bad?"

"It's worse." I paused. "Edward's dead. He killed himself."

Had she felt him die? Could she, from almost two hundred miles away? I didn't know how that worked.

The line was silent for another long moment. "Do you have my address, too?"

"Yes, on Queen Anne Hill?"

Her voice changed. It had always been deep and smooth, but now an undertone of hatred dropped it lower. "Get on a plane and bring him here. You've got about five hours till dawn. But don't drag any of this down on my head, or I'll cut yours off and burn it."

Click.

Two minutes later, I was on the phone with a travel agent. Notice may have been short, but she managed to book us on a 1:30 A.M. United Airlines flight to Seattle. I called a taxi, not bothering to pack much-just a few changes of clothes.

Before we left, I tore out the page with Maggie's address on it, and then threw the book on the fire, making sure it burned completely. After that, things seemed a little safer. Then I ran outside and let all the rabbits go.

The whole ordeal was hard on William. He hadn't been out of the house in ninety-six years. I covered him with a hooded cloak and led him to the cab.

"I'm sorry, William, but you've got to hurry. We have a plane to catch."

He wouldn't know what a plane was, but my words moved him a bit quicker. Poor thing. A cab ride was only the beginning. The lights at the airport and all the noise might throw him into shock.

A middle-aged Asian sat behind the wheel.

"Take us to the airport, please," I whispered. "We're late."

"We'll miss dinner," William rattled through rapid, nervous breaths. "If we don't get home soon, we'll miss our dinner."

"We already had dinner. Don't you remember? I brought you the rabbit myself. You almost got blood on your smoking jacket."

The cabbie glanced up, but I ignored him. At that point, it didn't matter what he thought.

"It's late. Very late," William insisted. "We must get back home."

What was I supposed to say? That we weren't going home? That we no longer had a home? That Edward had ignited himself on purpose and the police watched it happen and now we were paying the price?

"We're going visiting. Do you remember Maggie Latour? Philip's mistress? The dark-haired one? She always wore red dresses and held on to his arm."

His face twisted. He tried to think back, to remember. "Katherine didn't like her."

He did remember. Lady Katherine had been William's wife all those years ago.

"Yes." I smiled, sitting close to him. "Katherine didn't like her because she was so beautiful and her family was poor and Philip used to talk about marrying her. Do you remember?"

His face grew animated at my words. These people I spoke of were links between ourselves and the past, a distant past no longer connected to us except by such sweet champagne memories. Maybe that's why I loved William. He was my chain to reality, my line to what once had been.

"Yes," he whispered. "I remember."

I reached over and grasped his wrinkled old hand. "Nothing is going to hurt you. We're going to get inside a large steel bird and fly to a different city. We'll be safe before morning, and we'll live with Maggie for a while. Understand?"

He stared out through misty, milk-white eyes in confusion but nodded just enough for recognition. "Is Maggie expecting us?"

"Yes."

He relaxed but held on to my hand tightly. When we stopped at the airport terminal, his fingers tensed.

"It's all right," I whispered and handed our fare-plus a twenty-dollar tip-to the cabdriver.

The trip might have been easier if we hadn't been so pressed by the clock. Passing time never stopped haunting me. We couldn't miss our flight, and we had to get to Maggie's before dawn.

Bright lights in the airport's wide corridors hurt William's eyes, but he held my hand and followed me. I kept his cloak pulled low over his face and tried to avoid attention. A few perfectly curled check-in girls stared at us curiously, but I dropped the helpless routine and glared at one of them. She didn't give me any trouble and handed over our boarding passes.

Getting through security wasn't as bad as I expected because the line was short at that hour. I'd kept several IDs for William updated, and he stayed quiet, just following my lead.

After that, the rest of the flight involved waiting. Once William was down the covered on-ramp and settled inside the plane, he fell asleep. Severe stress put him into a state of exhaustion. That's why I protected him from it as much as possible. Sitting strapped in my aisle seat from Portland to Seattle, I allowed myself the luxury of seething in hatred and blame toward that psychic cop-if he was a cop. He ran with cops, so he must be one.

It's funny how I never once blamed Edward. Maybe because he was dead. I only blamed the man named Wade, who'd tracked me into Mickey's Bar. All of this fear and flight was his fault. I'd never really wanted to kill anyone in my life, but all the way to Seattle, I mulled over fantasies of ripping his throat open after listening to him scream for a while.

Pity for William filled me again when the plane landed at Sea-Tac. He'd been through enough.

"Wake up. Just a little farther now."

He was too heavy for me to carry, and that would have attracted undue attention. But I had to half drag him anyway. Thank God a lot of really weird people hang out at airports. Nobody more than glanced at us on the way out.

I hailed another taxi and almost melted in relief when the driver stopped for us. By that time, I was so exhausted that I couldn't do more than hand him Maggie's address and whisper, "Here. Take us here."

William fell asleep again. The driver was a young guy wearing three days' growth and a Seattle Mariners baseball cap. He glanced at me with something akin to concern on his face, and then changed his mind and pulled out onto the street. We must have looked pretty wiped out.

Streaks of pale yellowish white were running through the sky when the cab pulled up to a large brick house covered in dark green ivy and built way back behind a chain-link fence.

"Here you go," the driver said. "That'll be thirty dollars."

I handed him two twenties and tried to wake the comatose William.

The driver's face wrinkled as if he was wondering what to do. "Do you need some help with him? I can get him up to the house for you."

"No… thanks. I've got him."

With all the strength left in my body, I wrapped William's arm around my neck and dragged him from the cab. Without looking back, I held on and half carried him up to the house.