Читать книгу The Life After Trilogy: Soul Taken / Soul Possessed / Soul Betrayed - Katlyn Duncan - Страница 25

“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 nodded.

She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “I don’t remember that.” She closed the door and shuffled through the keys on her key ring. She looked on the floor around us.

“Are you missing something?” I asked innocently.

“Did you see a key anywhere?”

I ‘helped’ her look for a few minutes but we came up with nothing. When Ally’s phone rang from her bedroom I jumped at the opportunity and hobbled down the hallway, keeping up appearances.

I grabbed the phone from Ally’s purse. I’d missed a call from Heather. Sailing through the rest of the phone calls, I saw most of them were from Seth. I deleted each one. Several texts from Ally’s friends filled her message box, but I ignored them.

A voicemail popped up, I touched the screen and pressed the speaker button. Heather’s voice filled the room: “Why didn’t you tell me about that scum sucking loser of an EX boyfriend? Dry your tears, honey, he is worthless. Seth had no idea how good you were for him. I’m coming over tonight and bringing our favorite DVDs and a lot of ice cream. Screw the diet and screw men!”

I smiled at the message. Ally definitely had a great friend there.

Cooper appeared in the room, looking paler than normal.

“You don’t look so good,” I said, walking over to him.

He stumbled and I caught him in my arms, both of us toppling to the floor. I groaned as the weight of him pressed hard against Ally’s body. He’d chosen the wrong time to be corporeal.

I gently pushed him off as I wriggled beneath him, and finally freed myself from his weight.

“Callie,” he breathed.

“No,” I said. He sure seemed to have a hard time remembering my name. “It’s me, Maggie.”

He blinked hard and his eyes widened. “Need. Callie.”

With those words, Calliope appeared next to us; she fell to her knees, tucking Cooper’s weak body against hers. “What did you do?” she snapped, her fierce gaze falling on me.

“What did I do?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything. He came in here like this.”

Her normally unthreatening chocolate-brown eyes turned to slits. She opened her mouth to say something but Cooper moved his arm up between us, then it dropped.

“It was me,” he said weakly. “I influenced.”

Calliope’s expression softened. “Okay, I’ll take care of you.” Her gaze snapped to mine. “Can you handle yourself for a few minutes?”

I sniffed. “Of course I can. What’s wrong with him?”

“There’s no time, I have to get him well again. Don’t screw anything up while we’re gone. I don’t have time to get you another babysitter.”

And with that she disappeared.

“Rude,” I murmured. She’d been kinder to me a few days ago; what had changed? I sat back on my heels and the key I’d shoved in the pocket of Ally’s jeans poked me. I couldn’t just sit there and wait. Maybe I could prove that Cooper didn’t get sick, or whatever he was, for nothing.

Opening the bedroom door I peeked down the empty hallway and padded across the carpet, just in case Marie was nearby. At the stairs, I leaned over the railing, listening. The only sounds were Ally’s ragged breathing and the whirr of the vacuum in one of the downstairs rooms. I darted to the office door and shoved the key inside the hole. A bolt of electricity flowed through me and I snatched Ally’s hand back. I touched the key again, but the shock returned with a vengeance. I sucked it up and turned the key, pushing the door open and lifted my hands to the barrier but they moved through it this time.

“What the—?” I took a tentative step forward and the same electricity from the key flowed through me again. I shuddered as the energy slammed into Ally’s body over and over. I bit Ally’s lip, drawing blood, but I didn’t stop moving forward even when I thought both Ally and I would explode from the pressure. Black spots danced in my vision but the further I got into the room, the less the energy resisted and by the time I stood a few feet from the door, it had dulled to a vibrating caress across her skin.

How had I been able to pass through now when I hadn’t before?

No time, my rational side thought.

I went straight for the desk, opening each drawer, sifting through pens, paperclips, blank notepads and other office supplies in one drawer. The next was filled to the brim with receipts. I took a few of them out and a low whistle escaped Ally’s lips at the amount of zeros attached to a lot of them. I searched the other two drawers, but they were just filled with random papers and logs. I took out one log dated several years ago. David had kept a daily journal of his tracking of the Shadowed. I took the most recent ones and placed them on the desk.

I went to the bookshelf, scanning the titles for possibly more logs or any other information on where the Shadowed might have Ally. Cooper would have to give me a glowing recommendation for the Guard after witnessing these investigation skills.

I stopped in front of the third bookshelf, the leather-bound book beckoning me. In my rush to get into the room I’d forgotten about the gift from David to Ally on her last birthday. I searched Ally’s memories but no thought of the book came up after that day he’d given it to her. The memories became unclear, as if I saw them through fogged glass.

I lifted the book from the shelf and held it in front of me. I didn’t know if it was Ally’s body or the book that buzzed, but the rhythm surged through me as if I’d been reunited with something I’d lost.

Then the world disappeared around me into another memory.