wants to hear you complaining abouts your job again,” he whispered.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Trust me,” he said as he stood up. “You gots no idea what I’m thinking. And you should probably puts that thing away.” He gestured toward the marker. “My opinion is ya gots ta tell Russell. Forget about all the crap you two gots going on in your personal life for a few minutes and deals with this.”
He paused at the door, ready to leave, laptop folded up like a sheet of paper and tucked into his shirt pocket. “I don’t wanna scares you, boss, but that thing is trouble. The government’s been wanting to gets their paws on your company for ages.” He lowered his voice, forcing me to lean closer to hear him. “And it looks like they finally gots a way to do it.”
CHAPTER TEN
Angelique:
Chaz said that I should start writing things down, that it will help me remember my past lives. He says that everybody keeps a journal now—even One-Timers. A secret collection of memories that no one else ever reads. It’s supposed to help me remember what I don’t want to forget. But I’m afraid of the past and the future. And I’m worried about what I might find out about myself.
There was blood on my sheets when I woke up. My hand hurts but I don’t know why, and a heavy pain has settled in my chest, like my lungs are made of rock. We went to a jazz club last night, I think. I ran into a bald man there—his face, his voice—he seemed familiar. But then a fight broke out and in the midst of it, a picture flashed in my head: a stone crypt.
The City of the Dead.
Chaz took me there, but it didn’t help. The picture got louder and heavier, like the pain in my chest. I ran away from him through the misty fog, feet pounding against cement while the mist hung heavy and wet, almost like rain. I thought I heard a howling death, felt white fangs ripping my skin and I knew that I never wanted to fall in love again. Ever. That was when I saw it. The place that had called me. But I was too weak. Too afraid.
I felt the same way now.
I sat down with a stylus and a VR tablet, with trembling hands I began to write down random thoughts and words. Then it started to come back to me. Images. Sounds. Voices. The black holes in my memory dissolved into shocking memories; they thundered awake, sudden, immediate, demanding. My emotions were ripped and shredded.
A familiar face floated before me, a moment of joy and hope.
Then I remembered. It wasn’t clear at first, but after a minute I could see.
My first life…
We lived on a farm in Scotland, William and I, on a parcel of hilly land near the River Esk. During the day we tended our herd of Hampshire sheep, watched as the wind ruffled the long grass, commented on how each blade enticed the sheep to linger, to fill their bellies. In the evenings after dinner we would sit before the fire, I playing my clarsach harp, he singing the old Celtic songs.
We were a strange pair, I know. Both of us willing to give up the modern city life to herd sheep, but you have to remember that the government gave incentives back then, trying so hard to get folks back to the farms. We were the lucky ones, that’s for sure. Got our little piece of property for almost nothing.
He was ten years older than I was, and quite dashing, with his rugged, country-squire looks. Not at all the sort of man I’d hoped to meet when I went off to university in Glasgow. Not the sort of man I’d planned to marry, but there it is. You don’t often end up doing what you have in mind in the first place.
I was going to change the world with my new ideas. I’d wanted to sail across the ocean and marry an American, leave this dull land of brilliant blue skies and emerald hills behind. Wash my hands of it, once and for all. Catherine MacKinnon, I said to myself more than once, you need to break with your clan and make a difference in the world.
Of course, I didn’t know then the things I know today, but I still don’t think I would have lived my life any different. It was time for