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.
chapter 3
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.