the one she had lost hold of at the club. Opening the top, she glanced in and glanced up again. “You know, it’s really empty in here without a wallet. Thank God I’m not a human with a driver’s license to lose or an identity to steal, huh.”
His female reached in. Unzipped a pocket. And withdrew a cell phone.
As she held it in her hand, she stared at the thing, seeming to reacquaint herself with her own possession. “I haven’t fired this up since I left. It’s out of juice, though, I’ll bet—yeah, no juice.”
“We have cords.” He got up and started looking in drawers. “Fritz always has something of everything in the houses he kits out—found ’em. What kind is it?”
“A Samsung.” She came over and looked down at the various rolled black cords, all ready to use, the packaging removed. “Galaxy. But not the super-new one.”
“Thank God it isn’t an iAnything.”
“Why?”
“Vishous doesn’t like them. And given that he did the security system in this house, he would never have left anything like that behind in any drawer. He would have checked to make sure.”
“Is that a Brother?” she asked. “Vishous, I mean?”
“You remember him,” he said with distraction as he started to try various options in the butt of her phone.
“Oh, was he at the club the night before last?”
“I got it. This fits.” Stretching the AC/DC plug to the wall, he went to—
“Wait,” she said as she stopped him.
* * *
As Therese put her hand on Trez’s arm, her heart was pounding. But come on, she told herself. It was crazy not to use her old phone. If she was trying to save money to move out of that rooming house, then getting another one was a waste if this was perfectly usable.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just being weird.”
“Are you afraid they’ve called?” His voice was low. “Your parents, I mean.”
“No.” Yes. “I mean, if they did, it’s fine.”
The initial charging took quickly, and as she waited, she found herself wishing she weren’t so cheap. She also tried to decide what would be harder. If they had phoned… or if they hadn’t.
“Turn-on time,” she muttered.
Initialing the unit, she waited for it to fire up, and then—
There was no reason to enter her password. Her notifications flashed on the screen immediately.
And all she could do was stare at them.
“My brother,” she heard herself say. “He’s, ah, he’s called.”
“Recently?”
“Seven times. And yes… three nights ago was the last one.”
“Are you going to call him back?”
Therese shook her head, but not in response to the question. She was trying to focus through her emotions to remember what the hell her password was. Her birth date—yes, she’d used that as her password because she got so sick and tired of remembering word-and-number combinations. Entering it, she got into the phone proper.
Her eyes watered as she looked through everything. There were texts, missed phone calls, other voice mail messages—not just from her brother.
It was all tangible evidence that her old life had continued without her. And the fact that none of the communications except for Gareth’s calls were recent made her feel like she’d died and was witnessing people move on. Cousins, friends, professional contacts. Those had all stopped reaching out after a short while. Her brother had persisted, however.
Not texts, either. Calls.
He was a texter. Or had been. The only time he ever called her was for emergencies: Accidents, car or person. Sicknesses, although with vampires that was rare. House problems that were messy, like burst pipes or blown electrical fuses that were smoking.
Or deaths.
Funny, Therese had heard people talk about seminal moments before, and she had always pictured them in the context of history. History was important, and involved many people—and sometimes the entire race: Like the raids of a couple of summers ago. The democratic election of Wrath, son of Wrath. The birth of Wrath’s son, Wrath. All of those events were seminal in that they were origins of great change and the kinds of things that defined a given generation.
The lives of most individuals, on the other hand, were anecdotal rather than historic. The ins and outs of a person’s life mattered solely to them, with minor extensions into families and friends. Rarely was there a span or sprawl that enveloped huge numbers. Rarely did things go so deep that breath was taken from you and you remembered exactly where you were standing when something happened or was told to you.
Rarely did you remember the shift, and not