Blood Memories

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.

"Almost there," I told him over and over. "We're almost there."

The place looked old but well kept. The brick stairs to the front door seemed like an endless flight upward. Only the light from the east kept me from collapsing into sleep like William. How lucky he was, just to sleep. I blinked once and pictured the comfort of relaxing all my muscles and drifting away into oblivion, not caring about anything.

Reaching the top, I dragged William across the porch. Before my finger touched the bell, the door opened, and a pale, angry, perfect face stared out at me. Even in my state of fatigue, I couldn't help being jolted by Maggie's ivory face. She wasn't just beautiful. She was different. Even in mortal life, I'd never seen any woman who looked quite like her.