Soul Mates Page 7

  Blood stains marked the sheets where her hands had been.

  She sat on the side of the bed, thoughts of Jeremiah Moore long gone.

  Would Savannah know anything?

  No. The blood was still wet when I woke. Fresh.

  Alannah creeped herself out by kneeling and looking under her bed. There was nobody there. Her room was exactly as it should be, except for the bloody sheets.

  She walked through their apartment, but there were no signs of anybody. The door was closed, locked, and deadlocked. The windows were shut and locked.

  She bit her lower lip. There was no way anyone could have gotten into their place and certainly no way for them to have left without leaving something unlocked.

  Everything was quiet, and although Alannah normally loved that, right now it felt somehow wrong.

  It was 4:42 a.m.

  She’d be waking up in less than an hour, so she decided to just stay awake. There was no way she would be able to get back to sleep, anyhow. She made coffee and sat in the living room, watching CNN with the volume turned low.

  As she sat there, the odd phrase crept into her mind, but this time she thought she knew how it was spelled. She typed A agua esta fria into Google on her iPhone.

  The water is cold.

  Alannah frowned as she stared at the words translated from Portuguese.

  “What water?”

  Google didn’t have an answer for that.

  * * *

  At a little before 6:00 a.m., sunshine started to stream through the apartment windows. Alannah had finished three cups of coffee (one more than she would usually drink in an entire day). She’d continued to watch CNN but none of the stories really sank in.

  She swirled the mug in her hand, the last slurps of coffee waiting for her, but she decided she’d had enough and took it to the kitchen.

  Wine would be better, she thought. She choked out a small laugh. She wasn’t much of a drinker; Savannah would have more seriously gone that route.

  Savannah.

  She needed to know.

  Alannah removed her diary from the bureau and wrote two entries. The first was about the vision she’d had of the scary little boy.

  The second, longer, entry was about Jeremiah Moore. She took her time with this one, writing every detail she could remember about their meeting.

  There was something about him . . .

  For the first time since waking, she moved the Portuguese boy to the back of her mind and thought of something else. Someone else.

  She liked his smile and his voice. She knew without a doubt that he was gentle and trustworthy and lovable. His smile was a wide grin that seemed to stretch too far, but it had made her want to kiss him.

  He was taller than she (well, who wasn’t?), probably by a foot, but that wouldn’t matter, would it?

  The age, though.

  She tried to guess his age and decided he must be near forty. She was twenty-two.

  “Not quite double.”

  It wouldn’t make sense that he would be interested in her. He’d see her as a little kid. She was kidding herself to think he might be interested.

  But would he be?

  She went to her bedroom and took off her T-shirt and panties, tossing them in the laundry hamper for Sunday’s chores.

  After walking to the bathroom, she turned the shower on and climbed in. The water felt brisk and hot, and she was glad it would wash away any remnants of the blood.

  She turned her back to the streaming water, letting it flow into her long dark hair. Her eyes were closed, and it felt nice.

  “Wish you were joining me, Mr. Jeremiah.”

  She felt her face flush at that thought.

  She finished her shower and got dressed. It was her day to work, so she poured herself one last coffee and sat at her desk, ready for the first call of the day.

  Chapter 10

  2014

  Savannah Clark had decided to change her ways, but that oath lasted only two months. Every once in a while she thought of the baby that had lived inside her for a short time almost two years ago, and a kind of sadness came over her. She wanted it to be a real sadness, because she thought that was what she should feel, but it had happened so quickly that it was more like watching a melancholy movie. Still, she knew that she never wanted to go through that again.

  However, she wasn’t strong-willed.

  Three days after her twin had seen a ten-year-old boy as her own reflection, Savannah woke up in a strange bedroom with a man she didn’t know snoring beside her. Her head was pounding, and she vaguely remembered being at a bar the night before.

  She slipped out of bed, naked, and looked for her clothes in the dim lighting. There were no lights on, but the morning haze drifted through a window.

  “Ouch,” she said as pain throbbed through her head. They’d been downing shooters at the bar—that much she remembered. But his name, or where they were? Nothing.

  She saw her clothes piled near a chair and wasted no time getting herself dressed. Her watch was with her clothes, and she could see it was shortly after 5:00 a.m. Her purse was there, too.

  “God, I think it’s my day to work . . . .” She thought it was Tuesday, and paused to question herself.

  Yup. My day.

  Savannah tiptoed out of the bedroom and down a hall. She was in a two-bedroom apartment, but she didn’t take much time to see if there was anything she might remember. She headed for the door and quietly let herself out.

  The apartment was on the fifth floor, somewhere in downtown Seattle. When she ran to the street, she could see a hotel a block away, so she walked there. A taxi stand had three cars with drivers who were almost asleep. She hopped into the first cab in line and asked the driver to take her home.

  When she arrived, Savannah took a fast shower and toasted a bagel. She slathered it with cream cheese and started a pot of coffee.

  Six-fifteen. She still had forty-five minutes before she needed to get on the phones and answer inane questions from customers.

  It’d been two days since she’d been home.

  “What’s new with you, sis?” she asked.

  Savannah pulled out their shared diary and started to read.

  Five minutes later, she stared at the words, finding them hard to imagine.

  The boy staring back at me looked dead. He was a ghost or a zombie or something and I was never so scared in my entire life. It should have been my fucking reflection!

  How is that possible?

  It’s not.

  Savannah stared at the words, and just for a second she wondered if Alannah was playing a trick on her, but, of course, that wouldn’t be like her at all.

  She also read all about Alannah meeting the stranger at the dance studio, and that intrigued her as much as the impossible reflection.

  “Sounds like you have a little crush, Sis . . . .”

  In the short time she had left before starting work, she wrote her own entry in the diary. Unlike her sister, though, she didn’t feel compelled to tell the whole truth. She did admit to going out drinking, but in the journal it was with June Sophit, a friend a few blocks away. According to her new entry in the diary, Savannah stayed overnight at June’s place.

  She shrugged. What Alannah doesn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. With her coffee cup re-filled, she settled at her desk and sat cross-legged. The computer booted up for her, and she clicked the VPN icon to sign in to the main computer at Millipad. At exactly 7:00, she changed her status to AVAILABLE, and the first call came within ten seconds.

  The job was sometimes boring, sometimes stressful, and always headache-inducing. Savannah knew the Millipad products inside and out from her training and was rarely stumped by a question. The stress only came when a client screamed over the phone about some perceived slight. Sometimes there was little to be done other than stay silent and let the person rant. She couldn’t help somebody who wasn’t being civil. When those calls came, it was almost always the customer’s problem. Th
ey didn’t follow the proper installation instructions or they deleted a program they shouldn’t have or it was some other easily-explainable problem. It was just tough dealing with them when they were being irrational.

  Starting the day with a hangover headache didn’t help matters, but that started to fade soon enough. Over the course of the next eight hours, she talked to 116 customers. At 3:00 she finished with the current caller (a man who had accidentally hit the buy button twice but didn’t want two tablets in his shopping cart), and set her status to NOT AVAILABLE.

  One more day down.

  She logged off and put her headset aside before stretching her legs. She made another bagel with cream cheese and washed it down with some milk.

  The diary was still on the kitchen table where she’d left it. She thought again about the weird image of the dead little boy who had scared Alannah.

  “Must be your imagination, Sis.”

  She put the diary away and grabbed a back pack. It was pink, a color she was not the slightest bit fond of, but she’d found it at a garage sale for five bucks. She made a tuna sandwich and a hardboiled egg and packed them along with two bottles of apple juice.

  She liked the walk. The air was brisk, the sun shining, and the temperature a nice eighty-two degrees. She wished Seattle could be like that every day of the year.

  The meal program wasn’t called a soup kitchen, but that’s how Savannah thought of it in her mind. It was officially called Seattle Volunteer Food Mission, but somehow that felt stilted and she liked the simpler phrase better. She walked to the side of the church and wandered around to the area in the back. The Mission was fairly small, but it fed dozens of homeless people every night.

  Savannah recognized many of the people as she dished out a meal for them. Tonight, it was a helping of roast beef and potatoes, with a small cup of cream of mushroom soup. She was responsible for the beef. Although she wanted to slice bigger pieces, she knew the supply had to be stretched so that nobody would leave without something in their belly.

  “Thank you.” The man was old and dirty, but he smiled and nodded to Savannah. She could see the gratitude in his eyes and wondered when he’d last eaten. He wasn’t a regular.

  She smiled as she put the slices on a paper plate and passed it to the next person to add a scoop of potatoes.

  “You’re welcome. Good to see you here.”

  During a break, the woman who filled the soup cups rubbed her eyes. “Not too busy tonight. Warm outside. People finding some other way to eat.”

  “I bet it’s a lot busier in winter.” Savannah had only been volunteering for a few months.

  “Hard when we run out of food and there’s still a lineup. We do what we can, though.”

  A woman came to the food line with two small children, and Savannah’s heart broke for them. They picked up small bottles of water when they joined the line. What must it be like to have to beg to feed your children? She wished she’d brought some kind of toys to give the kids, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now.

  First in line was a little girl, maybe eight years old. She had big, wide eyes that seemed to wander all over the place. She likely hadn’t seen this much food in one place, at least not recently.

  “Thank you,” she said politely. “I’m hungry.”

  “I hope you enjoy it, sweetie.”

  “I never had beef before.”

  Savannah kept a smile on her face, but really she wanted to hug the girl.

  “I bet you’ll love it!”

  Next came the girl’s brother. He was a couple of years older and Savannah thought maybe he was more used to this. His eyes were glazed over and his mouth a thin line. She put a piece of beef on his plate and said, “Do you like beef?”

  The boy moved his head slowly to look at her. For a moment he didn’t reply. He licked his lips and locked eyes with her. Savannah felt trapped by his gaze, waiting for him to reply and not wanting to turn away.

  Finally he answered. His voice was low and rumbly, like he was being strangled.

  “The water is cold.”

  Savannah froze, the words piercing her like a knife.

  “What?”

  A agua esta fria.

  The boy grinned widely. She could see two missing teeth.

  “What did you say?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “It’s cold.” He held up the bottle of water he’d picked up earlier in the line. “See?”

  He held out the bottle, and she automatically reached to touch it.

  “Yes, you’re right,” she said. “It’s cold.”

  The boy laughed. “I like beef. I like chicken better, but beef is good.”

  He moved to the next station, and the mother moved into his place.

  “So nice of you to help us, dear. I hope God takes care of nice people like you.”

  Savannah smiled but glanced at the boy as he shuffled along.

  Chapter 11

  2014

  Jeremiah woke and stared at the ceiling above his small bed. It was morning and he hadn’t slept much. He’d spent a sleepless night thinking about the girl he watched in the dance studio beneath him.

  He’d never felt like this before, and honestly never believed he’d ever have anything close to this reaction to a girl.

  “Alannah,” he said. He’d whispered her name a dozen or more times through the night, as if he needed to hear the sound of her name to maintain some weird connection with her.

  All for nought, though.

  He knew there was no chance of anything happening. Compared to him, she was only a little kid. About twenty, probably still a virgin based on how shy she was, probably naïve about the world . . . they’d have little or nothing in common.

  But . . .

  “But nothing.”

  He stood and stretched and walked to the window of the living room that looked down to the parking lot of the strip mall. There were only a few cars there this early, but he glanced at all of them, trying to tell himself he was looking for nothing in particular.

  She wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  He watched for a few more minutes before going for a shower.

  While the hot water splashed down on his face, he imagined her being in the shower with him. They would scrub each other’s backs, and while he scrubbed hers, she’d look backward to him shyly, with a secret smile. He’d rub her shoulders, neck, and back and then reach around her body to soap her breasts, gently massaging her nipples before kissing her neck as their bodies pressed together. His cock would be pushing against her ass and she’d be arching her body back against it.

  He sighed as he continued his fantasy, and his hand found his erection. He rubbed himself, imagining it to be Alannah’s hand, imagining them making love in the shower. In his mind, he leaned her against the shower wall and kissed her deeply, then moved down to kiss her tight nipples as the water splashed on them. He kneeled, and his tongue found its way inside her pussy. She moaned, and he felt an animalistic urge to just fuck her. He rose and pressed against her, once again kissing her mouth, and his body reacted as she pulled him even closer to her. He slid inside her, and it was the most amazing lovemaking he’d ever experienced. He pushed slowly, deeper and deeper, and it didn’t take very long for him to come. He heard her crying with pleasure as he pushed his cock deep inside her and brought her to her first orgasm.

  Jeremiah shuddered as he came himself.

  He stood in the shower, the water having turned lukewarm, then cool. He finally noticed and turned the water off and dried himself before getting dressed. He couldn’t help but take another look outside the window, but she still wasn’t there.

  For breakfast, Jeremiah cooked two fried eggs and plopped them onto a slice of toast. He nuked some coffee he’d made the day before to go with it.

  “How do you like your eggs, Alannah?” he asked the air.

  Twenty-ish was too young . . . wasn’t it? Almost half his age. Of course it was too young. Her skin was smooth and
delicate, her cute little body lithe and strong. She wouldn’t possibly be interested in him.

  With a rush, he pushed back from the table and walked to the bathroom to stare at himself in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes, wrinkles scratching down his cheeks, his hair starting to gray, and some of it falling out.

  As much as he tried to keep in shape, he knew he carried twenty pounds more than he should, and if he walked up more than two flights of stairs, he would get winded.

  She had the world available to her.

  But . . .

  When he’d looked into her eyes, he saw a delicate little thing. She was fragile and wouldn’t be able to be with just anyone. He understood. He knew from that single meeting that he would be able to take care of her.

  She was nice. He could tell that as clearly as he could see the red stains in his own eyes. He’d looked into a thousand women’s eyes in his lifetime, searching for that one who had the eyes that said, “This is a girl you can trust. She will always treat you well and she’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever met.”

  Could he really not at least try to see if things could work out?

  By now, the habit had formed. He walked back to the window and looked out, his heart catching in his chest.

  Alannah was standing down below, staring up at him.

  * * *

  Alannah also hadn’t slept well the night before. Part of it was lingering fears from the scary little boy in her mirror, part was the recent note that her twin sister had written in their diary, and part was thinking about the stranger who had watched her dance a few days earlier.

  She knew there was nothing to do about the scary little boy. It was just some weird hallucination that she hoped wouldn’t recur.

  The note from Savannah talked about a different little boy, who scared her at the mission. It was unsettling because Savannah had thought he’d said the same damned words about the water being cold that they’d both heard a couple of times before, but again, Alannah tried to push those thoughts aside.

  The stranger who watched her dance, though . . . he was harder to ignore.