The Life After Trilogy: Soul Taken / Soul Possessed / Soul Betrayed. Katlyn Duncan
“Fine, you better not say anything to Cooper,” he said then disappeared.
I ran up the stairs, grabbed Ally’s purse, slipped on her shoes, and sailed back down the stairs in record time. I met Jamie in the parlor slipping into her coat and grabbed the note and the owl, tucking them into Ally’s purse. Slipping the boot onto Ally’s bad leg I grabbed the crutches. Just in case I’d need them. I didn’t know how long Aaron would be gone, so we’d have to hustle.
“Where are you going?” Marie’s voice suddenly said from inside the refrigerator making me jump. She was placing bags of vegetables on the counter.
I tucked the crutches under Ally’s arms and slid a glance to Jamie.
“My dad’s car broke down, Ma—” I nudged Jamie. “Ally is taking me to pick him up.”
Marie beamed. “How nice of Ally to make a new friend.”
“I guess we’ll be on our way now,” I said, ushering Jamie into the garage.
I tossed the crutches into the back seat and followed them in while Jamie jumped in the front. I rummaged through Ally’s purse for the keys.
“Here,” I said, handing them over.
“This isn’t going to work,” Jamie said, tossing her bag onto the seat next to me.
“It is going to work.” I pressed the garage door remote and sunk down in the wells of the backseat. Thank goodness Ally was a tidy person. I thought of a few souls I’d Collected that if I were laying in the backseat of their car I’d be covered in fast food wrappers and questionable substances ground into the carpets.
Rain pelted the car as Jamie backed out of the garage and turned toward the driveway.
“I see him!” she whispered.
“That’s good; I told him to come out here,” I said. “Keep going, but not too fast.”
Jamie jammed on the brakes.
“I didn’t say stop!” I hissed.
“Sorry!” She picked up the pace to a slow roll down the driveway. “He’s staring at the car,” she said in a low voice.
“Ignore him,” I said.
I didn’t remember the driveway being that long, but I silently applauded Jamie for being conscientious with me lying in the backseat without a seat belt. The car slowed and Jamie turned in her seat. “He just disappeared.”
I popped Ally’s head up and saw the gates opening at the entrance. “Okay, now you can step on it!”
The tires squealed as Jamie nailed the gas. I gripped the back of the passenger seat as we took a sharp right turn. Looking back toward the house I couldn’t see much past the window as the rain picked up. So I hopped over the divider and sank into the passenger seat, clicking the seat belt in place.
“Is he following us?” Jamie asked, her eyes squinting. The windshield wipers lightly thumped against the window, clearing the rain for a short time until it covered the glass again.
I turned in my seat. “I don’t think so. Cooper is the one with the connection to Ally so he’d be the first to find us.”
“Won’t Aaron go and tell him?” she asked.
I grinned. “Not if he wants to keep his job.”
“So where is this place?” she asked, matching my grin.
This girl liked adventure just as much as I did.
“I thought you said you knew where it was?” I asked.
She sighed. “I know around where it is but I can’t see anything in this mess. Here,” she said, digging her cell phone out of her jacket pocket. “Plug the address into the navigation app.”
It took several attempts to make Ally’s fingers press hard enough on the tiny keyboard to make each letter type in, but I finally plugged in the address.
Jamie laughed. “That alone would have alerted anyone that something was wrong with Ally. She’s always typing away on her phone.”
“This one has buttons,” I said. “Tiny buttons, by the way. Hers just has a screen.”
Jamie’s hands tightened against the steering wheel. “Well, we aren’t all able to get the newest phone when it drops.”
I sensed a little bit of disdain in her voice. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” she said, taking a left turn. “I know you are in her body, but you do sound like her.”
I flinched.
“I mean your voice, her voice.” She shook her head furiously. “You know what I mean.”
“Sure,” I said. I’d seen not so pretty things come out of Ally’s mouth through her memories. Even though I had to pretend to be her for a little while, I didn’t want to be her.
The phone spoke through a robotic female tone. We were close. In our dash to get to the location, I hadn’t really thought of what we might find there. If the owl and memory had been an indication, I knew Jackson had to do with it. Were we walking into a trap? Although he’d had plenty of opportunities to harm me and hadn’t. Could I trust him based on that?
Cooper had said Jackson turned Shadowed at some point, but his turning and his involvement with me seemed unrelated. I didn’t know how much longer I’d have access to him in the Living Realm, and it wasn’t as if either of us had a cell phone that worked in the After. I wanted, no, needed answers more than anything.
“You will reach your destination to the left in 0.2 miles,” the GPS said.
The rain had let up a lot; only a few drops hit the windshield as we neared our destination. Jamie drove the car through a winding road that opened up to dozens of brick buildings nestled close to each other. Most of them were closed for the day, but a few pickup trucks idled in the lots or passed us on the way out of the park.
Ally’s skin crawled as we got closer.
“This is it,” Jamie said. She slowly drove by a gray building with a bright white sign that read, ‘Anderson Landscaping’. “Seth works for his father’s business.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, even though I had known this through a quick peek at Ally’s memories.
“Everyone knows that,” Jamie said, driving past the building.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“We can’t just sit in front of the place. There was a light in the upstairs window.” She pulled the car close to the curb and turned it off.
Her phone blasted a rock song from its speakers. I dropped it.
“Crap,” she said, grabbing the phone. “It’s my dad.” She lifted it to her ear. “Yeah, Dad?… No, I’m still here at Ally’s house… yes… it’s in the top cabinet… no, the other one… keep going…” She rolled her eyes at me and mouthed an apology.
My soul buzzed. We were so close. I had to know what Jackson had to say about Seth and possibly Krystal.
“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I shoved the door open and hopped out of the car before Jamie could stop me. Abandoning the crutches in the car, I put on a limp just in case anyone Ally knew was around.
Including Seth. I hoped he was innocent in all of this, and a small part of me hoped Krystal was as well. I just couldn’t imagine two of the people that Ally trusted would ever go to those lengths for… what? Revenge? They