Melody Unchained. Christa Maurice

      Melody sat next to the bed where her elderly master lay dying. Occasionally, she mopped his brow, but otherwise she stared out the window, waiting. Her next master would probably be whoever came to clean out the apartment. Billy had no family so that duty would fall to the building super, Zubrowski, a greasy man who looked at her like she was naked even when she wasn’t. Being his servant would not be enjoyable, but she knew his type. He would squander his wishes quickly and pass her along to another who was much like him. It could be a century before she got away from his kind–who wanted lots of money, women and fame–and back to one like Billy. Sweet, gentle Billy who actually cared about her. They were few and far between. They always promised to free her and then, for whatever reason didn’t. Billy had held onto his last wish until now, but like so many others, he would die without making it.

      Getting revenge on the chieftain who murdered her husband had been very sweet, but might not have been worth the price.

      Billy stirred, reaching for her.

      “What is it, habibi?” she asked, leaning over to hear his voice. His thick, dark hair had thinned and turned gray with the decades, but he was always handsome to her.

      “I am dying,” he told her for at least the thirtieth time.

      “Yes, Billy. You are dying.” She shifted to the bed and took his hand in both of hers. If she could cry, she would, but tears had been taken from her with a great many other things when she’d paid for her revenge. “Billy, you had promised to free me. Do you remember?”

      “Free you?” The cataracts filming his eyes made it hard to know if he understood.

      “Yes, Billy. Free me. Please. Just say the words.” How many times had she been here? Sitting beside a dying man, begging him to free her, only to have him die, leaving her in the possession of the next master. Disappointment shouldn’t surprise her, but she couldn’t not try.

      “My Melody. So loyal.” Billy touched her face with his withered hand. “With me until the end.”

      She clenched her teeth before she snapped that she’d had no choice. He was her master. She had to stay. But he had been so kind. For fifty years, he had been the best of masters. Treating her almost like a human. Never demanding anything horrible or demeaning. He had even helped her cook and keep the house when he could. “Yes, Billy, with you until the end. Now please free me before you die.”

      “Poor child, saddled with such an old man.”

      If she could cry, she would be sobbing now. That she should have spent so many years hoping again, only have him lose his mind and not free her as he had promised so long ago. “Billy, you must say the words. I wish you to be free. Just say the words.”

      “Say the words?”

      “Yes, Billy.” Melody clutched his hand between hers. “You want me to be free, don’t you? You don’t want me to have another master. You must say the words and believe them.”

      Billy’s eyes fell closed. “Say the words and believe them.” He stilled, his breathing shallow and even.

      Melody glanced at the dented brass lamp Billy had kept on the nightstand all these years. Her home. The moment Billy died, she would be sucked back into it and would stay there until some idiot who owned it uttered the fateful words “I wish I had a turkey sandwich.” Billy actually liked the thing. That was why he’d bought it in the first place.

      He stiffened and Melody braced herself. Any second now. “Melody,” he said in a clearer voice than she had heard in years, “I wish you free.” He reached out with his other hand in what was no doubt meant to be a dramatic move to throw the lamp across the room, but he didn’t have the strength to do more than push it an inch.

      Melody jerked backward, sucking a breath into her lungs. Her head buzzed with the flow of blood. “Billy!” she cried. She clapped her hands over her ears. It hurt. Had it always hurt? Had she forgotten even that? Her fingers ached at the joints and her stomach growled. Tears flooded her eyes so she couldn’t see. “Billy, help me!”

      “Melody?” Billy’s voice was distant and weak. “I’m sorry, Melody. It was your wish.”

      Melody slid onto the floor, clutching her chest. A terrible noise thumped from there. A hammering. “Billy!” She grabbed for the blankets, but her fingers wouldn’t close over the material. Then the room shrank to a pinpoint.

      And flickered out.

      * * * *

      “Oh man,” Jerry grumbled to Barnes in the hallway outside the interview room at Arden’s police station. He traced a crack in the linoloeum with the toe of his shoe. The seven-story building hadn’t been updated since it was constructed in the sixties. The disappearing tax base required every man to do double duty but, damn, he’d much rather pretend he was a CSI on a robbery than a social worker with the traumatized victims. “Why do I always have to deal with the hysterical woman? Where’s Rogers?”

      “Out sick.”

      “Social services?”

      “The on-call woman is tied up with a child abuse case.”

      “Hospital?”

      “Cleared her. They said physically she’s like a newborn. Not a scratch, not a scar, nothing. In perfect shape. Besides, you have a gift with the ladies.” Barnes clapped him on the shoulder and gestured to the interview room.

      Gift with the ladies. All he did was never hit on them. Jerry pushed open the interview room door. The woman...uh, girl, sat on the chair on the other side of the gunmetal gray table with her knees pulled up to her chin. Her glossy black hair hung around her face and her dark eyes were huge. Under normal circumstances she probably had dark skin, but shock had sucked all the blood out of her skin and made her sort of yellow. She was wearing a man’s shirt, white with blue pinstripes and–jeez–nothing else. Jerry trained his eyes on the file Barnes had shoved into his hands.

      The girl had been found in the apartment of William Welsh. Welsh had been dead for about four days. Eighty-eight years old, William had died of natural causes. The girl had been hiding in a closet wearing– Jerry studied the photo. Wearing nothing but the shirt. Which begged the question: Why did an old coot like Welsh have a half-naked, possibly foreign, probably underage girl stuffed in a closet in his apartment?

      “Hi, I’m Jerry Howland.” He held out his hand. “Can you tell me your name?”

      The girl stared up at him with her huge eyes. Her face was streaked with tear tracks. “Billy’s dead,” she whispered.

      Not foreign. Her voice had a faint accent, but not strong enough to pinpoint its origin. He lowered his hand and sat down in the chair across from her. “I’m sorry. Billy was your grandfather?”

      “He was my master.”

      Jerry set the file on the table. Master. That sounded bad. What would an eighty-eight-year-old man want with a nubile little...serving girl? He scanned the coroner’s initial report. According to it, the old man had had a really weak heart. No way was he having sex with this girl. “Do you have a name?”

      The girl shivered, hugging her knees tighter. “Billy called me Melody.”

      Jerry made a note on the file then made the mistake of meeting her eyes. This was why men screwed up