“One last chance for what?”
“To be with your wife, of course,” she replied.
I felt a wave of anger wash over me at her mention of Felicity. I still had to find a way to undo what she had done to her, so the fact that she was using my wife as a carrot to dangle in front of me was incendiary. But I’d traveled this road with her before, and I knew that was her game. So I took a moment to breathe before offering a measured response.
“What’s the catch?” I finally asked.
“We share her,” she said.
I stifled a disgusted snort. “You know that isn’t going to happen.”
She paused and then replied with an oddly dejected sounding tone backing up the words. “I thought that might be your answer.”
“I’m surprised you even bothered to ask,” I said.
A heavy silence flowed between us. I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. Now and then I thought I picked up a sound that was akin to distant traffic.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me where you are?” I asked.
“Close,” she replied.
“That’s a little vague. Would you like to be more specific?”
She ignored the second question and said, “You only have yourself to blame, you know.”
“For what, Miranda?”
“All of them,” she said.
“All of them?” I repeated.
“Yes, all of them. Everyone who has had to die because you kept her from me,” she explained.
“Nice try,” I told her. “But a guilt trip isn’t going to get you anywhere. I feel enough of it as it is, I’m not taking yours on as well.”
“You should feel guilty,” she replied. “They are all your responsibility.”
“Sorry, Miranda, but their blood is on you, not me.”
“Is that what you want me to tell Lisa?” she asked, her voice soft.
The cycling ache that was pressing against the interior of my skull ramped up the scale a bit and then added a sharp stab of intense pain for good measure. The name itself didn’t ring a bell, but something about the way she said it told me the situation was heading south in a big way.
I twisted to the right while holding the phone tight against my head and then sent my free hand searching for the call pendant once again.
“Who’s Lisa?” I asked.
“The person who used to live in this body,” she said.
“And where is she now?” I pressed.
“Where she will be forever, little man,” she replied.
“And where is that, Miranda?”
She sighed. “You know. You have been there.”
Images of the grey cell from my vision flashed through my mind, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
“Why, Miranda?” I demanded. “Are you planning to keep Lisa’s body?”
“No, little man,” she replied. “I told you. There is only one that I want, but you will not allow me to have her.”
“So then what now?”
“I am too tired. You have won.”
“Then you’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“You have no reason to,” she replied. “I understand that. But it is the truth. I am leaving. Forever.”
“But if you leave, shouldn’t Lisa come back?”
“Not if she has nothing to which she can return.”
Her comments glanced from one another like steel on flint, sparking a recent memory. A searing flash from my tortured visions shot through my brain, and it immediately twisted my stomach into a tight knot.
“Some people need to stay dead, Rowan,” Ariel says. “Even if they have to die again.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded, my tone rising in pitch as Ariel’s ghostly voice continued to echo in my head.
My hand was still frantically feeling about for the call button but finding nothing more than a twist of sheets and blankets. On a whim I moved it out to the edge of the bed and dragged my fingers along the side until they bumped against the point where the mattress met the railing mount. Digging into the gap, I finally felt a round cord and sought to hook my digits beneath it.
“If you had simply given her to me, little man,” Miranda said. “Then this would not be happening.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded once again.
“End this,” she replied. “Like I said. I am going away. Forever.”
“How, Miranda? Tell me.”
“Why do you ask what you already know?”
“Don’t do this, Miranda,” I told her. “This woman doesn’t deserve to die.”
“Neither did I,” she whispered.
My fingers tunneled beneath the cord, and I slipped them along its length as I pulled. The pendant clattered against the side of the bed but then caught on something as I yanked.
Silence was filling my ear at this point, and a horrible sense of dread was welling in my chest.
“Talk to me, Miranda,” I snapped. “You wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t want to talk this out.”
“I overestimated you, little man,” she said.
“How?” I pressed, trying to hold her attention. “How did you overestimate me?”
“I thought that you would at least want to see her again.”
“You mean Felicity?”
“Of course.”
“I do, Miranda. You know that.”
“I gave you a chance,” she said.
“I wasn’t good with the terms of your offer.”
“Just remember, you are the one doing this to her.”
“Doing what?”
“Once I am gone, what makes you believe you can find her again?”
“I know where to look.”
“I have a question, little man…”
“What is that?”
“How long do you think it takes to fall from a ten story building?” As if the words themselves weren’t frightening enough, a gut-wrenching melancholy overshadowed the statement.
I was starting to panic. Grasping for something to keep her on the line I said, “Let’s discuss this, Miranda. Exactly how would we work out this sharing?”
“It is too late for that,” she replied. “If I cannot have her, neither will you.”
I was still tugging on the call pendant cord, flipping it with quick jerks in an attempt to shake it loose. Finally, it broke free and I pulled it up. Sliding the sheathed wire through my hand as I released then gripped and then pulled, I dragged the control forward. The moment it was within reach, I jammed my thumb down on the button.
In that moment, Miranda spoke again, offering me a single word, “Goodbye.”
I shouted into the mouthpiece, “MIRANDA, NO!”
Barely three horribly prolonged seconds later, I heard a sickening thud and clatter, punctuated by a distant scream, and then nothing.
As the emptiness burned itself into my brain, light filled the room. I could taste salt as hot tears trickled across my face to meet up with the corners of my mouth. I held the now silent handset in a vise-like grip, still
