Cooper walked over to the computer and poked at the keys. “Maybe there are retrieval questions. If you know the answers to those...”
But I still focused on the photo. Not just in anger and pain, but now in curiosity. Something about the woman seemed familiar. I’d never seen her before, I was certain, but it was almost a sense of déjà vu.
Getting up, I walked over to the picture and knelt. I brushed aside the shards and picked the photo up in my bandaged hand.
“Who are you?” I asked no one.
I flipped the photo over. The names Ellie and Erik, along with the month and year were scrawled across the back in Erik’s handwriting. It had only been taken nine months ago. Three months before the supposed accident that took my memories.
Nausea brewed and bubbled in my stomach. I swallowed the bile down. “Try Ellie.”
The keys stopped clicking for a moment. Then they started up again.
“We’re in.”
9
Cooper tapped on the keyboard, going through file after file. I paced the room, wondering who that woman was. Why her name was the password. It seemed strange that she mattered more than finding out the truth of my past, but here I was. Bandaged, bloodied hand still aching from the glass, and still tempted to tear up the photo. But I didn’t. I planned on showing it to Erik and confronting him about the woman, no matter what else we found out down here. He owed me an explanation.
Even as I thought about him, the familiar ache started in my chest. Despite everything, I missed him. And it hurt to be without him. The anger faded, and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand any of this. Erik never gave me any reason to doubt.
Until now.
Cooper paused in his typing.
The silence interrupted my thoughts, and I stopped pacing.
He leaned back, covering his mouth with his hand, shock etched into the profile of his face.
“What?” I stepped toward him. “What is it?”
“It can’t be.” He shook his head, dropped his hand, and looked at me. “If this is true, I mean. This is some insane stuff.”
His fingers moved over the keyboard again, tapping slowly. The pace made me want to look for myself, but something kept me frozen in place.
“This has to be wrong,” he said. “Some hobby, maybe. It can’t be real.”
Anxiety ping-ponged in my chest. Front to back with someone slapping paddles so hard it kept knocking the wind from me. Whatever Cooper read on that computer, the shock and horror shone out of his eyes like headlights. And I was the deer stuck in front of them.
“Cooper, what?!”
He stood up and turned the chair toward me. “Sit.”
I did without hesitation. “You’re scaring me.”
He swiveled the chair toward the computer screen. The glare of it hurt my eyes for a second before the words came into focus. The moment I started reading, it was like I got sucked into one of the thriller novels I loved to read.
Only this wasn’t fiction. But it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be, because each word was another piece of a horror story that built my life. An impossible thing. Nothing I’d ever even heard of.
“What the fuck? This has to be a joke.”
“I don’t think it is,” he said. “Your husband is Doctor Erik Franks. The Doctor Erik Franks.”
“Erik is a medical examiner with a PHD. So what?”
Cooper paused then, something passing over his face that was almost imperceptible. “Jesus, Lenore, you really don’t know, do you?”
I raised my brows. “That you’re being cryptic? Yes, I know that.”
“He’s not exactly an anonymous man.” Cooper crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the desk. “He was all over the news about six months ago. Talking about bringing people back from the dead. How with modern technology combined with old ways we could do it.”
“Old ways?”
He gestured toward the computer. “What you see there.”
What I saw there were notes on necromancy from a book that seemed to come right out of a horror movie.
“How is that possible? I looked up Erik on the phone too. Nothing like this came up.”
“Maybe he knew you were snooping. He could have set it so the search results filtered out specific words.”
Maybe I hadn’t been as sneaky as I thought. The notes and files on the computer only got worse, more surreal. Pictures of the corpses filled the screen. One woman after the next. Erik had outlined which parts of each woman he used. Putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle—until he made me.
“No.” I stood up so abruptly the chair flew back, slamming against the metal table.
The cold, steel metal table. If Erik’s notes were true—he created me on that table. Flexing my hands—were they my hands? Did they belong to me?
Necromancy. He had brought me to life with necromancy.
“This can’t be true.”
My knees gave way. Cooper rushed to me, catching me with muscular arms.
“Okay," he said. "Come on. This isn’t the first time you’ve nearly collapsed. You need to get out of this basement and rest."
I ground my teeth but nodded. Every time we found out some new bit of information, my body had a physical reaction. Like I wasn’t supposed to know. My brain swam with so many thoughts and uncertainties about who and what I was.
With an arm around my waist, Cooper guided me back up the stairs and toward the master bedroom.
"It's going to be okay."
I didn’t believe him. How could I believe him? I was some sort of abomination—pieces of dead things sewn together. Alive because of what? Words in an old book.
He guided me toward the edge of the bed. I sat and blood dripped from my hand, speckling the wood floor.
“Am I even alive?”
“Hey.” Cooper pulled back and cupped my cheeks with his hands. He stared into my eyes, nothing but compassion lingering there. “You are alive. You’re a living, breathing human being. No matter how that came to be.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “How can you be so calm
