Secrets - [Guardian Trilogy 01] (47 page)

This wasn’t hell. I didn’t understand. The gun flashed in my mind again—Oh no, Holden had stopped me. He tore us apart. I closed my eyes from the intense light. “No.”

The light faded and I was once again suspended in nothing, alone with my broken heart.

About the author

Many authors claim to have known their calling from a young age. Liz Schulte, however, didn't always want to be an author. In fact, she had no clue. Liz wanted to be a veterinarian, then she wanted to be a lawyer, then she wanted to be a criminal profiler. In a valiant effort to keep from becoming Walter Mitty, Liz put pen to paper and began writing her first novel. It was at that moment she realized this is what she was meant to do. As a scribe she could be all of those things and so much more.

When Liz isn’t writing or on social networks she is inflicting movie quotes and trivia on people, reading, traveling, and hanging out with friends and family. Liz is a Midwest girl through and through, though she would be perfectly happy never having to shovel her driveway again. She has a love for all things spooky, supernatural, and snarky. Her favorite authors range from Edgar Allen Poe to Joseph Heller to Jane Austen to Jim Butcher and everything in between.

Come visit Liz online.

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Coming February 2012 by Liz Schulte

“Olivia” I gasped sitting up in bed.

For just a moment, I could have sworn I felt her caress against my mind. My eyes darted around my new apartment cautiously, she wasn’t here.

Of course I didn’t see her, she's dead.
She's dead, get a grip.

I collapsed back into my new bed. I had been doing well. It only took three and half years to go from thinking of her every second of everyday to only thinking of her when I was trying to fall asleep–progress. That was the only time I allowed myself the luxury of Olivia, I must have been dreaming. She wasn’t coming back, I accepted that. She was gone for good and by my own hands no less.

My brain knew I needed to let her go; it was completely on board with Operation Olivia Elimination. My heart, however, would gladly give the rest of my life just to feel her light up my mind for one whole minute. I closed my eyes against the newest flood of pain and regret it sent pumping through my veins. This traitorous heart would not leave me alone. What did I have to do to make it shut up? I am moving on—I've moved on—she's gone, and I sure as hell couldn't bring her back. All I had left was the job.

I gave up my apartment in St. Louis, sold nearly all of my possessions saving only the photographs I bought from her show, her camera, and the shirt of mine she wore, then I got the hell out. It was easier for me to forget her and what I had done in Chicago. Nothing to remind me of her here, the only place she could haunt me was in my head. The more I embraced the jinn the less Olivia could torture me. Soon I could be rid of her completely and back to my empty, pain-free existence. I’d be slightly more twisted and dead to the world around, but at least my mind would be back in the game.

I was a machine where work was concerned. Recruiting more new members than ever before, causing a wake of chaos and destruction in the lives of all of those who crossed my path, and I felt wonderfully disconnected every single time. With every new sucker a little piece of her slipped through the cracks and away from me forever. It had been over three years and still her hand squeezed my heart, uninvited and unwanted. What choice do I have?

But you do want it,
that annoying voice in my head reminded me.
If you didn’t want to hold on to her you wouldn’t be having these troubles. What will you even do when she's gone? You'll be empty and void; nothing left. No reason to get out of bed—

“No.” I said aloud as I pulled myself from the mattress. Actual sleeping was the hardest. I only slept once or twice a week now and for only a few hours at best. I was more vulnerable when I was sleeping. The unconscious connection we had shared was still unnaturally strong. Apparently the parts of my mind I had no control over continued to look for her while I was asleep, yearning to be whole again. She left me broken in more ways than one.

One of the two women in my bed began to move around as if she were waking up, “Shhhh” I touched her forehead and sent my own sleep deprivation into her, until she, once again, settled down. I was in no mood to speak with Tweedledee or Tweedledum , I had a meeting to go to. I kicked their plain, drab garments closer to the bed as I made my way to the bathroom. The lamp was knocked over and the covers lay in a twisted pile on the floor.

"Hmph, nuns." I smiled, enjoying my own personal vendetta against God.

****

I don't know what I expected. Certainly not this much pain. Opening my eyes and feeling Holden immediately saturate my mind made me want to scream—or go back. I was able to shove him into a closet in my mind where hopefully he would stay until he disappeared forever, forgotten.

Why did I agree to come back?