Dead Statues Read Free

flesh.
    “But I can’t keep a secret like that from her,” I whispered back. “She has a right to know that her father is still alive.”
    “She has no rights!” Murphy grimaced, his face contorting out of shape like a nightmarish Halloween mask. “She doesn’t have the right to be here – none of us do.
    Kiera’s father believes his daughter is dead, and she is as far as this world is concerned.
    What would happen if he knew that she was living again on the other side of the country?
    It’s not her – it’s not the Kiera that you are in love with; it’s the Kiera who was brought up in a world where wolves live amongst humans.
    It’s a world where she is dead.”
    “I don’t know if I can keep something like this from her,” I said.
    “You must keep her away from her old life, Potter,” Murphy said, his voice now sounding like Isidor’s, as if he were somehow warning me from beyond the grave. “If her father should see her, then perhaps the world will merge just a little bit more, then a little bit more, and I fear that could be catastrophic for all of us.”
    “But I don’t want to keep secrets from my friends, especially not from Kiera,” I shuddered. “She would hate me if she found out that her father was still alive and I hadn’t told her.”
    “Then you better make sure that she never finds out about her father,” Murphy said in his own voice again, with a grim smile on his face. Then added, “Or about your friend, Sophie.”
    I looked away in shame, even though nothing had happened between me and Sophie – not in this when. She had tempted me, but I had been true to Kiera. It was Kiera who I loved. I could never hurt her.
    “So?”
    “So what?” I asked, looking back at Murphy. But he had gone, and so had the fog and the graveyard. I was standing in a bedroom and Sophie appeared naked before me. I half expected her to cover her breasts with her arms and yell at me to get out, but she didn’t, she just stood there, her head to one side, looking at me. One side of her face looked broken and battered as if she had been hit by a car.
    “What do you want?” she asked me.
    “Do you want me to leave?” I said.
    “No,” she whispered, and the room suddenly flickered with candlelight. “Do you want to leave?”
    “No,” I said, closing the door behind me.
    Sophie came towards me, and as she did, I felt a thumping sensation race through my body. It was like a ghost of a heart, racing inside of me. She stopped and her neck made a sickening crunching sound as if snapping back into place. We were so close that I could see she was trembling. “I do remember you,”
    she whispered. “I remember everything. I remember how much I loved you and I know how much I hurt you.”
    “How do you know?” I whispered back.
    “The letters you sent me,” she said, her eyes looking into mine. “They were full of pain.”
    “I’m not hurting anymore,” I said.
    “Are you sure?” she asked as she folded her arms about me. They felt stiff and cold and her skin smelt as if she was decomposing, in my arms.
    “I’m sure,” I said, closing my eyes.
    “I’m in love with another.”
    Sophie seemed to flinch in my arms and pull slightly away from me. “Kiera Hudson?”
    she breathed and the bones in her broken neck made that crunching sound again.
    “Yes,” I told her. “I love her more than anything.”
    “But you loved me,” she frowned.
    I opened my eyes to see that she was staring into them again, and the hurt that I could see there was almost unbearable. I had loved Sophie once, and those feelings which I thought had been snuffed out like a flame, slowly rekindled themselves inside of me. She had been my first love.
    “That was a long time ago, in another where and another when,” I whispered, wanting to run from her.
    “What about what we shared?” she suddenly screamed, pulling me close again.
    “What about us?”
    Then instead of pushing her away like I had done in the cottage,