In Memories We Fear Read Free

just a second, she worried he wasn’t even going to stop—not even going to look down—but he did.
    “I don’t have time for—,” he started, and his eyes locked on her face.
    She was dressed all wrong, looking neither like a damsel in distress nor a pretty street urchin. For God’s sake . . . she was trying this in a pair of canvas sneakers and one of Philip’s old sweaters that hung halfway to her knees.
    “Please,” she said again, turning up her gift and watching his expression alter slightly. He would see her as helpless, fragile, alone, and in desperate need of help. She clouded his mind, his judgment, and played upon any sense of humanity he still possessed.
    “I need a place to hide, just for a few hours,” she said, moving closer, pitching her voice to a tone of fear, hoping Philip could see how difficult this was from where he stood.
    “Hide?” the man repeated, his eyes glassy now. Up close, his suit looked cleaned and pressed, but not new. She normally didn’t require anywhere near this much influence over a victim—and it was hardly sporting—but she didn’t have a choice here.
    “Just for a few hours,” she said again. “Someplace no one will find me. Can I stay in your room?”
    This was lamest thing she’d ever suggested to a victim, and any sane person would have told her to call the police and walked right past her. But at the moment, he wasn’t sane. He wanted only to protect her. He’d do anything she asked.
    “All right,” he said, sounding dazed. “But I have a pitch to make. I can’t miss it.”
    “When?” she asked, surprising herself that she cared.
    “Half an hour . . . in the Klamath room.”
    Half an hour? He wasn’t going to make that.
    He led her inside the hotel and to the elevator, as if taking a strange girl from the street to his room—just because she wanted a place to hide—was the most normal thing in the world, and Eleisha began feeling uncomfortable about the whole situation, again wishing maybe she hadn’t suggested this.
    He led her to the sixth floor and used his key card to open the door to his room. They entered, and she closed the door. At this point, she would put him to sleep, feed, and then alter his memory so he’d have no recollection of ever having seen her.
    But she looked at the printed charts and the computer case, and she remembered his stray thoughts about losing his house and how his nearly maxed Visa card could barely cover the price of this room.
    “Okay, you’re safe here,” he said, readjusting the charts. “I have to go.”
    She reached out and touched his face. “You’re tired. You need to sleep.”
    Like a clock stopping, his eyes closed, and he fell back onto the bed, with the computer and charts beside him. Eleisha looked at his wrist. She was hungry, but she couldn’t do this. If she fed, he probably wouldn’t wake up soon enough, and he’d still be weak.
    Instead, she reached inside his mind and took him back to the moment he’d crossed the street. She put in a different memory. He’d found the charts in his car, but he’d forgotten the computer in his room, and he’d hurried back up to get it. He never met anyone. He never saw anyone on the way up. Then stress and exhaustion had overtaken him briefly.
    “You’ll wake up in forty seconds,” she whispered. “Do you understand? Forty seconds.”
    She slipped out the door. He would make his presentation.
    All the way back down in the elevator, through the lobby, and into the street, she wondered what on earth had possessed her to instigate some game that played with people’s lives—just to entertain Philip.
    But when she came around the building and saw his face, she knew why. He looked animated, interested . . . amused.
    “That was tragic,” he said. “No style. No improvising. You just used your gift. I can do better wearing a gunnysack without any pants. I can do better without even turning on my gift.”
    But his voice held no cruelty. He was having