In Memories We Fear Read Free Page A

fun.
    “Really?” she said. “Have you forgotten that I get to choose the target?” She started walking, glancing back. “You just wait.”
     
    Wade Sheffield was on the bottom floor of the church, doing curls with a set of free weights he’d bought last month.
    He’d been living here, since the previous spring, with three vampires and a ghost. He was probably the only mortal in the world more comfortable with the undead than he was with normal people, but he’d been able to read minds all his life, and “normal people” did not enjoy his company.
    So now the five of them were trying to make this old brick church into a home. They nicknamed the building “the underground.”
    The main floor comprised a large sanctuary, complete with stained glass windows, and two offices. Wade had refurnished one office, and Rose had turned the other into her bedroom.
    The upstairs was not currently in use, but it sported six rooms that had once been engaged for Sunday school classes, and later, these would be used to house any lost vampires they found.
    The basement consisted of a three-bedroom apartment where Wade, Eleisha, and Philip lived, and an industrial-sized kitchen that the old congregation had once used for potluck dinners. But over the summer, Wade had been turning this area into a home gym. He’d started with a simple weight machine and then moved to free weights.
    In the early days of their mission, he’d believed that being educated, telepathic, and competent would be enough to make him indispensable to the group.
    He’d been wrong.
    Now he was working out twice a day, and Philip was teaching him how to use a sword.
    After finishing a second set of curls, he was sweating, and he dropped the weights into their rack, half turning to look at the doorway; tonight he was feeling anxious, even frustrated.
    Their last attempt to locate a lost vampire in Denver and bring her home had ended in complete disaster, but after a few weeks of mental recovery, Eleisha had seemed ready to “get back on the horse” and try again—or so Wade thought.
    Again, he’d been wrong.
    Their strategy was for Wade to search out any online news stories of homicide victims drained of blood or of living people checked into hospitals with cuts or gashes that did not warrant an unexplained amount of blood loss. He’d once worked as a police psychologist, and he knew a good deal about where to search for such stories. Then, they would attempt to make contact, travel to meet the vampire, and try to bring him or her safely home to the church.
    Since the end of the summer, Eleisha had always expressed polite interest in any possible stories he mentioned, but she didn’t press him, and she didn’t seem eager for him to find a new lead. He wasn’t sure why. She should be pushing him, even working with him, doing everything she could to launch a new mission. This entire underground had been her idea, her vision, in the first place.
    Had her last failure shattered her confidence? Was she afraid to try again?
    To make matters worse, lately, she seemed interested only in spending time with Philip.
    Well . . . Wade didn’t know why that made matters worse. He just knew it bothered him.
    Grabbing a towel, he wiped off his face and arms and headed back toward their basement apartment. He didn’t stop there and went straight to the stairs, half jogging up to his office on the main floor.
    He liked this room with its old, used desk he’d picked up in downtown Portland. He liked the bookshelves and all the maps and his computer. The walls were cream, and the window overlooked Eleisha’s rose garden.
    Dropping into the desk chair, he moved his mouse, and the computer screen lit up. Tonight he was determined to find something—anything—to get them all out of this current state of limbo and back into some kind of action.
    Opening his Internet home page, he started, as usual, with the online New York Times , skimming quickly as his mind had