No Time to Cry (Nine While Nine Legacy Book 1) Read Free Page B

scowl. I
didn’t want to be ‘retrieved’. I didn’t want to go to Seattle. Dealing with being
suddenly dead was enough of a change without throwing in a relocation plan to
boot. 
    “And since things seem to have been
moved to the fast track, we need to get a move on. You’re visible now. This is
going to be the second place they come after it’s discovered that the sleeping
girl up on that couch is no longer breathing. We have to go…now. You’ve got to
come with me…Isabelle. Do you want to try explaining any of this to cops? Why
are you here in the dead girl’s apartment? How do you know her? Why are you
here and she is up there dead? What’s your name?”
    He stopped there. Glancing briefly again
at the assortment of mail, obviously to let it all sink in, or perhaps for
dramatic effect.
    He had a point. I couldn’t deny that. I
was dead. What would I say? What could I say to anyone once I was discovered up
there?
    I looked around me again, at all my
much-loved possessions, my charming home. I loved living here. I loved my
friends and the life I’d made for myself.
    How could I be expected to leave it all
behind? And to be so rushed through the entire mental processing of it all just
sucked royally too.
    I felt so sick.
    A look of concern settled on his face
and he checked his watch, looked at me again, the concerned look deepening to
dismay. “No. Wait. That’s not right.” He sounded really alarmed, staggered
actually. His voice nearly quavered. He seemed to pale even further.
     I turned and looked at myself in
the gilt framed, full length mirror that was attached to my foyer wall, nearly
afraid to after taking in his reaction. 
    “You look the same. Almost exactly the
same.” I saw his reflection before my eyes settled on my own. He was frozen in
his shock. “You’ve gone solid and you look the same. That’s not how it
happens.”         
     My eyes came to rest on my image.
I looked like me. Ah, relief. I was still me.
    Well—as I looked at myself more closely,
without the haze of looming dread clouding my vision—I was actually more like
the perfected version of me.
     I stepped closer to the mirror to inspect
myself. My skin looked velvety soft. I reached up and touched my face, it was
exactly that. I’d always had nice skin, but this was baby soft perfection,
smooth, even toned, flawless, luminous.
    “Wow,” I breathed out. My eyes were the
most amazing hues; trapped in them were the waters of New Providence, in the
Bahamas. Clear, cool, pale violet. Blending gently into rich Cyan. Fusing into
Sapphire and then Persian Blue. Hypnotic.
    My hair? It gleamed. It glowed. It had
gone from a pretty shade of dark-honey blonde to a combination of shades. Now a
gorgeous blend of warm honey and shimmering amber, with threads of radiant
sunset oranges and reds, adorned my head.
    And my body felt stronger. I worked out
a couple of times a week, but this felt different. Somehow less vulnerable.
“Ok, this part I’m liking.” I smiled. And it made me stumble back a bit from
the mirror. It was the dream me; the ‘me’that was featured in my
dreams.
    “No. That’s wrong,” Mr. Encouragement
chimed in. Rain on my parade why don’t you. “You can’t look the same.”
He reached out tentatively and touched my cheek. A look traversed his face for
just an instant that I couldn’t quite name. But it made me feel pleased. “You
can’t look like you at all. And when precisely did this happen? You did not
look like… this,” he flailed his hands around in front of me, “when
we…well, moments ago!”
    “I don’t look like me. Look at me!”
    “I am. And it’s all wrong.” We both
examined my image. I had a certain radiance and luminosity now, coming from my
eyes, from my hair, from my skin. I was thrilled with this amendment, Liam not
so much. In fact, he looked a little ill. “Well, somebody must like you.” He
shrugged, dismayed and now at a loss. He seemed much shaken by