Immortal Becoming Read Online Free PDF Page B

to come with me.”
    Jess felt a dizzy, spinning sensation, the same sensation she felt every time she returned to her Aunt Moira. She must have crumpled to the ground, unconscious. Then her mother was beside her in the dream. She took Jess’s hand and suddenly they were in the same room she now stood in. Moira and her mother began to cry and hug. Jess had never met Moira, didn’t even know her mother had a sister, let alone that they were twins. Sometimes she wondered if Aunt Moira was really her mother’s imaginary friend/sister who had been passed down to Jess.
    “ Oh, Fates,” Moira had cried. “They’ve killed you!” It was then that Jess noticed that her mother had blood pouring from her neck.
    “ Mommmmmyyy!” Jess had begun to cry, and Moira looked at her. Jess would never forget the look on her aunt’s face in that moment. Her eyes reflected a combination of surprise and sorrow.
    “ Please,” her mother had said in a weak voice. “Please take care of my Jessica, Moira. She is an innocent. I want her to live a normal life.”
    “ Of course.” Moira knelt down, tears streaming down her face, pulling a crying Jess into her arms. “I am your Aunt Moira, Jessica. I will always be here for you. Whenever you need me, you just need to make a big wish for me. Think really, really hard about this room while you go to sleep, and you will come right back here in your dreams, okay?” Sniffling, Jess had nodded.
    She’d felt dizzy and spinning again, finding herself standing right outside her back door. Running into the house, she saw her mother laying in a pool of blood with her neck slit, her father kneeling beside her, holding a bloody knife.
    “ Mother!” She ran to her mother’s other side and touched her mother’s cheek, feeling a tearing sensation in her chest, like someone had removed an organ, followed by an empty hollowing in her mind. Her mother was dead. Jess looked up into her father’s vacant stare and knew that she was alone in the world, except for Aunt Moira.
    Jess had come to Aunt Moira almost every night after that. They had cried together, both mourning the woman they had loved more than any other in the world. Eventually she visited less and less often, until the year she turned thirteen, when Jess had gotten very ill. That was when Moira had begun giving her the special drink. Whenever Jess went without it for more than a day or two, she could feel herself getting ill again.
    It had been more than two days since she had visited her Aunt. She was feeling the effect of her drink re-energizing her.
    “ I needed that.” Jess sighed.
    “ So where have you been? I was very worried. I thought something might have happened to you.” Moira was watching her intently.
    “ Nothing to be worried about. Eric talked me into teaching a class a couple of days ago. I was nervous and couldn’t sleep the night before. Shit, I fell asleep in the bath. I’ll be back to tell you everything later.”
    “ Damn it, Jess. WAIT!” Moira called out.
    She heard Moira calling to her. She could hear Shane calling to her too. She reached for the spinning dizzy sensation, willing her mind to wake up.
    The minute Shane had ported back into his kitchen, he knew something was off. He couldn’t sense her presence; Jess was gone. He knocked on the bathroom door.
    “Jess.” He knocked louder. “Jess!” he yelled, twisting the door open and lunging into the bathroom. Her discarded GI was thrown on the bathroom floor, her bag lying just inside the door. The tub was full of steaming bubbles, but no Jess. He ran into the bedroom, calling, “Jess,” but heard only silence.
    Fates, what if she had panicked and left after all? Could she have figured out how to send her psychic energy into the entry and leave that quickly? He opened the stone entry, but the Jeep was still there.
    “I’m sorry, were you calling me?” Her sweet voice came from behind him. He jerked his head around and looked into the open bathroom