Your Number Read Online Free PDF Page B

phone into the road.
     
    “What’d you do that for?” the driver whined.
     
    “Just take me home!” she demanded. “El Royale Tower.”
     

 
     
    8.
     
     
     
    The last thing Kate wanted to do was go inside that apartment, but she had too many cherished mementos, and couldn’t leave without them. She’d go home to Spokane, to her mother, and her old cat Pumpkin. She’d change her name immediately, and get a job in real estate, or find work as an interior designer. She always wanted to become an interior designer. Hollywood had nothing left for her, and she had nothing left for Hollywood.
     
    The front door opened silently. As soon as she stepped inside, she heard rustling noises from deep in the apartment. She felt for her cell phone, wanting to call the police, finding only an empty slot in her handbag.
     
    “Dammit!” she whispered stridently, remembering she’d tossed the phone. More rustling, then a solid Crash! She backed out the door. Then a gust of either bravery or stupidity came over her, and she slipped back in, and crept to the kitchen, where she grabbed the biggest knife she had. Then she tiptoed toward the source of the sound—her bedroom.
     
    The door was ajar slightly, and she tried to peek inside, but saw only her dresser, every drawer open, and her clothes strewn onto the floor. The pictures had been toppled over, pictures of her and Charlie. Suddenly she was pissed, fuming at whoever the hell had the nerve to break in and go through her things.
     
    Then a noise behind her, clicking on the wood floor, made her twist around. She saw one of the nasty creatures, its dark gray plumage sickly and sparse, its curved beak snapping and frothing. She dropped the blade, screaming, and bolted inside her bedroom, no longer concerned with who was in there. She slammed the door and locked it. Then she felt another presence and spun to find a young girl. Chocolate skin with scars blanketing her arms, half of her face, and her left leg below a bright yellow dress.
     
    “Sunshine?” Kate puffed for breath. “What do you want?”
     
    “I want to help you,” she bent over a pile of pictures and other personal effects, searching. “But we have to be quick.”
     
    “What’re you looking for?” Kate heard a sudden and forceful thump against the door.
     
    “There’s no time,” Sunshine kept searching, throwing aside a picture of Charlie and Kate. “Help me find something with your sister’s imprint.”
     
    “Eva? What for?” more banging forced Kate to flinch.
     
    “Just hurry!” the girl commanded. “Anything that has a connection to Eva. A picture, a gift she gave you—anything!”
     
    “What?” she trembled. “Why?”
     
    “HURRY!”
     
    Kate got on her knees and sifted through the pile. She found an old scrapbook of Eva’s—drawings, poems, random thoughts.
     
    “Here!” she gave it to Sunshine.
     
    “This is perfect!” the girl thumbed through the pages and her eyes got bigger and bigger. “Just perfect!” she placed it on the bed and opened the satchel she had draped over her shoulder. From inside, she produced the same talisman Kate had seen her use before, at their first meeting.
     
    The door quaked at its hinges, and the ceiling cracked, shaking the light fixtures, forcing Kate to slink next to the bed and cover her head with her wrists. Sunshine crisscrossed the wood and bone and sinew talisman over the scrapbook again and again, unaffected by the steady pounding outside, the dreadful beasts fighting to get in.
     
    The girl closed her eyes halfway, until Kate saw only white slivers, and began to murmur. The incantation, combined with the constant beating and snarling and slashing, drove Kate out of her mind with fear. Sunshine chanted and chanted, dangling her ancient charm over the homemade book. Then she shook it at the door and screamed at the top of her lungs: “Be gone, impure spirits!”
     
    A still silence overtook the room. Kate’s ears rang.