Free Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey Page B

showed me. I could repeat and slow them down myself. It was like the images had been downloaded onto my hard drive and I was manipulating the data. I was flooded with images of me or, rather, Rose and Alden. When the rain started, I slowed everything down. Alden hadn’t lied. These were memories from the Great Storm of 1900.
    “Hurry, Rose, we need to get out before the structure fails,” the Alden from the past shouted. He was perched in a dormer window, extending his free hand to her. “Rose, please.” He was just as beautiful in the memory as the lifeless Alden standing in front of me, and he looked pretty much the same except for the shorter hair and long sideburns. He was also older in the memory.
    Rose yanked off her petticoat and waded through the ankledeep water to grasp Alden’s hand. It was like watching myself in an elaborate play. Her face looked just like mine, and she appeared to be about my age—younger than the Alden in the memory. Her hair was the same dark brown and her eyes were almost black, like mine. The similarity between us was striking, but she seemed different somehow. Dignified or something.
    She crawled onto the writing desk under the window and then onto the ledge.
    “Stay here. I’ll find a secure place,” he shouted in her ear. With both hands, Rose clung to the window frame as Alden climbed out onto the roof.
    Alden’s voice pierced through the howls of the storm. “Here, Rose! Now!”
    She clambered up the slate shingles as he pulled her to where he was balanced on the apex of the window dormer. A churning brew of brown water swirled around the house at the roofline. Wooden debris, mixed with the bodies of animals and humans, passed by as all around them people clung to parts of houses and buildings floating in the water. Their faces were twisted in agony as the storm swallowed their screams.
    “We must get to the other side,” Alden yelled. He wrapped an arm around Rose’s waist and pulled her with him over the top of their two-story home to the gentler slope at the back of the house. Wedging himself into the valley of the roof where the porch met the bedroom, Alden tucked Rose in against him, protecting her from the debris hurtling through the air.
    That was definitely Alden, but Rose was not me. We looked alike, but she seemed so foreign—the grace in her movements, her voice.
    Rose asked Alden to find her in the future if something happened. Then they kissed. Really kissed. It was a passionate, desperate embrace like I’d only seen in movies.
    It was odd watching their intimate moment. Awkward and wrong. Like I shouldn’t be seeing it. But I wanted to. I wanted to put myself in her place.
    I realized, as I watched them, that my heart was pounding in my chest.
    The memories stopped as if someone had pulled the power plug from the projector.
    “What happened?” I whispered. “Why did you stop?”
    Touch the body, please. It’s time to go back.
    “I want to see more.”
    Not now. Please let me out. Touch the body, or my exit will be unnecessarily painful.
    I stood up and put my hands on his chest. This time I did scream. I’d forgotten to brace myself. Alden’s chest heaved under my palms.
    Avoiding eye contact, he picked up my phone from the coffee table and punched buttons. “I need to get home. Here’s my number if you have any questions. I’ll feel the pull of your soul if you need protection.”
    I couldn’t believe it. One minute he was playful and funny, the next he was all business. I was embarrassed and angry. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I felt used. How could he kiss me like that and just blow me off?
    . . . But he hadn’t really kissed me. That was just a memory from a long time ago. He had kissed someone else. He had kissed Rose.
    I opened the door for him without speaking, afraid of saying something stupid.
    I was jealous. The problem was that the other woman was me .
    He paused in the doorway and handed me my phone.
    I shoved it into my back