Free Love Beyond Sight by Rebecca Royce Page B

cracking up. Maybe that's what the incidents were: manifestations of stress. Maybe she subconsciously made the items appear.
    It's time to go home, Ruby .
    The whispered voice moved through her like a touch from a close friend or family member. It felt… remembered. But, of course, that was impossible.
    She grabbed the doorknob and opened the door to go inside. There was a simple solution for all of this, she would just not leave her apartment again until it stopped and if that made her a shut-in, well then, so be it.
    You can't hide from this.
    Oh Sugar-Honey-Iced-Tea, the strangeness had decided to follow her home. Fine. Sure. She never hid from things. She liked to face them, straight on.
    "Who is there?"
    It's time to remember, Ruby. Can't you remember, Ruby?
    In the back of her mind, a strange chanting began. She could hear it. Like the voice harassing her, the sing-song nature of the vocalizations sounded so darn familiar. It was like they were there in her mind, memories, but she couldn't access them.
    You need to remember, Ruby. It's time .
    Yes, she got the idea. The voice wanted her to remember something she'd forgotten. Well, that wasn't the easiest thing in the world. It wasn't like she could simply demand a repressed memory reappear because she wanted it to. There had to be a reason she'd forgotten whatever this was to begin with.
    "Maybe I don't want to remember."
    Oh god, now she addressed the strangeness directly. She should simply give up. Ruby began to pace. Surely, the university had to have services for their faculty if they started to have mental health issues. She'd call and find out. Of course, then they might end up firing her. All the men in her department hated her. They were jealous. She was young, she'd been published. Oh god! She was under so much stress…
    They need you, Ruby .
    "Who needs me?"
    The Outsiders …

Chapter Seven
     
    Eden held her eyes closed tightly then covered them with her hands just to be safe. She'd always been really good at taking orders and doing as she was told. The desperation in Samuel's voice made her want to move fast.
    "What's going on?" Because Eden knew she couldn't have seen what she thought she had. It was… impossible. Samuel's skin had looked like it'd peeled off his face. "Are you okay?"
    "Listen." She could hear him getting up and wanted to stop him. He'd had a major injury to his head; he didn't need to be running around. "Something is going to happen. I have to go out and take care of it."
    "I don't understand." She needed to see what was going on. This was ridiculous.
    "Don't open your eyes." He sounded desperate and she'd grown so accustomed to listening to his voice over the years that she did as he instructed. "I have to go. When I come back, I'm going to look different. Everything about me will be changed except the way I sound. Remember, you know me."
    His voice cracked on the last sentence and two seconds later she heard the door slam behind him. She counted to three before she removed her hands from her face and let her eyes flutter open. It felt like she had run a marathon. What had just happened?
    She rose, and after a second, when she was certain she wouldn't faint, she decided the best course of action was to clean up the mess she had made in the room. Everything could be made all right if it was straightened up and tidy. If she just put all of the stuff back in its original place and tried to fix the chair…
    But like a vacuum came and sucked all of the energy out of her, Eden felt more exhausted than she ever had before. All thought of cleanliness fled as she walked to the couch and slumped down on top of it. What was going on? She'd woken up from her brutal vision of getting slaughtered by the demon to find herself in a strange place. Assuming she'd been kidnapped, she attacked Samuel, who now turned out to be her soul mate.
    Her heart did a flutter at the thought . Soul mate . She had one, she wasn't crazy, and he was here with her. Sort