Free Soul to Shepherd by Linda Lamberson Page B

charges—and Quinn was no longer technically mine.
    “What is it?” Quinn asked in alarm.
    “My heart— your heart—I can’t feel it anymore. It’s gone. ”
    “Evie, it’s right here.” He took my hand and placed it over his chest.
    “But it’s not here .” I placed my other hand over my chest. “Not anymore,” I said sadly. “It’s official. I’m no longer your Shepherd.” My chest heaved upon feeling the unexpected vacancy within. It was a different kind of emptiness from what I’d experienced up in the Archives. This time it was my choice to give up the familiar, comforting rhythm of my true soul mate reverberating inside me.
    “Dylan,” I muttered, choking on the words forming in the base of my throat. “Only he can feel your heart beating now.”
    “ Dylan ?” Quinn visibly shuddered at the thought. “That’s messed up and twisted on so many levels.”
    “I know it may seem that way to you right now, but as your Shepherd, Dylan has to be able to know where you are and how you’re doing.”
    “And you? You don’t need to know those things anymore?”
    “I do, but I’m not your Shepherd anymore.” Fear stirred within me as I clutched my chest with both hands. “Crap. How am I supposed to protect you if I can’t even find you anymore?” I was on the verge of hyperventilating as I second-guessed my decision. “Quinn, I think I screwed up. I—I didn’t think the whole thing through.” I gasped. “I didn’t realize I’d be giving up the one thing that connects you to me.”
    “It’s not the one thing, Evie. It’s just a thing.” He cupped my face with his hands and looked into my eyes. “Hey, you may not be able to feel my heart beating anymore, but you still have it, and it’s yours to keep.” He wiped a tear from my eye. “We’re true soul mates, remember?”
    “Yeah, but your soul has never led me to you when I didn’t know where you were.”
    “Hasn’t it? How did you know I was up here? I mean, isn’t this place supposed to be some vacuum in time and space?”
    “Yeah, but that was different. In my mind, there weren’t that many places where you’d be.”
    “Still, wasn’t this the first place you checked?”
    “Actually, it was the third.”
    “The third ? Wow! It took that long, huh?” he teased.
    “Thanks. Kick me while I’m down,” I mumbled, not wanting to bother getting into the reasons for the roundabout way I searched for him.
    “Evie, relax. I have the perfect solution to our little problem. All you need is a cell phone.” He smiled triumphantly at me.
    I laughed. The answer was so simple and yet it’d completely escaped me. I used to live on my cell phone when I was alive. “You know, if it weren’t for you, I probably would’ve tortured myself all day trying to come up with some supernatural way to keep track of you.”
    “Evie, when are you finally going to accept I’m here to help—that you need my help?”
    “Well, I definitely need your help with one thing.” I smiled seductively and kissed him as I pushed him down onto the grass and straddled him.
    “So you really can’t feel my pulse speeding up right now?”
    “No, not at all.”
    “That’s too bad.” He kissed me back but then moaned and pulled away.
    “What is it?” I asked in alarm.
    “Nothing, really.” He pulled me back down to kiss me again, but I resisted him.
    “Tell me.”
    “It’s just kind of twisted to think Dylan is running around with my pulse now.”
    “It’s not like he’s borrowing your toothbrush or underwear. Think of it like you’ve got your own personal ringtone on his cell phone.”
    “That does make it sound a little less disturbing,” he noted with approval. “Can he really feel it every time my heart rate accelerates?”
    “And every time it slows down,” I added. “As long as you’re both in the same realm.”
    “So if he should drop by up here right now …”
    “He’d know exactly what we were up to before he even saw