Chapter 7

Nova was afraid to take her eyes off the screen. He was there, walking down the alley with large men. Two of the men were dressed in leather from neck to toe, which was a lot of leather. The third man wore suit pants and a dress shirt like he was off to a fancy dinner.

When they went around the corner Nova scrambled to hit the button to switch to the next camera. She had cameras set up from any direction leading here. It had taken three years to accomplish the best locations, and she’d had many scary moments doing it. Every one of them was worth it right now. She could finally look at that man without being seen.

The man from her soul’s memories, from the journals, was right outside her home. She looked up at the ceiling, okay, the upper part of the building she lived beneath. Nova leaned forward, closer to the screen. Why was he out there?

They stopped and stood there talking. He was looking all around, and his expression said he wasn’t happy with something. One of the other men walked away from them, while the others remained where they were talking. He was waving his hand around and shaking his head. Leaning her elbows on the desk, she propped her chin on her hands and stared at him. “Why do you keep turning up? What do you want with me?” The journals never completely said why they were to avoid him, not really. The other bodies that had kept this soul safe had described the fast-beating heart and sweating when they were near him. She hadn’t broken out in a sweat, but her heart had been working on a meltdown when she spotted him and yet, she wanted to see him at the same time.

Tilting her head to the side she scowled at him. “And why don’t you age?” That was probably the thing that bothered her the most. How could he be the same for this long? She glanced over at the trunk, how many years did they go back? Three, four hundred years? The pictures that popped into her head at random went a lot further back, that much she knew. She had wondered how many keepers of this soul had lived before someone put the pieces together and decided writing it down was a good idea. She was grateful they did. Imagine her life if she didn’t know about past memories. She’d probably be in a mental institution right now.

Nova found herself touching the pendant resting against her throat. She’d been given it by one of the women down the street. She didn’t know much about her other than she was part of those women that rode the motorcycles, and her name was Crystal. She’d given it to her one day and told her it was sugilite, to protect her soul. She had looked it up when she got home and she’d worn it ever since. She knew it was odd to accept something from a stranger and she had no idea if rocks and stones had powers, but she was a twenty-seven-year-old woman that had an ancient soul inside her, so she knew there were many unexplainable things in this world, and wore it. She’d take all the help she could get.

Nova blinked and looked at the screen again, there were two women with the men now. If body language meant anything, they clearly knew them. All of them started walking. She squinted at the screen trying to figure out where they were going. Flipping through the cameras she tried to see if they came into view. She found them, but it wasn’t close enough to make out much. She zoomed in as far as she could.

They were talking to the women with the motorcycles. Other than the one that had given her the stone, Nova had only seen a few of them away from their group. There was something different about all of them, but just as long as they weren’t bright souls, as she thought of them or the dark ones, what they were or did wasn’t any of her concern.

She jumped up and went over to the fish tank and sprinkled some food in. Nova wasn’t fond of fish, not really, but having any other pet meant they would make noise and even though she was pretty sure it was soundproof down here she didn’t need to push her luck. Leaning down, she looked at the three fish in the water, “and I can pretend I’m talking to you instead of myself, right? Makes me seem less crazy.” Setting the container down, she went back over to stand there and stare at the screen.

They were walking away now. She leaned on the desk and hit the button for the camera when they went around the corner. Where were they going? That was a dead-end in that alleyway. They moved to stand closer to one another and then they were gone. She opened her mouth, then closed it, almost missing the chair as she sat down. “Tell me I hit record.” She grabbed the mouse and moved it to see if the screen was recording. It was. Backing up the shot, she played it again. They had disappeared.

Covering her mouth with her hand, she stared at the empty alleyway on pause. She hadn’t been seeing things when he’d stopped her from getting hit on the street. He had vanished. Nova thought he’d just moved quickly in another direction. She didn’t have time to stop and look around for him, because of those men with the darkness inside them. Dropping her hand, she blew out a breath and looked over at the fish. “What the hell is he?” Quickly bouncing through the cameras, she checked that they were really gone and there was nothing she needed to see. She stood up and looked at the journals. She had to add that little tidbit in there. There was never any mention of that man disappearing in any of them. That she would have remembered.

How did one simply vanish? That was, what, some sort of witchcraft or something? Nova opened the trunk, debating for half a second on searching that on the internet, but decided against that. Disappearing people would just result in a lot of weird and strange garbage out there. Although knowing the things she did, she had to wonder if some of the ‘made up’ crazy articles had an element of truth in them somewhere.

Nova sat and opened the journal; how did she even write this down without sounding insane? She snorted out loud because everything in the journal was completely sane. She needed to get this done and try to sleep. Tomorrow was a day of hiding in the shadows and getting supplies, food, and her new lenses, if they were ready. All of which depended on if her nerves allowed it. If it was a calm, not frozen with paranoia day, she should probably pick up a few more switches. That was a longer trip than the others and she had to work up to it most times. She’d been slowly updating some of the outlets and sockets in here. She was quite proud of it, really, she’d only gotten shocked that first time, having missed one small step of turning the power off before playing with wires.

She looked around the room. Whoever designed this place was a genius and at some point, in the soul’s history had been very strong, the furniture alone weighed more than the cheap items you bought in the stores now. How did they get them down here? Was this built first and then the house over top of it? It hadn’t started out as a house, at one point, it had been a small shop of some kind. To kill some endless hours of nothing, she was going to have to figure out a way of searching the history of this address, without leaving a trail doing it. The journals told of things like adding this or refinished that, but nowhere did it list how it was done, by whom and when exactly. There was just this place in one of the journals. She closed her eyes and tried to remember how long ago—two hundred years? Give or take. That left the question of who figured out to keep the journals altogether, so the next keeper knew where to find them? Rarely did she purposely try to recall certain memories, but that, she just might attempt someday. The average mind had to keep track of one lifetime’s worth of memories. Nova had to keep track of so many other lives, that there were days she lost her own reality.

She wanted to leave this place better than she found it, so that when the soul moved on to the next person, they would be comfortable. She grimaced at the thought, of course, she’d have to die for that to happen. “That’s a cheery thought.” She mumbled and then gave her head a shake to get this written down.

After finishing, she put the journals away, in order and then set the red book on top. Closing the trunk, she traced her finger over the design carved into the leather top. She did that often, a melancholy moment of ‘I hope to see you tomorrow’ sort of thing. She wasn’t ready to move on just yet and she hoped both her body and soul knew that and worked together to make it so.