Death Knows My Name (Memory Keepers)

  “Hey, she’s eating it and liking it. Besides, it isn’t half-bad. You want a bite?”

  “No, I’m going to pass.” She turned to Aurora. “Hurry and finish, so you can take your medicine and take a nap.”

  “All right, Mommy,” Aurora’s sweet voice replied as Luke made his entrance into the kitchen.

  “What’s up, cupcake?” he asked, kissing Aurora on the top of her red head. “How was your trip, Mayne?”

  “It was all right. Not too bad.”

  After Aurora was done with her lunch, Becca took her upstairs for her nap. Luke had to get back to work so I decided to go check up on Anya, finally. I opened her door and peeked my head in. She was curled up on her bed with her eyes closed tight and fast asleep. She seemed so small lying there. Also very fragile, completely breakable. I crossed the room on tiptoes. The floor was carpeted so that helped me not to make much of a sound.

  I eased down on the edge of her bed and reached my hand out to gently brush her dark brown hair away from her face. A small smile danced on her lips and I wondered what she dreamed. She stirred and her eyes fluttered open a slit as she peered at me through long brown lashes. Her smile grew wider. My heart clenched. The small impish grin held a hint of mischief and its grip on my heart tightened, feeling more familiar than it should.

  “Auntie Mayne.” She pushed up and crawled into my arms. Last time I was here, I made her promise that she would never outgrow sitting in my lap. The months since my last visit had made Anya’s limbs lanky, but she still curled herself on me and I was grateful.

  “Hey, sweetie, how are you doing?”

  She frowned, but only slightly. “I think I’m okay. I’m just so shocked, scared and . . . and I feel so guilty. I feel like I escaped something.”

  I squeezed her tightly. “There is a reason for everything. So if you were meant to be on that bus, you would have been. If you were meant to die, you would be dead. The roof would have collapsed or any number of things would have happened. Death has its ways. You are meant to be here, alive. I have learned that recently.”

  “That feels right.” She nodded in agreement. “Do you want to hear something weird, Auntie?”

  She rested her head against my chest as she whispered the words. “Right before mom woke me up to tell me the news of what happened to my classmates I was dreaming about them and all games we use to play when we first met. I haven’t thought about those things in forever. At least not this school year. But today I did. It felt like I was there again. I keep having other dreams like that, too. I keep sleeping and I get to see my friends again because I know I won’t be able to ever see them again, but I can see them when I fall asleep because it feels that real. Isn’t that just plain weird?”

  My back straightened at her words. Had she just said what I think she said? Okay, it couldn’t be what I thought it was. I wanted to shut my eyes tightly and yell. I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs. Not her! Not my sweet, beautiful, and brilliant niece, Anastasia. But I didn’t scream. I forced a small smile to my lips and nodded.

  “That is a good way to look at it. I am very sorry about your friends, Anya. I am sorry that you have to go through this. But you are a tough cookie so I know you will pull through.”

  That was all I could say. I wanted to storm the gates of Heaven or Hell, which ever would do the trick. Maybe I was just assuming things. It could all just be a coincidence. I wouldn’t know for sure until I could talk to Eric. For now, I had to be supportive and comfort Anya.

  “Auntie, how did you heal when Uncle Dante died?”

  I gulped. I couldn’t say what I would say to anyone else, that I hadn’t. But that was no longer true, was it? I had healed. Eric helped me. How do I say this to a 10-year-old?

  “Well,” I started, “it took me a while, but only because I’m not as smart as you. I finally healed when I understood death and its meaning. It was explained to me but I had to figure it out on my own.”

  “How was it explained to you?”

  “Um, it was just explained that death is part of God’s plan. Everything has a system. Something about the Grand Design. Oh, and also, without death nobody would live. Like, truly live. Without death, there would be no need for birth. Love wouldn’t exist. There was more and it was more evolved than that but I can’t really remember. The guy telling me this was hot!”

  Anya giggled and squealed. “Auntie!”

  “What? He really is hot.”

  We giggled over silly little things until Becca came in to see what all the laughter was about.

  I excused myself, retreated down to the guess room, and closed myself in for privacy.

  Whispering, I called out. “Eric. I need to see you.” I sat down on the bed and waited. When he didn’t come after five minutes, I called out to him again. “Babe? I really wish I could ask you something. Besides, I miss you.” I realized that it was true. I hadn’t seen him since brunch and it was now past dinnertime. I was getting up when I felt him. I turned around on the bed and there he was, standing at my side slightly in front of me.

  He looked damn tired even though he stood tall. “Mayne.” My name sounded terse and tight.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, concern. “You sound weird.”

  With a stern nod, he replied, “All is well.”

  “Okay, Eric, what the hell gives? ‘All is well?’ Don’t talk to me like that. You sound like you have a stick up your ass.” I realized how tired I was. My temper got shorter the more tired I was. I relented. “Sorry,” I mumbled and dropped my eyes.

  “No, I am sorry. You were right. It has been just a long and tiring—”

  “Day?” I interjected helpfully.

  He shook his head in disagreement. “Life.”

  Tell me about it. “Eric, is my niece?” I paused and took a breath, not wanting to know the answer. “A Memory Keeper?” I braced myself for what I already knew.

  “Yes. It’s the reason I went to see Lucifer to try and open up a renegotiation of the truce.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He sat down on the bed, but he didn’t sit as closely as I thought he should and he still wouldn’t look at me.

  “I saw her name. It was on my list and I remembered what you said about when your parents died. It was your first keep, right? I thought it was going to be your sister! Either way I didn’t want you to hurt again and Anastasia to have to live through what you had to. That would hurt you. But her first keep is so much worse than I thought.” He looked at me finally and the pain in his eyes made my breath catch inside my throat.

  “I knew it was going to be bad. It’s why I came back at lunch. All those little pulls. It was children, and a lot of them. I didn’t want to go, but I made that mistake once. The longer I waited the more they’d suffer and if I waited too long then Valience and his Swarm would have to call them. That would be worse, right?” I placed a hand on his knee, trying to offer comfort. He continued. “So I called them. One by one, I took each one into my arms and carried them to Michael. Every single one. They held on tightly and I whispered in their ear. I told them ‘Do not fear. The worst is over.” They were all so scared. Some cried and all I could do was hold their tiny souls in my arms, their broken bodies dying as I carried them to Heaven.”

  He looked at me with tortured eyes. “You do not understand the worst part. In all, sixteen children died today. They all had the same keeper.”

  It suddenly dawned on me what he was trying to tell me. “Anya.”

  “Yes, Anya. Her first keep is for sixteen children. All those memories. All those people only to be added to for the rest of her life. Imagine, she is only 10 years old and her duty has only just begun.”

  Dear God. My thoughts and my heart raced. Sixteen, that was almost my total amount of losses and I was 27 years old! Anya had a lot more ye
ars ahead of her. This was not fair. I couldn’t stand by and let this happen, not to her and not to others who had no fucking clue what was going on. The thoughts in my head screamed at me and I couldn’t concentrate. All I heard were a thousand different demands and commands. Fix it. Help them. Stop this, stop this, stop this now! I wanted to let out a frustrated scream but Eric would think I was insane, so I just screamed out in my mind until it was all I heard, drowning out every other thought. Ahhhhhhh!

  “Mayne.” Eric’s voice was careful. “Stop. It will be okay.”

  Crap. Having a boyfriend who can read my thoughts was going to take getting used to, and in the meantime, it was humiliating.

  “I am not crazy,” I told him.

  “You are, but not for this reason. I am screaming too, only you cannot hear mine.”

  I looked at him and believed him. I closed the space between us as I moved to stand in front of him. He seemed so broken, I gathered him into my arms in a tight hug. I’d hold all his broken pieces until he could put them back together.

  I couldn’t imagine how he or Anya felt. I had never lost a child and they had lost sixteen of them. Eric carried them each to heaven after I had painfully described what each loss does to a Memory Keeper. I should have left him clueless, but I hadn’t. Maybe it was a good thing I told him because their truce left us clueless and look where that left us. I had been broken too, before Eric.

  Eric’s head was against my stomach as he wrapped his arms around my waist and I held him against me tightly. I knew what I had to do. I only needed to know one thing.

  “Eric, I need to know if you trust me enough that if I do something, whatever it is, you will support me?”

  “It has nothing to do with trust. I don’t care if you are completely wrong. I’d dare anyone to go against you. Whatever you want to do, I will make sure it is done.”

  “Ooh, I love it when you get all dark and alpha on me,” I teased.

  “I’m serious, I will support you even when you are wrong and more when you are right, because you are never wrong in my eyes.”

  That was good to know. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but I knew that something had to be done, and I also knew that I was the luckiest freaking girl in the entire world.

  I had Eric, I loved him, and more importantly, he loved me.

  Chapter 18

  The next night was bitter cold when I went with Becca, Anya, and Aurora to the candlelight vigil memorial. The girls hugged and pressed against me as they cried, and with each little whimper from them, my heart broke.

  My eyes found Eric’s as he stood in the shadows looking over the crowd. He saw the devastation of death for the first time through me. His eyes pleaded with mine to look away. I knew the ache in my heart was hurting him, too, because he could read my mind and, as my lover, he now was connected to me deeper than just reading my mind. He didn’t want to see me hurting because of him.

  I forced a weak smile and winked at him. He grinned in return and my heart fluttered. I looked away flustered, trying not to blush in a sea of mourners with my devastated nieces holding on to me as they experienced their first taste of death. Sadly, for Anya this was far from her last. I held her close.

  I wanted to end this pain. I knew I couldn’t stop death altogether, but I could soften the blow. Death is meant to be unpredictable—who wants to walk around knowing the exact moment someone you know, love, or care about is going to die? I agree with that part, but for Memory Keepers it’s the not knowing why everyone close to us is dying part that hurts. But maybe if we knew why, we could possibly learn to deal with it better. We’d know it wasn’t us. We’d know we weren’t cursed.

  However, would the truce between Heaven and Hell withstand the change? Would they even agree to it? I didn’t know because I knew nothing of what the truce was built upon.

  After the memorial, I had to catch my flight. Eric offered to take me home and come back for my stuff later, but how would I explain that to Becca? Besides, I paid a lot of money for the flight, and even though I wanted to spend that extra time with him, I still wasn’t all that willing to go through the chilling experience of traveling with him again.

  It was dark as Becca drove me to the airport. She tapped the wheel with her long slender fingers to the beautiful chaos of Hole’s “Good Sister-Bad Sister.” She suddenly sat up straight in her seat and turned her head toward the restaurant we had just passed.

  “Eyes on the road, Becca, I’m serious. I knew I should have taken a cab,” I scolded as I shook my head.

  “Was that Eric Bana we just passed? I think it was.”

  I shrugged. “In Washington, I highly doubt it.”

  “No, I’m for real. I think it was Bana!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, sure. Who cares anyway, Becca? You’re married and it’s not like he would choose you over me, and I’m off the market.” I flipped my hair hotly. Taken by another, Eric, I added silently. I fought to hide my grin behind my hand and failed miserably.

  She glared at me but I only pointed to the road, trying to draw her attention back to it. Sheesh. How the hell did she get her license when she never freaking paid attention to what was in front of her?

  “What, Becca, it’s not like you have a good track record? Remember when you claimed to see Hugh Jackman?” I threw out there innocently.

  “I did! At the stoplight on the corner in Blue Ridge, you know the light that stays red forever? We both looked over at one another at the same time. It was a moment.”

  I stared at the side of her face to show my disbelief. “Uh-huh. In Seattle. Because all the hunky Hollywood stars hang out here.”

  She eased on the brake at a four-way stop and turned to me pointing angrily. “Hugh and I shared a moment. It was real and it was deep!”

  I laughed. “No, Becca, you and a random nobody shared an awkwardly long red light stare. Sounds creepy to me, but I guess it was the hottest five seconds of your life. I’m sure to that poor upper-class Joe Shmoe it was something, too. Red light love. Hey, maybe Jackman will make that a Broadway play!”

  “You are one mean little woman when you want to be. You’ll see. One day Hugh is going to be talking about the one who got away, and guess what, he’ll tell the red light story.” She huffed at me, pouting.

  I turned my head so I could grin out the window. My sister was insane and I missed her.

  My heart suddenly clenched. When she died, she wouldn’t be my memory to keep, she would be Anya’s. I sighed and shook my head. I had to find a way to stop this. Screwing my life up was one thing, but Anya, that was another. I didn’t want her to be as confused as I was growing up.

  Becca raised her eyebrow. “We’re here. What? Did you want curb side service?”

  “No, it’s just, that was fast.” I guess I was lost in my thoughts because we were at the airport.

  “Want me to drive around the block?” she asked teasingly.

  “No. You could have at least pulled up to the unloading zone.”

  “It’s packed and I don’t want to wait. Luke is with the girls and he wants to put them to bed early so we can—”

  I hopped out of the car. “Ewl. Too much information, Rebecca. I don’t care.” I yanked my bag from the car and closed the door. I took a step away from the car and as she prepared to pull away, I went back, opened the door, and bent down to peek inside. “I love you, sis.”

  Her eyes widened and she smiled softly. “I love you, too. Call me when you get home.”

  I nodded, knowing that this time, I really would call her. I smiled and turned from the car, dragging my bag toward the airport entrance as she pulled away.

  On the flight I did what every normal person would, I slept. The good thing about bus stations and airports is that they always have abundant taxis lined up waiting no matter what time of
day it is. I hopped in the nearest one to the door, told him my address, and slunk back against my seat. The past two days were getting to me. So many thoughts ran through my mind. Ideas and confusion of how I was going to handle the Memory Keeper situation clouded my thoughts.

  When I got to the apartment, the cabby helped me take my bag up to my apartment door. I thanked him the only way a cabby likes to be thanked, with cash. I pushed open my door and expected to see Big Jim waiting for me. I was going to curl up with him and watch a comedy, one that would have me delirious with laughter. Maybe I’d make it a marathon. Dude, Where’s My Car? and Forgetting Sarah Marshall would be perfect. Then I would call Devon and decide if we could still work together even though I hated his guts. I would do all this after I called Becca. First things first.

  I opened the door and Tammy met me with Big Jim’s leash in her hand. “Hey, girl, welcome back. I was just about to walk Jim for the morning. How was your trip?”

  I sighed, dropped my bags in the middle of the floor, and toed off my shoes as Big Jim hopped up against my legs.

  “It was draining and confusing, but it was nice to see the girls.” I plopped back on my beloved and well-missed recliner chair. “What did I miss?” I asked as Big Jim took his place on my lap. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the back of the chair.

  “Uh. Well,” Tammy started, and I opened one eye at her stammering.

  “Well, what?” I asked, a bit too snippy. In my defense, I had just been to a memorial for children and been on a crowded flight home. That would make anyone a little cranky.

  “Did you talk to Devon at all while you were away?”

  “Nope, I sure haven’t.”

  “What are ya’ll fighting about? It just seems so unnatural. You two seem so connected.”

  “Tammy, not to be rude, but this doesn’t really concern you.”