Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) by Tim O'Rourke Page A

Queen. Only then would he spare her friends’ lives.”
    “Sounds like Luke was using you both to flush Kiera out,” I said thoughtfully. “He knew that Kiera would come to your rescue. Then he would’ve killed her.”
    “He said that he had you, Kayla,” Potter explained.
    “As you can see, he hasn’t,” I shrugged. “See, Luke was just bluffing you.”
    “But if he knew I was back in this pushed world, then wouldn’t that mean Kiera had returned too?” Potter asked.
    “Not necessarily,” I said, looking at him. “Some of us have come back into this world at different times. Jack Seth has been back two hundred years or more. Murphy came back before us, too. As far as Luke knows, Kiera hasn’t come back into this pushed world yet. But if he gets his hands on that blood taken from her corpse in the morgue at some point in the future, he will know she’s back for sure.
    “But Murphy told me he’d already destroyed that blood sample,” Potter said.
    “Only because he came across Sophie and that only happened because we give her a little push,” I said. 

    Chapter Ten
     
    Isidor
     
    My first instinct was to call out her name. My second was to spring from my hiding place and go running toward her. But I fought the urge, and stayed hidden from view. I couldn’t risk showing out, not with those Skin-walkers looking for some kind of winged creature they believed had been killing children in their town. So from my hiding place, I watched Melody walk away between the trees and into the distance. I didn’t let her go too far for fear of losing sight of her, now that I’d found her again. I had a kinda nervous but excited feeling in my stomach. I had waited for so long to see her again. I had dreamt about this moment, imagined how it would be. We would see each other again for the first time and be overjoyed. We would laugh, and locked together in each other’s arms, we would share our first true kiss. If I had a heart that still beat, I knew it would now be thumping in my chest. I saw glimpses of Melody’s bright pink hair in the distance as she headed deeper into the woods. Then, when I feared that I might lose sight of her altogether, I crept from my hiding place and followed her.
    Creeping from behind one tree and then another, I kept a safe distance. I didn’t want to get too close to her and reveal myself too soon. I still couldn’t be sure if Melody would recognise me in this world or whether I would be a stranger to her. If I were a stranger to her and she glanced back to find me following her, she might let out a cry or call for help, believing that I was the killer the local cops and she searched for. I couldn’t risk scaring Melody, as there still might be some of those Skin-walker cops with their berserkers searching the woods. I didn’t want to draw their attention to me. I would wait until we were deep in the woods or a safe distance from where anyone might see or overhear us before I revealed myself to Melody.
    I continued to follow Melody, catching fleeting glimpses of her pink hair as she weaved her way amongst the trees. At first I wonder ed if she might be heading for the lake, but she skirted around the edges of it, heading toward the mountains with their snow-flecked peaks in the distance. For how long I followed Melody I didn’t know, but it must have been for two hours or more. And with each step, my nervousness about revealing myself to her grew in the pit of my stomach. So many self-doubts washed around my mind. Not only did I fear that she might not remember me, but what if it was different here? What if our relationship wasn’t the same as it was before the world got pushed out of place? I didn’t know if I could deal with that kind of hurt. I had built this moment up so much in my mind since I had discovered that picture of us… the picture!
    That picture of me and Melody showed us looking happy and locked in each other’s arms. The photograph could’ve only been taken