My Immortal by Erin McCarthy

the plantation. This was a mistake. Let’s drive into town and get some lunch and talk there. You can follow me in your own car and go back to the hotel from there.”
    Separate cars, a public restaurant. That worked for her. “Show me the way.”

Chapter Four
     
    “Where are the letters?” Rosa didn’t bother to waste time with a greeting. She hated the nasty little house, with its old-person smell and suffocating heat, and she didn’t want to hang around, even if they were only out on the porch.
    “Why?” Anna stared at her from her habitual spot in a white plastic chair next to the front door, her tired brown eyes still sharp and alert.
    Rosa tried to quell the discomfort that seeing Anna always brought, the reminder that if Rosa wasn’t who she was, she too would grow old like that, her body shrinking and sagging and wrinkling until she was nothing more than vein-peppered skin and brittle bones.
    “A woman showed up today. He was talking to her in the pigeonnier .”
    “So?” Anna rolled her rheumy eyes and gave a snort that irritated Rosa. “Lots of women show up here, and have for as long as I’ve been alive.”
    “This one’s different. He wants her.”
    That got Anna’s attention even as she scoffed. “That’s your wishful thinking,” she said, arms crossing over her chest in skepticism, though she sat up straighter. “You’ve always been a dreamer.”
    “And you’ve always been too quick to assume the worst.” Rosa watched a fly buzzing in front of Anna’s face. With speed that belied her age, Anna reached for a fly swatter, arched, and swung, bringing the fly down in mid-flight.
    Rosa lost patience. She had never liked being forced to deal with Anna, and liked it even less now, when she was feeling more desperate than she’d like. “Just give me the letters.”
    “What? You’re just going to hand them to her? That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “What do you suggest I do? I can’t leave them for her to find. She’s not staying in the house like others have in the past.” It was a little dig, a reminder.
    Anna wasn’t offended. She laughed. “True, true. But what makes you think she’ll care about any of this?”
    “She’s oozing compassion. I can see it, feel it. It’s all around her, like an aura. The martyr who takes care of everyone, that’s who this is. And he likes that in her.” That baffled Rosa, but there it was. Damien had gotten strange over the centuries, preoccupied with redemption, inflated with pity, and this one appealed to him.
    Slowly nodding, Anna said, “I can see that. You might be on to something”
    “So give them to me. I’m going to make friends with this girl.”
    But Anna shook her head. “Just send her to me. She’ll trust me more, the sweet old lady.”
    “Good point.”
    Not that there was anything sweet about Anna. Or herself.
    “You’re as devious as ever, Anna. It just warms the cockles of my heart to know that.”
     
     
     
    “What did your sister say about my plantation?” Damien asked, gazing at Marley curiously over a cracked laminate tabletop in a worn diner.
    Marley wanted to be truthful, wanted to mention anything that could help Damien find Lizzie, but at the same time she wanted to protect her sister, wanted to keep to herself just how childish and delusional Lizzie could be. It was embarrassing to Marley that Lizzie had declared herself in love with Damien when he didn’t even remember her. Not that Lizzie would ever be embarrassed by that herself—but Marley had enough embarrassment, guilt, shame, and repression for both of them.
    “She said that she was staying there. That there were really cool parties and hot guys…she said it was like being in a hunk calendar. She mentioned you as the owner, said you were, uh, totally amazing.”
    She would have expected Damien to be smug about that last part, and waited for his reaction, but he just looked troubled.
    And he didn’t even acknowledge the compliment. “I honestly