AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What do you mean, ‘right’?”
She scooped ice into a glass. “You aren’t old enough to drink.”
“I most certainly am.” Indignant was the perfect word to describe how I felt. Not one I’d use in everyday conversation, but still perfect. “I got in, didn’t I?”
“Where’s your stamp?” Opening a new bottle of grenadine, she poured some in the bottom of the glass, added two cherries, and topped it off with Coke.
“Stamp?”
She grinned wider. “Stay out of trouble, sugar. Come look me up when you’re legal.” She slid the cherry Coke across the counter and winked. “On the house.”
The guy beside me showed her a stamp on his hand and ordered a beer. I cussed. I’d missed that part. At least I hadn’t paid a cover.
I turned around to scan the crowd, cherry Coke in hand, and immediately spilled it all over my right shin and shoe.
Jack. Standing by the front door.
I shoved the glass into an empty hand and pushed my way through the crowded dance floor to the entrance.
Gone.
Stepping outside, I cringed when the cold wind hit the Coke on my pants. Maybe it hadn’t been Jack. Maybe my anger was playing tricks. Maybe I needed to find a bar that would serve me.
I blew into my hands to keep my fingers warm, and saw a green trolley speeding up instead of stopping as it approached Beale Street Landing.
The crowd was too thick for the trolley to be going so fast. One drunk stumble in the wrong direction and a person could meet a bloody end.
Then everything flipped to slow motion, too heavy and too thick.
The rip blended, just like the one Lily and I had experienced the day before. The dark made it harder to see specific features, but when a newsboy passed by, hawking the Memphis Daily, and then passed through a group of Elvis impersonators, I knew time was shifting again.
I rubbed my eyes with my fists and looked around for someone to touch.
A little girl wearing a white dress. She had two long pigtails, and she was skipping. Completely out of place. I reached out to touch her at the same time she dropped a penny. She chased it into the street.
The brakes of the trolley squealed, and the smell of smoke filled the air, along with a mother’s anguished cry. “No! Mary!”
What if I was wrong, and the little girl was real, not a rip? I was close enough to catch her. Without another second of thought, I ran, desperate to stop her before the unthinkable happened and the trolley mowed her down. If I was fast enough, I could knock her out of the way and roll us both to safety.
I ran.
I leapt.
I grabbed.
She dissolved.
So did the trolley.
Chapter 29
“Can you tell us again what happened?”
“I don’t know what I saw. There was a little girl—she was there and then she was gone. Her mother called her Mary.”
She was a rip. No good way to explain that.
“The Orpheum has a few ghosts, but Mary is the most famous. Maybe you have the Sight.” The policeman had a round edge to his voice. Definitely a local. “You were here earlier, with the Turner case? After what you’ve been through today, I’m surprised that’s all you saw.”
