You Are Mine Little Sister (by Syra Tucker) novel Chapter 162

For the first time, I got to understand what it meant to 'lose track of time.'

Because I did.

I couldn't tell you how long I'd been buried under that tile. Hours? Days? Only that when the church finally quieted, I knew it had been long enough. I even felt the instant the church emptied, indicating the men were out.

The hole had been a safe space. Another set of people had come into this very room after the first ones left. They searched again, turned over tables and ended up with nothing.

"I don't think she's in the building. She might've gotten away before we arrived," one of them had grunted before they left.

I knew it was safe to come out now, but I couldn't find the spine for it. It was too dark, and the air out there must be thick with blood and the coppery rot of bodies.

Josephine. The thought pressed like a fist against my ribs. Where could she be? She must've gotten a good place to hide, or better still, found a way to leave the church.

I was so suddenly grateful she wasn't the one that had found this room with me. She'd have wanted me to go into the hole first, then it'd have been her in Claudia's place.

It was nearly dawn when I left the hole. Dew freckled the window ledge in pale, patient beads. The church had a morning the way a corpse has cooling breath.

The sight of Claudia's corpse kept me rooted for some time. Pale had seeped through blue, and the smell hit like a chemical stench that took the air out of your lungs.

I couldn't believe it. Just yesterday, we were all in the van, plotting an escape. Today, she was rotting in front of me. And I'd spent the night in that hole, knowing she was rotting up here.

I sniffled and forced myself out of the room. My feet barely knew how to carry me. Josephine was the only thing I couldn't stop thinking of. Where would I find her? Or was I supposed to wait back here in case she'd return? I knew her. If she had managed to get away, she'd still be worried about me and come looking.

I kept my steps as light as I could as I walked into the main large hall which was hollow with the smell of death pooled in every corner. Each breath tasted like old iron. Each step sounded too loud in the big empty hall, like someone else was walking ahead of me and I followed their ghost.

I dragged the back of my hand over my nose, but it did nothing.

I needed to find Josephine. Be sure she hadn't been hiding somewhere like me.

There were a dozen places to check.

The smell didn't matter anymore. I pulled her so tight into me, hugged her like she was my last ground wire to sanity and without her I was spark meeting gasoline.

God, I'd been wounded, broken, dehumanized. But none had dug a hole this deep in my chest. It was inferno-sized and made hell look temperate.

'You should eat this. You look like you need it more than I do.' Those were her first words to me on the day I was being starved by Blayne for not serving his client properly.

I could still remember what the meal looked like. Pasta and cheese.

'You could fake images, you know. During the act. It serves as a means of escape.'

I watered her hair with grief as I wept like the calendar had run out of days. Rocking and naming her under my breath like it could bring her back.

I'd spent so long calling her friend because the world we lived in had starved us of better words. Holding her now, I finally understood what she'd been to me. Not a friend. A sister; one I'd found in the worst place on earth and loved anyway.