Chapter 14

• Bastian turned and looked over to where Leone and Trendan stood leaning against the wall. They were perfectly fine with just standing there and doing nothing. He didn’t do that very well. Sure, he could stay in one spot for a long time just as long as he was people-watching, but alley-watching was not fun. His nerves felt like they were all firing at once inside him, he had never been this close to meeting her. Seeing her, or her soul he chased through all time when he was face to face with her—what was he going to say? Hey, how’s your soul doing? He looked down at the pavement. That was so lame he probably just lost cool points thinking it.
• To kill time, he tried to remember the faces that had kept the soul safe over the years, he couldn’t go back too far, because there were too many years to cover, and his memory wasn’t that good. The last one before the breathtaking blonde had been a petite redhead, with curls that refused to be tamed. He smiled; he’d never managed to get close enough to touch that hair to see if it was as springy as it looked. The one prior to the exuberant redhead had been a woman with long brown hair, that was so tightly braided, he was sure it may have cut off the flow of blood to her brain, but she’d seen him and gone the other way so fast, he hadn’t been able to get a good enough look at her. Before her, she’d been an exotic-looking creature with dark hair and emerald eyes. He’d blown his chance that time pausing to admire her beauty, by the time he’d snapped out of it, she’d vanished. He turned in a circle and looked around, it may have even been in this area that had happened. The city was constantly changing, he’d seen it being built from dirt to skyscrapers, but this area still held most of the old buildings and now that he’d been told she was in this neighborhood, he wondered if somehow the women were connected. Not in blood, if their looks were any indication, but by the soul. Which was impossible. Souls didn’t link through past lives for a reason. He couldn’t imagine how taxing it would be if a soul recalled its past life with each rebirth, that would be insanity and they wouldn’t last long in a body that way.
• “Bastian.”