Read In Memories We Fear for Free Online

The bed was covered in a white eyelet comforter and a ridiculous number of Philip’s pillows. He technically had his own room, but he never slept there.
    “Philip,” she began, uncertain how to even broach the image in her mind. But they could be leaving for London as early as tomorrow night, and then they would all be embroiled in a difficult search. “I wanted to try something new tonight . . . to try showing you a memory.”
    He dropped down into the chair beside her bed and pulled his boots off. “You’ve shown me memories.”
    “Not like this. I want to try showing you a memory I saw in someone else.”
    He stopped moving, and the muscles in his arms tensed. “Who?”
    “Robert.”
    As soon as she said it, she’d let out a secret she couldn’t take back. Philip looked up, and she wasn’t sure what she saw in his eyes. Anger or anxiety? Maybe both.
    “Robert showed you his memories?” He bit the words off. “How many?”
    She stood up and hurried over, crouching down beside him. Sharing memories was a deeply personal act. “More than he wanted. We got locked inside his past, and they just kept coming. Don’t be angry.” She put her fingers on the arm of the chair. “Philip, do you remember the gypsy girl you once saw with him, way back when you were first turned? Jessenia?”
    He wasn’t ready to stop being angry yet and didn’t answer. He just looked at her.
    “They spent hundreds of years together,” she went on. “They were close like us . . . but different.” She had no idea how to explain the next part. “They shared more than we do.”
    His tight expression relaxed slightly. “What?”
    “I can’t . . . tell you. I don’t know how. Will you let me try to show you the memory? It happened about a week after Jessenia turned him.”
    Philip glanced away, and his jaw twitched. “Eleisha, I don’t want to see anything from Robert’s life. I don’t know why you are—”
    “Please. This isn’t about Robert. It’s about us.”
    She didn’t know why this was so important to her, but she couldn’t stop dwelling on that one memory, and she needed to show it to Philip. She needed him to know.
    He let out a frustrated sound, like a growl, and stood up, moving to the window to make sure the oversized shade was drawn and the heavy curtains were closed. If they got lost inside a shared memory, the sun could rise before they came out.
    He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it on the chair. Then he sat on the bed, putting his back against all the pillows.
    Eleisha went to him quickly. He didn’t want to do this; he didn’t want to try this. But if he was even half-willing, she wouldn’t let the chance go. Once he saw what she’d seen, felt what she’d felt, he’d understand.
    “Remember how Robert’s gift was protection, how he made people feel safe,” Eleisha said quickly. “Jessenia’s was a sense of adventure. She infected people with a seduction of adventure.”
    Eleisha crawled up beside Philip and grasped two of his fingers, reaching her thoughts into his while simultaneously letting her mind flow back.
     
    Philip was accustomed to Eleisha’s communicating feelings to him through memories, and he’d never minded before, never worried about it before. But she’d never looked this intense before either—and she’d certainly never begged.
    He wanted to stop this before it began, but how could he refuse? She asked so little of him.
    So he let her grasp his fingers, and he opened his mind, feeling her inside him immediately. Normally, during a shared memory, he would be sucked away into her past, seeing through her eyes and reliving the experience through her.
    But this time, when he closed his eyes, he felt her struggling for a few moments, and then the scene changed.
    To his shock, he was looking out through Robert’s eyes.
    He became Robert.
     
    Robert had decided upon a journey to France, so he and Jessenia made their way to the coast and found passage on a ship