Chosen by Christine Pope (free children's ebooks pdf txt) 📕

one swallow. After that, I took the empty glass with me and performed a quick inspection of the other rooms. Nothing out of the ordinary, just bedrooms decorated with the same taste and flair as the rest of the house. Another bathroom, not quite as luxurious as the one in the master suite, but still large enough that two people could comfortably brush their teeth in there or perform other bathroom prep as necessary. It seemed sort of a shame to waste all this space on me, but truthfully, so far I hadn’t come across any survivors I’d be willing to share this house with. Yes, there had to be some good people who’d made it through the Heat unscathed. I sure hadn’t seen them yet, though.

Suddenly feeling even more tired, I headed back to the kitchen so I could rinse out my wine glass and set it on the counter. For the first time, I noticed a door off to one side; I opened it and saw it concealed the laundry room, which was large and well laid out as well, with a state-of-the-art washer and dryer combo, as well as plenty of storage and a separate wash tub for scrubbing out stubborn stains, or whatever. Inside the cupboards I found what looked like a lifetime supply of detergent, along with all the spare towels and sheets for the various bathrooms and bedrooms. It seemed clear that the developer hadn’t been worried about the appliances using up too much of the power the solar farm produced.

Well, if he hadn’t worried about it, then I wouldn’t worry, either, when the time came. Right now I had enough clothes to last me another week, so laundry wasn’t exactly a concern.

The master bedroom had its own kiva fireplace, and I decided it would be better to have a fire there. Having a fireplace in my own bedroom felt deliciously decadent, and the thought of having the flames there to warm me through the night seemed extra appealing.

So I brushed my teeth but didn’t worry about my face, since I’d taken a shower only a few hours earlier, and then got some logs from the basket on the floor near the hearth and made a stack the way my father had shown me. There was a lighter on a shelf nearby, so I used that to get things going. Dutchie watched all this with some bemusement, but once the fire got crackling away and began to spread its heat through the room, she let out a contented little sigh and curled up on the rug, her eyes closing almost immediately.

I know how you feel, Dutchie, I thought. Even so, something in me was reluctant to turn off the bedside lamp, as if, once I had done so, I’d never be able to get the light back. Silly, I knew. It wouldn’t even be fully dark with the lamp shut off, as the fire was certainly adequate to illuminate the room.

Still, I sat there on the bed for a long time, looking at the glow of the lamp on the bedroom’s warm terra-cotta-painted walls, at the gold leaf detailing on the wall where the door was located. Everything felt cozy and quiet and safe, and yet for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to reach over to the lamp and turn the knob. Finally, I got up off the bed, went to the closet, and retrieved the Smith and Wesson revolver from the shelf. I laid it on the table next to the bed, then took a deep breath and shut off the lamp.

It wasn’t dark. The room danced with firelight, and wasn’t even completely silent, between the crackling of the logs and Dutchie’s soft snores. I settled my head against the pillow, breathing in the indefinable scent of clean linens. Had the caretaker put fresh sheets on the bed when he’d come by a few days earlier? It certainly seemed that way.

But I didn’t want to think about that, because then I’d think about how he was dead, and the man who’d built this house, and Elena and Tori and my aunt and uncle…my mother and father. Devin. Even as I tried to push those thoughts away, I could feel the telltale lump in my throat that meant I was dangerously close to bursting into sobs.

Don’t cry, I told myself. Don’t. It won’t bring them back. All you can do is keep living, so there’ll still be someone around to remember them.

At first glance, that notion might not have seemed very reassuring. Somehow, though, it did calm me, and I found myself falling asleep, succumbing at last to the weariness of the day and the softness of the bed in which I lay. The last thing I heard was a soft pop from the hearth as a log split and settled down on top of the others.

I’d never been much for dreaming. That is, I knew I must dream, because everyone did, but I hardly ever remembered any of those dreams. I was never the one recounting in excruciating detail my crazy dreams about flying or driving my car up the side of a building, or whatever. And I certainly never had those kinds of dreams, the kind you awake from all hot and bothered.

But I did that night.

I dreamed I lay in that bed, with the warm glow of the fire flickering against the walls and the comforting scent of wood smoke in the air. The strange thing was, I dreamed that I slept, and that I awoke to strong arms around me, holding me close, and someone kissing me. In my dream, I didn’t think that was strange at all. I opened my mouth to this dream man, tasted the sweetness of his lips, felt him release me from the embrace so he could caress my body, even as I reached over to touch him, to feel his arousal.

And it seemed so natural for him to press me down into the bed, to push himself into me so that we were moving together, my legs wrapped around him, driving him farther into me. This was all done in complete silence; only when the orgasm hit did I finally cry out, but softly. And he said nothing at all, although I could feel the climax shudder through him as well. We stilled, lying in bed, our breaths filling the silence. Then his lips brushed against my cheek, and I heard him whisper, Beloved.

I sat up in bed then, heart racing, and pressed my palms flat against the mattress. Shaking, I put one hand to my chest. Unlike in the dream, I was still dressed, wearing the sleep shirt I’d put on before I went in to brush my teeth. My mouth tasted of mint, not…him. And I could tell that no one had touched me. Things didn’t…feel…any different.

Just a dream. A horribly vivid dream. In a way, I could even understand it. I was feeling alone, and the voice had been my only real companion for the past few days. All right, I had Dutchie, but that wasn’t exactly the same thing. Was it so strange for my subconscious mind to turn that disembodied voice into a sort of dream lover, someone to make me feel as if I weren’t the only person left alive on the planet?

Maybe not, but I still felt shaken to my core. I pushed back the sheets and blankets and duvet, then crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom. There, I splashed water on my face, trying to calm myself, and telling myself I should be glad that I was someplace where I had the luxury of running water.

That no-nonsense thought did help me to regain my composure somewhat, and I headed into the bedroom after that, pausing to put another couple of logs on the fire and stir it up a bit with the poker before finally returning to bed. Through all of this, Dutchie had slept peacefully, apparently not discommoded at all by my wandering around.

I got back in bed, then pulled in a deep breath, and another. After everything I’d been through, was I really going to let a dream rattle me? I told myself that I needed to let it go, that everything would be fine.

I just wasn’t sure whether I believed those reassurances.

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