Chasing Time

by Elena Lawson

  Chasing Time

  Her Immortal Legacy (Book One)

  Katie May

  Elena Lawson

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  A Note From The Authors

  Also by Katie May

  About the Author

  Other Books By Elena Lawson

  The Last Vocari Series

  Copyright © 2019 Elena Lawson and Katie May

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author’s

  imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events is strictly coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter 1

  BECK

  I go by Clairmont now.

  Rebecca Clairmont. Though mostly people just call me Beck. I never liked the last name Barts anyway. Beck Barts? It reminded me of the sound of Dad’s cough after one too many inhales of his foul-smelling Cuban cigars.

  I wish I’d known sooner—how he lied to me.

  My father kept the secret since the day she vanished. I was only twelve when it happened. Ten years ago now but when I learned the truth, it felt like yesterday. The wound that’d been slowly closing was ripped wide open, again. Gushing and raw. With the added sting of the new knowledge that it was his fault. That the reason my mom went out into the darkened streets alone all those years ago was because he’d sent her there. He kicked her out! In the middle of the night. In her nightgown. Into the boisterous streets of Memphis on a Saturday night.

  And she never came back.

  Her body was never found.

  We had to bury a fucking empty casket.

  And he let me believe it was just some cruel twist of fate. A horrible accident. Coincidence. Would he ever have told me if I hadn’t found copies of the old police reports in his study? I shook my head, grinding my teeth as I searched the purple-hued room for my wallet. Where was the damned thing?

  “You’ll miss the train if you don’t hurry, love!” Aunt Deb called from the kitchen.

  I tore back the fluffy lilac bedspread and found the slim black leather clutch beneath the covers.

  Literally nothing had changed here since the last time I visited at sixteen. Same bedspread and fluffy heart-shaped pillows I picked out in another life. Same striped purple wallpaper—peeling now in several places. Same musty smell in the closets that you had to duck to get into.

  My mom and I came to visit her sister here every summer until she was gone. I kept up the tradition until I was sixteen—and a summer job, boys, and booze got in the way of flying across the pond to visit wacky old Aunt Deb.

  I must’ve grown since the last summer I was here. Everything seemed so much smaller, as though the room was meant for a child. I didn’t care, though. Escape is escape—no matter where you are. As long as you left where you were to get there.

  “I know! Almost ready!”

  It was amazing Deb had even agreed on such short notice to have me. After I found out about my Dad, I’d been furious. And questioning everything. I was in my second year at Brown, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a lawyer. Eventually get a position with him at the firm. Now, I wasn’t so sure I wanted that—or that I ever wanted it. I enrolled in the program because he wanted me to, not because of any true interest I had in it.

  The truth was I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I still hadn’t found that thing I was good at like most people had by twenty-two.

  So, I took a sabbatical. Basically, dropped out. Told Kane, the guy I usually taught self-defense with on Saturday nights—and occasionally boned—that he’s on his own for the rest of the term. Then I packed a bag and boarded a plane. Texted my goody-two-shoes roommate that she had the run of the apartment for the foreseeable future, but that I would make sure rent was paid for as long as I was away—happy to rack up dear ‘ol Dad’s near bottomless credit card.

  She’d be glad to be rid of me. Kane could be loud. Hell, so could I when he hit the right spot. And his apartment was too far from campus to be a prime location for our spontaneous trysts between the sheets.

  Now, here I was, in Gravesend, a.k.a buttfuck nowhere, but close enough to London that it registered on the map.

  I rushed out the door and into the hall, tugging on my beat-up tan leather booties, the ones with the small heel and the only things even close to feminine in the shoe department that I owned—almost knocking into Deb on my way to the door, she jumped back out of the way with a hand to her chest, her shoulder length curly gray hair bobbing with the motion. Her round, tortoise-shell glasses fell from her nose to snag midair on the slim golden chain around her neck.

  “Oh!”

  “Sorry, Aunt Deb,” I called, digging my cell out from the clutch. “Don’t wait up, okay?”

  Deb shook her head as she attempted to right her glasses. Regaining her composure, she looked at me pointedly, shaking a bony finger in my direction. “Now, you just watch yourself, Rebecca,” she warned. “Stick with your friend. London is no place for a girl as pretty as you alone at night. And I promised your father I’d return you in one piece.”

  At the mention of my father, I stiffened.

  Aunt Deb, perceptive as ever, gave a slight roll of her eyes. “I’m not happy with him either, dear, but family is family. Now, go on. You’ll miss your tram.”

  I offered a tiny close-lipped grin and left the two-story townhouse, running down the short stone pathway and through the skinny wooden door in the red brick fence. The air smelled of lilac and salty spray with an undertone of something sweaty, or maybe rotted. It was a combination of scents you only found in Gravesend in the summertime. And it reminded me of the last time I was there with mom.

  As I raced through Heritage Quarter and all the little colorful shops, I remembered going for ice cream at the one that was painted blue. And getting a new pair of shoes at the yellow one near the end after the soles of the ones I brought from home wore down to practically nothing from all the running and playing with the other neighborhood kids near Deb’s place.

  They were gone now, of course. No one in their right mind stayed in Gravesend—with the exception of Deb. The friend I was going to meet used to live just next door when we were kids. Amy Harkness. We were pretty much the same age, but Amy never allowed me to forget that she was the older one. No matter that it was mere days separating us.

  She moved to London the year after I stopped coming to visit, and she was the first person I told after Aunt Deb that I was on my way. I believe her exact reply to my message was fuck off, closely followed by: I’m taking you out. Brush your damn hair and wear something sexy.

  Glancing down a
t my outfit, I wasn’t sure she would call what I was wearing sexy. I didn’t do sexy. My usual combat boots, jeans, and fitted tank were only slightly modified for lack of wardrobe. I traded in the combat boots for leather booties. Swapped my torn jeans for a pair of dark green pants that hugged my curves like a glove. Added a light wash jean jacket over my black tank. I even dusted a light brush of powder over my face and put the mascara I snagged from the airport shop on in two layers.

  I thought I looked good. Maybe not sexy, but good.

  Sweat beaded on my brow in the unusually balmy night air. The sky clear of the clouds I’d gotten so accustomed to seeing over Gravesend. It was a rarity not to feel the threat of rain tangible on the breeze. I made it to the platform with seconds to spare.

  The tram pulled up right as I reached the yellow line on the platform.

  It was dead. This late into the evening, with the sun all but set, there were ten times more people getting off the tram than getting on it. And thank fuck because the smell of all the bodies pressed together always made me want to gag. The throat clogging cologne. The nose-wrinkling tang of body odor. The clinical, metallic smells of the tram itself. How these people did it every day I would never understand.

  Finding a seat was easy, and I settled in with my headphones cranked to eighty to wait out the twenty-four-minute ride into London.

  Ok. Twenty-eight-minute ride. Were these things ever on time?

  Amy said she would be waiting for me at the station, and it didn’t take me long to spot her in the thinning crowd. She found me at the same time, and her face broke out into a wide smile. Her blonde hair was loose around her face in a textured bob, waving in all the right places, voluminous, but not frizzy. I always envied her that. And though she looked older—she didn’t look aged. Her eyes were ringed in a thin, precise line of coal that flicked out on the sides to give her green eyes tiny black wings. Her lipstick was pale but suited her.

  “I said sexy, not raggedy ann,” she said with a cheeky half grin, giving me a light embrace.

  “Hi to you, too,” I said, trying to smooth my hair without her noticing. My long, tumbling chestnut hair hated the weather here and was prone to becoming a fluffy mess each time I came. I pulled it into a ponytail with the elastic I always kept on my wrist when Amy stepped back. “Better?” I asked.

  “Much,” she said, smoothing out the hem of her black dress where it hugged against her thighs, just above her knees. Her sleeves were lace, and they matched her strappy shoes. By comparison, I probably looked like a street urchin.

  Puberty had been kind to her. Shaping her stick-like teenage frame into soft curves and clear skin.

  My skin wasn’t so bad, I supposed. But everything I ate went to my ass—a feature I loathed, but Kane worshipped. The rest of me was very average. B-cup. Slim, but not skinny. Toned from hours spent lashing out at a six-foot bag of sand in the gym.

  Sensing where my mind had gone, Amy took me by the arm, and we started out into the city streets. “You look fine,” she offered, and my tense shoulders relaxed.

  I realized it really didn’t matter. Who did I have to impress, anyway?

  “Where to?” I asked once we got a block or two away from the station.

  She turned to me with a purposefully ominous stare. “The underground,” she said with a quirk of her brow—a challenge. Her voice was menacing.

  “The metro, then?”

  She nodded, laughing quietly to herself. “Yes. But first a drink… or three.”

  Chapter 2

  BECK

  And I thought I could knock them back. Amy was ordering drink number three before I’d managed to gulp down number one.

  “Thanks, sweets,” she said to the bartender who was quite obviously trying to get a better look down the front of Amy’s dress. But my old friend didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she leaned further into the rail of the bar, as though to press her breasts out a little more for him to ogle.

  I bit my tongue, not wanting to be that friend. The one who was overly cautious. Who told her that she shouldn’t invite that sort of attention—especially from someone she didn’t know. I didn’t know what happened to my mother—how she met her end. But I could guess, and I did guess. As I grew older and learned the horrors of the world, there was no end to what my imagination could come up with.

  That was why I started taking self-defense classes. And kickboxing. It was why I taught other, younger female students now how to protect themselves.

  If my mom had known how to throw a good punch, maybe she’d still be here.

  “Hey, where are you right now?”

  It took me a minute to register that Amy was talking to me. I stuttered. “Oh. Uh—I was just thinking.”

  “Well stop thinking. Isn’t that why you came? To get away?” I hadn’t told her anything specific, just that I needed to escape for a while and would be staying with Aunt Deb for the foreseeable future until I could sort out my life.

  Amy was right.

  I knocked back the watered-down rye—the ice long since melted and flagged the bartender for another. “It is,” I said and shoved the thoughts from my head—evicting them as forcefully as I could.

  I was going to have fun tonight. I’d spent too many nights now curled up in my bed. Angry. Upset. And too many days taking out my frustration in the gym—even had the purple knuckles to prove it.

  When the bartender dropped off the next drink, I let it burn a path down my throat in one great gulp, wincing at the acrid flavor, but also reveling in the warmth now spreading through my belly, radiating out through my limbs.

  “Better?” Amy asked, her eyes wide and brows raised.

  I nodded. “Where to next?” I asked as she readied to pay her bill with a wad of crumpled bills.

  I pulled the credit card out of my purse and passed it to the bartender. “It’s on me.”

  “What? You don’t—”

  I leaned in. “It’s not my credit card,” I said quietly so the bartender wouldn’t overhear. When I told my dad where I was going, he’d thrust it at me. Telling me to take as long as I needed. And to use his card to foot the bill.

  I was so pissed at him; I’d almost hit him. Almost. I’d refused to take it, at first. But he left it there, sitting on the ledge by the door, and I thought fine… If he wanted to try to make up for what he’d done by throwing money at me, that was his choice.

  And it was mine to see how much the little piece of shiny black plastic would let me spend before it maxed out.

  “In that case,” she said, cocking her head to one side as she stuffed the folded bills back into her purse. “I guess you can get the tab this once.”

  We ended up at this Shakespearean era nightclub that was the incarnation of a contradiction. The décor, the artwork, the very bones of the old building screamed sixteenth century. But the pumping bass and drum music, the shouting, the glitter, and the attire of the drunken guests was very much modern day.

  I mean, I couldn’t be certain, but I was willing to bet women wouldn’t wear what was clearly a bra and a skirt so short I hesitated to call it panties instead to an establishment back then.

  “Hey!” Amy called over the music, polishing off her drink as she twirled her way through the bodies back to where I was standing near the windows, looking out over the Thames. It glinted like a knife of silver in the light of the waxing moon. “Want to get some air? I’m dying in here.”

  I’d danced a bit—mostly because I was forced, but I couldn’t rival Amy’s energy. She could just go and go and go. Never once seeming worn out. Not losing her bubbly attitude even for a second.

  “Yeah,” I called back, stepping down off the high stool-like chair to discover I was more intoxicated than I originally thought. I gulped, gripping the edge of the stool as the room tilted, and I grit my teeth against the sensation of falling. Once I got my footing, I released the slippery wood and let Amy drag me out through the throng of gyrating bodies.

  The cool air outside hit my s
kin like a balm after a day spent in the sun—or maybe the fiery pits of hell. I took greedy breaths of unrestricted air, the drumming music from inside still ringing in my ears beneath layers of what felt like cotton that made it difficult to hear. I opened my mouth wide, trying to pop them, to get them to clear so I could hear what Amy was saying as she dragged me into the shadows between the club and another building.

  “What?” I’m sure I was yelling, but I couldn’t help it.

  She spun on her heel, a bit unsteady and hushed me sharply. “Quiet,” she said, and I started to be able to hear again the further we got from the place. My body felt heavy with all the alcohol running through my veins. My brain steeped in the fog of drunkenness.

  I should go home. Aunt Deb will be worried.

  What time is it?

  “Too early to be worried about the time,” Amy replied with a smirk as she continued to drag me. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud.

  “Fuck, Aimes, where are you taking me,” I protested as she dragged me down the alleyway toward the river.

  “He should be here by now,” she said. “Just wait till you see it, Beck. It’s gorgeous.”

  I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but I was going to start getting pissed off if she didn’t explain it soon. It was late. I was drunk and I knew it. My feet hurt, and my head was beginning to throb.

  Why oh why hadn’t I worn my combat boots?