YesterWorld (Book 2 of the Down World Series)

Original Edition: Chapter Thirty

Once in the house, I busied myself with things I'd been dying to do for two days: namely wash everything. I headed up to Anastasia's bathroom, peeled off the clothes that had become like a second filmy skin, and slipped into the luxuriously soft kimono-style robe she had hanging on the door. I found a better hiding place for Sage's ring in a deep pocket of the backpack, then ran all my clothes down to the all-in-one washer/dryer in the laundry room.

He wasn't back yet, but I told myself I didn't care.

Back upstairs, I ran the water in that huge bathtub until it reached the proper temperature of burn-my-skin-off hot and searched Anastasia's chest of drawers for something to change into after.

Everything she owned was preposterously girlie—lots of silk nighties and imported lingerie with European labels, and not a T-shirt or a pair of sweatpants to be found. I laid out the only pajamas I could find that at least had pants instead of bootie shorts, then headed back into the bathroom and let the steam from the water finally warm me up as I sat on the edge of the tub waiting for it to fill.

I felt like I'd been lost a snowdrift for days, constantly chilled to the bone and without any real sense of direction. The only thing that had been keeping me anchored was knowing that Adam was with me, that if nothing else, I had an accomplice in all this mess.

Now my eyes wandered to the delicate gold clock on the wall above the tub. It was after midnight. I was ashamed to admit to myself that I was scared here without him. What if he didn't come back? Was I strong enough to finish this mission on my own? If I went home now, gave up on finding the adult Jenny, could I really live with myself?

I slipped into that cauldron-like tub, trying to clear my mind of everything but how good it felt to be immersed in heat, to let my muscles finally relax. My half-opened eyes fell on a bronze bottle of Anastasia's perfume. What must it be like to be her, I wondered. Surrounded by every luxury, a seventeen-year-old mistress in a fantasy house.

Twisting off the cork-style top of the bottle, I was struck by how delicate the rosy scent of the perfume was, how it transported me somehow to a place I couldn't exactly identify at first. But once I had poured a few drops onto my wrists, the memory came charging back to me:

My mother. She used to wear this perfume when I was very little. Maybe it was something that had been in vogue in the nineties. Maybe all the girls wore it.

Maybe she had stolen it in DW, from a house very much like this one.

I poured a generous amount into the hot water, letting the sweet smell of it drown me completely. Then I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that the hot water was Brady's hands, that in front of me his beautiful brown eyes were floating, full of that warm connection I had been so desperate to feel for so long.

But then my eyes opened, ashamed at the vision that had usurped my thoughts. Because the eyes I was imagining weren't brown.

They were green.

*

It was the crashing sound that woke me up, followed by annoyed cursing. I rolled over in the silken sheets, almost slip-sliding out of the bed as Anastasia's camisole top was made of the same material. The clock on the bedside table informed me it was one a.m.

Groggy and a bit disoriented, I headed downstairs. My clothes were still in the dryer, and my arms instinctively crossed over my chest as I got closer to the source of the sound.

Even in the dim light of the elaborately decorated sitting room, I could immediately make out that the liquor cabinet was open. A slumped figure that I recognized as Adam sat nearby on one of those upholstered love seats that cost more than a car, a bottle of what I assumed was vodka clenched in his fist.