A Discordant Melody

Six

Six

I didn’t know what to do.  I was frozen, just looking at her as she looked me in the eyes, waiting for my answer. 

“Zoe…” she started again, but I cut her off with a hug. 

And I started to cry.  I know I shouldn’t have, but everything…everything was just getting to me all at once and I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

But Momma didn’t mind, not at all.  She just wrapped her arms tightly around me, like she wanted to hug me just as much as I wanted to hug her. 

“Don’t cry, sweetie.  I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you if I could do something about it,” she soothed.  “Everything’s okay.”

“No,” I mumbled as my tears continued to roll down my face when I pulled away to look at her.  “It wasn’t that.  It’s just…I’m so happy that I found you.”

Her lips curled up into a smile.  “You found me a few days ago.”

How did she know that?  “How…?”

Laughter bubbled out from between her lips.  “You don’t think I’ve have to watch my back for the last few months while we’ve been here?  You’re not the only person – or thing, for that matter – to track me down.”  She leaned forward to hug me again, but pulled back a moment later to kiss my forhead.  “But why are you here?  And how did you know that I was here, that I still had all of my memories?”

Right when she asked her question, though, I could see in her eyes that she knew the answer.

“Mnemosyne,” we said at the same time. 

Momma smiled again.  “Let’s go somewhere I know it can just be the two of us and we’ll be able to stay safe.  No one will be able to find us if we don’t want them to.”

She took my hand and stepped backward into the shadow that appeared behind her, pulling me along with her. 

Where we ended up was dark and it took my eyes a moment to adjust.  But by that time, Momma had let go of my hand and walked a few steps away, turning on a lamp that was situated on a table beside a couch.  We were in what must have been where she, Lee, and Molly had been staying.

“This is our place,” she said.  “It’s protected so that only the three of us can get in and we have to be with whoever else we want to come in.”

I stepped forward, my eyes glancing around the room.  Besides the couch, there was a coffee table in front of it and a flat screen television mounted on the wall.  A set of double doors led out onto a balcony with two windows on either side of them, covered in white, gauzy curtains.  There were a few pictures hanging on the cream-colored walls, mostly stills of buildings around Rome.  There were only two doors also, which I assumed led to two bedrooms. 

My eyes found Momma again, just as she peeked through one of the windows as she pulled the curtain slightly to the side.

“Are you expecting to see someone?” I asked, watching her.

She sighed and the curtain fell back into place when she dropped it and turned back to me.  “No, not right now anyway.  But I know that Molly and Lee will more than likely be heading back here in a little while.  I didn’t tell them where I was going when I ran off.  I knew Menoetius was watching you as soon as we walked into the club.  That’s why he disappeared before he attacked you outside.  He knew that I would find out that he’d found you.”

“Has he really been tracking you?  I thought that no one would have been able to find you.  Mnemosyne said that this was the safest place for you, besides the house.  How could…?”