Chapter 4 – Found

I guess I should have expected that it wouldn't be easy.

We had picked up Candy's medication requests early on at a hospital loading dock in San Diego and spent a little time playing around with them. Mend was actually a small pill that you swallowed. It instantly healed a bruise Jared had. Jaime had accidentally gotten a whiff of the Sleep. It had knocked him out for a solid 4 hours. Guess we wouldn't need the chloroform we had brought. Not that we had found an opportunity to try it on anyone but ourselves.

It was hard work to spy on the souls enough to get information on them, while staying out of sight so as not to draw attention to ourselves. In previous body snatching raids, Jared and the others had simply grabbed a few people at night, doused them with chloroform and been done with it.

We had more rules than that.

Three potential bodies had been rejected. One turned out to have a partner already, and that would have meant a higher likelihood of a search. I didn't mention it to the others, but it would also have meant that Wanda would feel a tie to this soul, and I refused to leave her with that.

A girl in San Francisco had looked promising. She was young, with very dark hair and tan skin, like she had Asian ancestors. But after following her for a few days, I decided that she also had too many ties. She had a large group of friends that she spent practically all her time with, and went to see her Comforter twice in the three days I followed her. Definitely not.

I almost thought we'd take the third girl we found, but Jared had absolutely refused. He didn't say as much, but I thought it might be because she had looked quite a bit like me.

So now we were in Seattle, sleeping nights in the van while parked near some camp grounds. We spent the days driving aimlessly through the suburbs, searching for another target.

"We should think about moving on soon," Jared said. "People near the campsite are starting to recognize the van."

"Already?" Jaime said. "Didn't we just get here?"

"It's been 5 days, kid."

Jaime frowned, keeping his eyes out the window, scanning potential candidates.

I was doing the same in the front seat. Each day we drove through several neighborhoods, looking for a girl who would be about 16 and alone. We hadn't found one we liked yet.

As Jared turned the corner, I saw in a small park a blond girl reading a book.

"Hey," I said. "What about her?"

They followed my gaze.

Jared scoffed. "She's too young, Mel."

"I don't think so," Jaime disagreed.

"Oh, come on, she's got to be, what, 12?"

"No way, she's probably 14. That's not that bad."

"Ian's 26. He's not going to be happy if we bring him home a baby."

I interrupted before they could really get going. "She might be a little young, but we need someone young. And we're out of options in this city. I say we follow her."

We parked a block away in the shade of a large tree. The girl finally put a rose in her book to mark her spot, then jumped up and walked down the street. There weren't many other cars, so we kept a careful distance. She didn't even seem to notice us as she continued to her house. She stopped at every flower on the way.

For two days we followed her everywhere. She lived with one other soul, who was probably her mother, though at first glance they didn't look at all alike. The older woman was tall and slightly round, where the girl was tiny and delicate. The woman had red streaked curly hair in contrast with the daughter's full golden hair. But, in the few times we got close enough for a good look, they each had the same button nose, the same dimpled chin.

I was able to go for a walk or two in front of the house; the clouds in this area kept the sunlight from hitting my eyes and giving me away. No one came to visit the house. The two souls didn't often talk on the phone. The girl was usually reading a book or gathering flowers. She went on walks every day, coming back with arms full of flowers either that she had picked herself or gotten at a flower stand a few blocks away.

I liked her very much.

"So," I said after we had parked and were trying to settle down for the night, "what do you think?"

"I like her," Jared said. "She may be a little young, but she's so delicate. It won't matter that Wanda's a terrible liar, no one could ever distrust that face. Everyone who meets her would want to keep her safe. I already want to protect her."

"That's what I think, too." I smiled at him. "Hopefully, with a face like that, we won't need Wanda to keep a body guard with her at all times. Even though she'll probably have one anyway." I doubted that Ian would let Wanda with a body out of his sight any more than Wanda without a body.

"And besides," I added, "it's a good thing she's so young. She'll have a much larger percentage of life as a soul over life as a human. That makes it less likely that the human who belonged with the body is still there." I turned to Jaime. "What about you?"

His eyes popped wide. "Huh?"

As of this point, we hadn't asked Jaime's opinion on the bodies; Jared and I had rejected them too early for him to have a say.

"Well, you wanted to help, so I'm asking. Do you think this body will be good for our Wanderer?"

He thought for a moment, then a smile slowly spread across his face. "Yeah. She's so pretty! And small and fragile. She looks kind of like an angel. It definitely looks like Wanda."

"Then I think we've got our girl. Now to take her home. Jared, what's the plan?"