If there weremea culpasto be said, he’d do that later.
Right now, he needed to get to Auralia.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Auralia
Auralia had to be pragmatic. She was one person, and she was exhausted.
She had Brandy under the armpits after she’d made last-minute adjustments to her rescue scheme.
The seat belt took three separate dives to cut free.
A fourth dive, and Auralia watched Brandy inhale, then she pinched the woman’s nose and drew her through the window. In her imagination, that process had been smooth and quick, and in reality, it had been neither. Auralia was out of breath. Her lungs screamed. But if she let go of Brandy, even to rise to the surface for a quick gasp of air, Brandy would drown.
Auralia fought against panic.
She caught the woman under the arms, pulled her halfway out, then placed her feet on the window ledge and thrust upward with enough momentum to help the swim vest get them both to the surface.
It had been Auralia’s plan that while Brandy swam, Auralia could float into the eddy with the buoyancy of the life preserver and pull the rope she’d wrapped around Brandy’s chest to help the woman out of the current.
Brandy was loose-limbed and slippery. She had no energy in her arms or legs. Just dead weight. Auralia thought the dead part, then, in her mind, struck through it with an imagined editor's mark, just weight.
Auralia’s lungs screamed for air, and she had the facemask on. If she were on her belly, she could flip the snorkel up. But configured as she was, Auralia had to release Brandylong enough that she could pull off the mask, and grip it tightly as she hooked back under Brandy’s arm, all while fighting the white waters that pulled her to the front of the SUV.
As Auralia kicked her legs and dragged Brandy, she thought about the next steps.
Sheelah was not going to fit out the same window that Auralia was able to drag Brandy. She was unconscious and unable to give even a little bit of help. At least Sheelah hadn’t turned her head and sent Auralia one last long stare before she went on to her just rewards.
That’s how a ghost can attach itself to someone and haunt them for the rest of their days.
Auralia shook off that childhood terror.
There was nothing Auralia could do about Sheelah.
She wasn’t even sure she could save Brandy. She had kicked them into the eddy and now her butt, in the black lace panties, grazed along the bottom of the river. Auralia pulled her knees up and planted her feet, trying to press up from the squat, but it was impossible on the ground, which gave under her weight, sinking her up to her shins.
Auralia let go of Brandy and stood, then reached down to clasp the woman’s wrists and dragged her backward onto the sliver of land between the rising river and the rise of the slope.
Brandy was out of the water.
She was out of the water.
Winded and with legs shaking so hard she couldn’t stand, Auralia looked over to Brandy and for a moment wondered if she’d dragged a dead body from the car. But when Brandy blinked, then blinked again, Auralia clapped a hand to her heart and started crying.
She needed an emotional release valve to open for a minute.
This had been a stressful day.
Auralia crawled to her bin to retrieve her daypack, which contained the things she carried in case of an emergency. She pulled out a Mylar blanket to spread over Brandy. “This isn’t it. I can do more to help you. I need a second,” Auralia said as she spread the blanket over the prone woman, using rocks to hold the edges down so the wind didn’t blow the resource away. “But there are things that Creed, Gator, and Remi keep preaching about, like saving myself first. You don’t know them. They’re—look, my mind is overwhelmed right now, I’m going to follow their counsel.” She placed the last rock. “I’m sorry about your mamma.”
When she looked over the woman, it looked like she was wearing a shroud, and Auralia was preparing the woman for burial.
Auralia reminded herself not to conjure any bad juju that might manifest between then and a rescue.
She pressed her hand under her breast to be sure she still had her phone, which would be their lifeline in just a moment. Auralia had to get warm first.
Pulling out a bottle of water, Auralia swished it through her mouth to clear it of the grit that had gotten into her mouth from the river. Then, she gulped some down.
