Please. Please. Please. Natalya sent silent prayers to any entity that might listen and grant her prayer that Ms. Claudette hadn’t died. She pulled into the shelter’s parking lot, scrambled out and locked her car. She was still in her party dress. That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Well… not exactly nothing. Lézare mattered. But this was oh so very different. Monica opened the door for her. “Is she—” Natalya couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “She’s alive. And awake. It’s the weirdest thing…” “What?” Natalya thought she was braced for anything and everything when it came to Ms. Claudette, after the shocks she’d already had. “She woke up five minutes ago, and the first thing she said was, ‘Natalya is on her way.’ Then she asked for a Manhattan.” Did Allynne know, somehow, that Natalya was nearby?
