Jenny Parry might not have been located, but there was a certain woman who was currently making her way down the street, wrapping her fingers around the door handle of the curio shop.
Oh, she hadn't wanted to go there, no. But something inside her drew her to the place, the clichéd moth-to-a-flame as accurate as ever, and Adelaide drew in a breath through unfamiliar lungs.
She had spent the past few days holed up in a motel outside of town; she'd walked after the unpleasant incident with Jenny Parry's son, rinsing the gore from her hands and face in a neighboring yard's half-frozen birdbath, and then she had walked. The cold had been alien against her new skin, her clothing not suited for it, but she'd finally reached a main road and had managed to flag down a car. She'd made up a lie about car trouble, stayed silent most of the drive as the helpful old man had dropped her off at the motel. They'd allowed her to pay with cash from Jenny's wallet, and she had taken a luxurious hot shower. Then she'd begun to plan.
She knew that she had to go back, but people would be looking for Jenny Parry. She didn't have to go back for long, of course. She had this glorious new body, and freedom to do with it as she pleased. She could travel the world. This girl, Jenny, was young and nubile enough; Adelaide could have a lot of fun in this form.
She'd purchased a box of hair dye at the convenience store up the road from the motel, and Jenny's blonde locks had vanished under a patina of deep glossy brown. That alone had transformed her enough that Adelaide felt sure no one would recognize her, but she'd still taken a pair of shears to her hair in the motel's bathroom mirror and hacked off the hair until it lay against her cheekbones in a sleek, short bob.
There. No one would glance at her and think Jenny Parry, not until they got a closer look.
She spoke to the motel manager, flirting shamelessly, dusting the rust off of old techniques; she wound up giving him a blowjob behind the counter of the front desk, the man moaning and clutching her hair, and she hadn't thought twice before her teeth came crashing together and splitting through skin and muscle. He'd screamed as his blood gouted out onto the floor and Adelaide had stepped sweetly over his thrashing, flailing body, picking up his car keys from the peg behind his desk.
She could figure out how to drive. She was getting a little tired of needing people.
She drove back into town on the fifteenth, dressed in Jenny Parry's jeans and shirt, the blood flecking still evident on them; she hadn't been able to find anything else suitable and so she told herself that she'd get something in Crows Landing. She needed to change clothes, dispose of these of course, but for now they would suffice. She just wore the motel manager's leather bomber jacket over the whole ensemble, her hands almost vanishing into the cuffs of the sleeves as she figured out how to work the mechanisms of the car. Using Jenny's memories proved helpful in that regard, and she was becoming better at it by the minute.
Soon she'd fit seamlessly into this era. She just knew it.
When she came into the curio store, her eyes weren't on any of the trinkets for sale, the exotic objects. She cared only for the shop owner, Samuel Belli; the man who had peddled her soul in its hair-portrait prison for so long. He would have answers; he could explain to her what she should do next.
When she found him, she simply came to a stop and stared. At the end of the aisle, a pretty girl with a fashionable, dark haircut and a feral, not-entirely-normal gleam in her eye.
Her voice, silkier than Jenny Parry's had ever thought to be.
Inside her head, Jenny sobbing, clawing, wailing. Still mourning her stupid, expendable child.
"Mr. Belli," Adelaide purred, a smile on her lush mouth.