The Transformed Box Set: Books 1, 2, 3, 3.5

by Stacy Claflin

  "Do you think he killed—?"

  "I don't want to think about that. I'd rather believe that Cliff's alive somewhere. I don't care about the stupid prophecy. I'm not marrying Alrekur."

  "So you've been back here for nine months. Have you found a new love?"

  I raised an eyebrow. How did she know?

  "Another secret of the Sonnast is that she…you…will always be in love. The mark of the Sonnast may mean that you're Alrekur's true love, but it also means that you'll always be in love. At least as a vampire. Obviously that wasn't the case before." She tried to cover a smile.

  "Nobody ever told me that part!"

  "And that surprises you? Why?" she asked.

  "You could have told me!"

  "You had your hands full with two guys. I didn't see how it would have helped anything."

  "Seriously? Even if it wasn't pertinent at the time, it's still useful information! Is that why I always get depressed when Cliff disappears?"

  She nodded yes. "So who are you dating now?" she asked, obviously changing the subject from her having kept that information from me.

  I sighed. "Mr. Foley."

  She nearly fell off the bed. "The teacher? The werewolf teacher? You're dating a werewolf? That's insane, Alexis! You do realize that, right?"

  "Don't get mad at me! It's not like there are any vampires in this town!"

  "I can't believe this!" she exclaimed. "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Do you have a death wish? I don't ever remember learning about self-destructive behavior in my Sonnast lessons."

  "You had Sonnast lessons?"

  "Of course. Everyone has. It's an important part of vampire social studies. But don't try changing the subject. Why are you dating a werewolf?"

  "At least he's a peace-loving werewolf. I'm helping to bring peace between our species."

  She snorted. "Like that'll ever happen."

  "Even Francine is working with werewolves," I said.

  "What?" she exclaimed.

  "I thought I told you about that. I guess that was a while ago."

  "I don't know," she said, her face softening, "maybe I didn't give you a chance since I was so mad that you went spying on the werewolves and purposefully kept it from me. How are you holding up?"

  "It's overwhelming," I said with a sigh. "I can't even explain how I felt when I woke up here and found out that it was the day of my graduation. How could everything in my life flip on me? Natalie even told me that my parents have always said that I was adopted."

  "For real? If there was any doubt, that goes to show that vampires are involved with all of this."

  I laughed. "I don't think there's any doubt."

  There was a knock on the door and before I could even respond, Clara had disappeared from sight.

  "Come in," I said, knowing whoever it was would regardless.

  My mom walked in. "Are you okay? It sounded like you were talking to someone."

  "I'm fine," I said. "Well, fine as I could be. I'm just talking to myself, trying to figure out everything that's going on. I'll get through it."

  She walked over to the bed and gave me a hug. "I'm sorry that you have to deal with these memory lapses, Alexis. I can't imagine what it's been like for you. It breaks my heart to watch you go through it each time."

  "Thanks. I think I'll be fine," I said and gave her a big, reassuring smile.

  "I hope so. Have fun at Hailey's tonight."

  She left the room and Clara reappeared. "That was close! So, you need to go spend the night at Hailey's?"

  I looked away and nodded.

  "What?" she asked suspiciously. "I can tell you're hiding something."

  "She's a vampire."

  "What? How did that happen?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "Tanner turned her."

  She rolled her eyes. "Everything has really has changed, hasn't it?"

  I nodded. "Everything. Is there any way that you can stay for a while?"

  "I'll have to see if I can talk William into it. We had originally planned on spending the summer in England. He's really enjoying it over there. And it's a different experience in the summer, when you're not in school. He wants to enjoy the country."

  "I'm sure that's not all he wants to enjoy. You don't think the company has anything to do with him wanting to stay there?" I asked with a smile.

  She grinned. "I'm sure it does. I still can't get over how well we're doing!"

  "When are you going to tell him the truth?"

  "I don't know. I don't want to send him running off. I want this to last as long as possible. He's so wonderful that I've completely forgotten about the other William. This is the first time I've been able to do that in over two hundred years!"

  "How long are you staying? I'm supposed to spend the night with my new friends. You can come over with me. I'll just say that I ran into to you. Or are you jet lagged?"

  She laughed. "I did a good job of pretending to be jet lagged when we first met, didn't I? I wanted to put off going to high school as long as I could."

  "You really don't like high school, do you?"

  "Why do you think I hid from the humans for decades? Every time I wanted to blend in with them, I had to go to high school or college. The drama gets old fast, as you've figured out. The only thing that changes are the clothes, hairstyles and technology. Beyond that, teenage humans don't change much."

  "Do you have any idea why the other vampires haven't been looking for me? I mean really, my human home is the first place that they should've looked. But nobody has even tried."

  "They might have."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "When I first got here, there was a block. I couldn't sense you at all. You have a very strong presence and it isn't ever difficult to sense when you're nearby. I focused all of my own senses with everything that I had, and came up with nothing. I had to visit Gessilyn. She discovered that there had been some sort of spell set over the town to protect your location. She tried to break the spell but couldn't, so she placed a counter spell on me that allowed me to find you. If another vampire comes into town looking for you, they'll move on believing that you're somewhere else."

  "What?" I exclaimed. "How's that possible? Why didn't you tell me about this when you first got here?"

  She rolled her eyes. "I tried, but you interrupted me, asking questions about William and I got distracted."

  "Oh. So it's possible that some of the others have been here looking for me, but they thought I wasn't here?"

  "I'm sure that's exactly what happened. It's the opposite of what happened with the Moretti's when you went through your transformation. You became like a beacon, announcing your existence to vampires everywhere. That's what everyone expects now. Depending on how detailed the spell is, it's possible that a vampire could be right next to you and have no idea. They could be blind to you."

  "But I should be able to see them. Right?"

  She shrugged her shoulders. "I would think so, but who knows? If they can't see you, you might not be able to see them. Spells can be tricky, especially if they're set by an older line of witches."

  "But I can see you!"

  "Gessilyn put a counter spell on me, remember?"

  "Are you going to try to contact the other va—?"

  My phone started playing a song. I saw that it was Hailey, wondering where I was, no doubt.

  "Hi Hailey, you guys get into the hot tub without me. I ran into a…snag…here at home. Keep your phone near though, just in case I need to call you."

  I could hear the irritation in her voice. "You're still going to the party tonight, right?"

  "Of course. You know me. I wouldn't miss a good party."

  "You better be there. Hurry up."

  "Do you trust her?" Clara asked suspiciously after I'd ended the call.

  "I don't have a lot of choice at this point. She's the only vampire in town, well except for you now, but you're going to be leaving soon."

  "We know nothing ab
out her motives."

  "From what I've gleaned, she needs me more than I need her. She's always had some common vampires around to help her. They're out of town now."

  "How does she walk around in the daylight?"

  "She has Tanner's ring. She said he didn't need it. I'm trying to figure out why. At first I thought it was because I turned him with my blood, but my blessing had been taken away from me then."

  "Samantha killed him, right?"

  "Yeah. Why?"

  Clara looked at me as though I should know what she was thinking.

  "Wait. Are you thinking that she actually turned him with her royal blood?" I asked in disbelief.

  "Think about it. She's been around for over two hundred years and she knows how to turn people into vampires. You came along when he was about to die and she came back to check on him after she'd supposedly killed him, right? It sounds like she came back expecting to find him going through the transformation."

  The room began to spin as I let that theory soak in.

  "Do you have a better explanation? You weren't even a vampire then. Sure, you were going through your transformation, starting to turn into one. But you weren't one yet."

  "Samantha turned him?" I asked, barely breathing. "Why?"

  Clara shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows what goes on in that head of hers? It—" She stopped, her eyes widened.

  "What? Talk to me!"

  "I'll bet she fell in love with him."

  "Are you kidding? She said that it had always been about using him to get to me."

  "They were together for a pretty long time, weren't they?"

  "Tanner said it was close to a year."

  Clara shook her head. "There's no way it would have taken her more than a week to convince a human to do anything if she wasn't using mind control. She took that long because she fell for him. I'm sure it started out as being only about you, but then she became smitten." Clara smiled. "She's always made fun of me for falling for humans, but then she went and did so herself! She even turned him."

  "Stop talking about that piece of garbage falling for Tanner and turning him. I get it. But does that really explain how he would be immune to the sunlight? Even royals need to have the blessing placed upon them at birth."

  "Yeah, but then they're able to pass it along if they know how to turn a human with their blood instead of their venom. Most common vampires have been turned with venom because it's so much easier. It takes a lot of practice to be able to turn a human using our blood. That's why it's so much more likely that she turned him than you. She's had more than enough practice. I can't believe that no one ever figured this out before. Especially since your blessing had been stripped at the time. Now that we know he can walk around in the light without the ring, there's no doubt that it was her."

  I frowned and then sighed. "Splendid."

  "Did you ever see her before you and Tanner hooked up?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked, confused. Where was she going with this?

  "Well she was in town for a year with him. She probably made some attempts to get to you herself. Come on, you have a vampire's memory. Have you ever seen her before?"

  I thought back to the times that I'd seen her, all within the short span of time between my abduction and when I had defeated the Moretti's. "No. She was never familiar to me."

  She shrugged her shoulders. "If she was trying to blend in with humans, she wouldn't have stood out."

  "You're probably right. I'm sure that I've met hundreds of people that I can't remember. Let's talk about something else, please."

  "Okay. We need to get you to Gessilyn to have her reverse your memory loss spell. We'll see if we can get any more information out of Hailey tonight."

  "Are you going with me?" I asked with a smile.

  "Yeah. Like I said, I'll stick around a day or two. After that, I have to get back to William. He knows I have a family situation, but I didn't tell him that it was back here in Delphic Cove. Let's go."

  She walked to the wall and looked at me expectantly.

  "I can't go through walls," I said, feeling like a loser.

  "Whoever stuck you here really wants you to be limited," she said, shaking her head. "Maybe we'll have Gessilyn look into that too. I'll meet you out front."

  I nodded and she disappeared through the wall. I grabbed my swimsuit just in case I ended up needing it and tried going through the wall, just to see if I could. I still couldn't. It was as if it had been made with stainless steel, which vampires cannot go through. I ran downstairs to the front door without running into my parents and I found Clara outside.

  We ran to Gessilyn's building in record time.

  "Did you find anything new?" Gessilyn asked me, as we were settling in with her signature tea.

  "Not anything about why my memory was wiped. It's been spotty since I returned to Delphic Cove. I've been having memory lapses on a regular basis."

  "With you being a royal vampire, it had to have been an extremely powerful spell to be able to even touch your memory."

  Clara and I exchanged a look.

  Gessilyn gave us a questioning look. "Is there something I need to know?"

  "I'm not just a royal vampire. It's not common knowledge yet, but I'm actually a Fyrsturae."

  She nearly dropped her cup, but managed to catch it before it spilled. "You're…? How's that possible?"

  I sighed. "It's a long story. I don't know how much I'm supposed to share, not that it should matter, given the fact that nobody has put any effort into finding me."

  "Didn't Clara tell you that there's a spell keeping you hidden?"

  I narrowed my eyes. "It doesn't matter. They could've tried to have it lifted."

  "Not necessarily. If it's attached to you, they would need to find you in order to have it lifted. Come over here and let me see what kind of a spell we're dealing with here."

  I walked to her chair and she motioned for me to sit down in front of her. I sat on the floor and she walked around me, whispering in a foreign language and rubbing her hands all around in the air about an inch away from me. I was starting to get antsy because it was taking a long time.

  "You can go back to your seat," she said, sitting back down at last. "There are two or three spells attached to you. I was having a difficult time reading them. They appear to have been set by an ancient sect of Icelandic witches, long thought to be extinct. Clearly, part of their line has survived and has continued practicing. I can't reverse the spells placed on you, the cloaking spell that's keeping you hidden, nor the one that's keeping your memories in the dark. The memory one looks like a cycling spell, which explains why you keep losing your memories. They must have been afraid of your strong mind to give you that one. What I did do for you, though, is to give you a blessing that will protect your memory from any more lapses."

  "But if you can't reverse the spells, how can you do that?" I asked.

  "Blessings are more powerful than curses, so I can offer you protection from future memory loss. Unfortunately, I don't know a way around what you have forgotten. If you're a Fyrsturae, you should have the ability to take full control of your mind yourself. Ideally, if you're not dealing with these memory losses on a regular basis, you should be able get all of your memories back."

  "What would have happened that was so important for someone to make me forget about it?"

  "Hopefully now you'll be able to figure it out."

  "You can't give a blessing to get around the cloaking spell?" I asked.

  "The only way to do that is what I did with Clara, giving it to her. Not to you. Sorry, dear."

  "What if I stand right in front of one of them? Will they see me?"

  "If they already know you and you talk to them directly, I believe so. It's not a spell that I'm familiar with, and I wasn't able to read into all of its properties without causing you any type of discomfort."

  "Oh," I said, getting the shivers. "I appreciate that. How did Hailey see me, you know, to be able to tell what
I was?"

  "She wasn't searching for you in the same way that other vampires would be. Also, she goes to school with you, correct?"

  I nodded.

  "The spell is to keep your location hidden from vampires searching for you. It's not meant to blind you from ones that are constantly around you. One of your vampire parents could be five feet away from you and be unable to sense your presence. They would believe that you weren't in the area and leave. Does that make sense?"

  "I guess so."

  "If Hailey had been looking for you, she wouldn't have found you either. But once someone told her that you were in town, or back to school, and then she could see you."

  "Then why did you have to put a blessing on Clara to find me?"

  "So that she could find you first."

  "My head is spinning," I complained. "Thanks for protecting me from future lapses. I think I need some fresh air. Are you ready to go, Clara?"

  "I understand, dear," Gessilyn said. "If you need anything else, please let me know."

  "So why didn't she look for you before this?" Clara asked Gessilyn. "If she's been having a lot of these, why was this the first time?"

  "I could be wrong, but I think each time she has another lapse, the spell weakens. The spell might have included something about keeping her away from witches."

  I nodded, standing up. "That makes sense. Well, if you hear anything from any other vampires, or werewolves for that matter, let me know."

  "I will."

  When we were outside, Clara asked, "Are you alright? You look upset."

  I felt choked up and blinked back tears. "This is all so frustrating. I wish that Gessilyn could have fixed my memory, but at least I don't have to worry about any more lapses. Mr. Fo—I mean, Toby, told me that he thought that every time I came close to remembering something important, that's when I would have another lapse. Now maybe I can finally make some progress. He said that I've been having a lot of lapses, but for the most part I could remember enough to fool my family into thinking that I hadn't had one."