by Alicia Rades
I gaped at her. Shouldn’t she be siding with me—after what the vampires had done to her?
I forced my feet to move beneath me, and I started up the steps and followed everyone else inside. Voices traveled into the hall from the kitchen. I found everyone gathered around the table, where Clarita and Amalia were exchanging greetings with Zoey. Only Richard, Ronark, Ryland, and Teagan were missing.
I lowered myself into a chair on the other end of the table, keeping a close watch on Zoey. I couldn’t help but picture her with elongated canines. Yeah, she looked normal, and her eyes were no longer silver, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she shouldn’t be here.
“How’d it go with Xander?” Amalia asked, turning to Fiona.
“Great!” she replied. “He gave us these trinkets to help suppress Matias’s abilities.”
Fiona dug into her pockets and spread the trinkets out on the table.
Clarita picked up a golden ring with a red stone to examine it. “A good idea. Not the strongest magic by any means, but we can use whatever we can get.”
“Rachel,” Jenna prodded, gesturing to the trinkets at the other end of the table.
Sighing, I stood and added my trinkets to the pile.
“Oh, wow!” Zoey gasped. “That’s a lot. There must be dozens.”
Genevieve pursed her lips, like she was thinking hard. “I want everyone to take one and keep it on themselves at all times. If Matias is using the locket to watch us, it should keep his visions fuzzy.”
I took the golden ring and slipped it on my finger.
“So, Zoey,” I said, trying to force my voice not to waver. “Will you be staying with us?”
Zoey glanced to Genevieve. “No. I heard all the guest rooms are full. I’m just here to help. No point in taking up extra room anyway. I’m only a few minutes away.”
I didn’t need a reminder of how many vampires roamed these streets… or used to roam them. Damn it. I was really itching to go out on patrol. Those days were over, though.
Sucks to be me.
“What can I help with?” Zoey asked, sounding enthusiastic to be on the team.
“We’re still finishing up some cataloguing.” Genevieve gestured for them to follow her. “I have a box of potions you brewed while we were working together, but they’re unlabeled. I was wondering if you could help identify them.”
“Sure thing.” Zoey followed behind Genevieve and gave a little hop.
Ugh. She was way too bubbly for her own good.
As soon as the other witches were out of the room, Fiona turned on me. She crossed her arms and furrowed her brow. What the hell? She’d never looked at me like this before.
“What?” I demanded.
“Why were you being so rude to Zoey?” she asked.
“I wasn’t!” I insisted.
“You were,” Sondra argued.
Okay, maybe I was being a little cold.
Jenna stepped toward the door nervously, like she didn’t want to get in the middle of this. “I’m, uh, just going to check on Ronark.” She slipped out of the room without so much as another glance my way, leaving me to face Fiona’s and Sondra’s narrowed gazes.
I let out a huff. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to say?”
“You don’t even know Zoey,” Sondra said.
“I know she was a vampire,” I shot back.
Sondra grabbed my hand. “Let’s go talk in private.”
I ripped my arm away. “Talk about what? There’s nothing to talk about.”
Fiona pursed her lips. “Yes, there is.”
I gave in and followed the two to their guest room. Theirs was laid out differently than mine, with two twin beds in either corner and a long chest of drawers between them. I fell onto one bed, while they both sat on the other to face me.
“I feel like I’m being interrogated,” I grumbled.
“You are,” Fiona snapped.
“Jeez. Calm down,” I snarled back. “What’s your problem?”
“Zoey and I were close for a long time,” she said in a harsh tone. “When she changed, it was like losing a sister. You realize vampires are gone, right? Zoey is human again. She’s not going to hurt you.”
Sondra held her hands up. “Okay, Fiona. You do need to calm down. We can have a civil conversation here.”
Fiona took a breath but didn’t respond.
Sondra turned to me and spoke softly. “Rae, what’s going on?”
I sat up straighter in the bed, unsure how to answer that question. “I… I guess when you see someone as a heartless vampire, you can’t really unsee it.”
“Heartless?” Fiona asked in disbelief. “Did Zoey hurt you?”
“No,” I answered immediately. “I just…”
“You just what?” Fiona raised an eyebrow. She was taking this way too personally. Zoey obviously meant a lot to her.
I switched gears. “We don’t know how this curse affected people. What if the vampires are still…? I don’t know, evil?”
Sondra looked like she was considering my words. She didn’t get all defensive like Fiona did. She just sat and listened. “You think the curse could’ve damaged their souls permanently?”
I hadn’t realized that’s what I’d been thinking until she put it into words. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, we don’t know for sure, do we? Look at Matias. He’s still out to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with him. Maybe we should just be cautious.”
Sondra shifted on the bed to sit closer to the edge. “I don’t think that’s the case, Rae. Everything I know about souls says that a soul only leaves a body upon death. Vampires were never truly dead.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know if this curse was an exception to that rule,” I pointed out.
“We’ve always known the curse affected souls somehow,” Sondra said. “It’s why witches who changed couldn’t use their powers—since witch power is connected to the soul. But I never once believed that vampires had lost their souls completely.”
“You can’t know that,” I pointed out. “It could’ve damaged them somehow.”
“Cool down,” Sondra said. “I’m just trying to explain what I believe. I’m not trying to get into a debate.”
I shut my mouth and let her talk.
“I’ve always believed that the vampire curse was powerful enough to overshadow a person’s soul. It took their basic instincts and pushed them to the surface, while pushing their humanity down, the empathy and caring that made them human. But I believe they still had a choice in everything they did.”
“Which makes them bad,” I pointed out. “If vampires were willing to kill people or enslave them, doesn’t that make them bad? If they chose that, rather than having it forced upon them through a curse?”
“Not all vampires did those things,” Sondra responded. “They didn’t all join up with the blood slave trade. Some of them never even tasted human blood outside a blood bank. Occasionally, the good would come out.”
“I never saw that,” I told her.
“How hard were you looking?” Sondra spoke softly, like the question wasn’t a slap to the face.
“If you truly believe that, then why did you kill them?” I asked.
“We killed the ones who deserved it,” Fiona replied, calmly this time.
What if they all deserved it?
“And what happened to them?” I challenged. “The ones you killed?”
“Their souls would’ve been released from their bodies, and they would reincarnate,” Sondra said. “We know their souls were there all along now. Their souls have been restored. Otherwise, Matias wouldn’t be able to perform magic.”
“So he just gets a free pass?” I asked. “Once he dies, he’ll be reincarnated to start his work all over again?”
Sondra shook her head. “We don’t know that. With cases like Valkas and Matias, where the person is truly evil, we believe that Synchrony will destroy their souls to keep the balance. But that’s not for us to judge.”
“Th
en who does judge?” I asked.
“Synchrony,” Sondra emphasized.
“Who’s to say Synchrony isn’t asking for our help?” I said.
Fiona shot to her feet, like she couldn’t take it anymore. “This is ridiculous, Rae. You’re just scared to admit that the vampires ever kept a trace of their humanity, because that would mean you’ve actually killed somebody!”
Fiona stomped out of the room, leaving me staring at her with my mouth agape. My blood boiled.
I glanced to Sondra. “She stands up to her brother once, and suddenly she’s grown a pair of balls?”
Sondra stood, though far less dramatically than Fiona had. “Zoey was our friend. You of all people should know what it’s like to get back someone you thought you lost.”
With that, she strolled out of the room after Fiona, leaving me to consider her words.
13
Three days passed, and I spent most of it holed up in my room with piles of books I’d dragged out of Genevieve’s spell room. Fiona and I hadn’t talked, and I’d only spoken to Venn once. He’d made it to Detroit, but it turned out his brother was no longer with the group of vamps he started with. He was still trying to track him down. Jenna and Ronark were getting into more and more arguments, and I had to step in a few times to calm them down. The only thing that seemed to calm Jenna’s nerves was an Aspirin and a tall glass of water. The withdrawals were getting worse with each passing day. I kept telling her things would get better, but I didn’t know for sure. I just had to hope that was the case.
“This is kind of cool,” Jenna said on the fourth night since Venn had left.
I was lying on my stomach on my bed and thumbing through a book on psychic energies. The words on the pages were beginning to blur together. I slammed the book shut and rolled over on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The mattress shifted under Jenna’s weight as she sat up and pulled the book she was reading closer to her.
“Anything useful?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Probably not. This one is all about incantations to control the weather. I just thought it sounded neat.”
“Eh.” I groaned from where I lay. “Maybe we should take a break.”
“Should we get something to eat?” Jenna suggested. “Honestly, I could use another Aspirin.”
I wasn’t very hungry. I hadn’t had much of an appetite these last few days, but my limbs felt a little shaky, and my throat was scratchy. “Yeah. I should probably get something in my stomach.”
Jenna and I set our books aside and headed to the kitchen. The house was quiet, but when I entered the room, I found Sondra sitting at the table with a blank sketch pad in front of her. She looked deep in concentration with her pencil to the paper, but she didn’t make a stroke. She heard our footsteps approaching and looked up.
“Hey,” I said lightly as I headed to the fridge to grab a yogurt, then helped myself to a spoon from the drawer. “I thought everyone had gone to bed.”
“Fiona’s snoring, and I needed a quiet place to think,” Sondra said.
Dishes clinked as Jenna reached into the cupboard for a bowl, then into the next cupboard for a box of cereal.
I took the seat beside Sondra. “How’s it been going? Rounding people up, I mean. Teagan said yesterday didn’t go too well.”
Sondra frowned. “No, it didn’t. I went to visit some friends about an hour away, but they refused to help us. They were afraid just associating with me would get the DMR’s attention. They basically burned any evidence that they ever practiced magic in the first place.”
I frowned. “We need more people, more weapons.”
Sondra sighed. “I know. They at least gave me the names of some of their friends who might be able to help—but I think it was just to get me to leave. I’ve been trying to get ahold of them, but everyone’s on high alert these days, especially anyone involved in magic.”
Jenna caught my eye. She cocked her head toward the door to let me know she was headed back to her room to eat, then left me and Sondra alone in the dimly-lit kitchen.
The silence left me a little uncomfortable. I took a scoop of yogurt, then turned to Sondra’s sketch pad. “What are you drawing?”
She shook her head and set her pencil down. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I asked in shock.
Sondra dropped her head. “I haven’t drawn anything since we’ve been here.”
“But you always have your sketchbook with you. What about the other night around the fire?”
Sondra started fiddling with her pencil. “I was just pretending to draw. I couldn’t manage it.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “But that’s your thing.”
“It was,” she said regrettably.
Her chestnut brown hair fell in front of her face, shielding it from my view. It was like she was trying to hide her pain from me. She sniffled, then pushed her hair back to look at me. When she did, she looked totally fine.
“The truth is, I don’t know who I am without magic,” she admitted. “I used to draw to make sense of the magic, to remember things from my past lives and sort through all the incantations in my brain, but now… it’s like drawing has no purpose.”
“Don’t say that,” I insisted. “You’re more than just your magic, Sondra. You haven’t even had magic all your life. Who were you before?”
She shrugged, and her lips turned down at the corners. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. I found myself through magic. It was like a compass guiding me to where I needed to go. Now… I don’t know which direction I’m supposed to walk.”
“Draw me,” I suggested before I realized I’d even come up with the idea.
She furrowed her brow. “What?”
“You said you don’t feel like your drawing has purpose. Well, give it purpose. Use me as your inspiration.”
“I don’t know, Rae.” Sondra looked down at her sheet of paper, as if already mapping out the lines of my face on her sketch pad.
“How’s this?” I asked, striking a pose with a faraway look.
Sondra looked like she was holding back a smile.
“This?” I threw my head back and bit the tip of my finger, giving her a come-hither look.
Sondra chuckled. “Okay, I’ll try. Just relax. No sexy poses.”
I sat up straight and got comfortable. Sondra shifted in her seat and bit the end of her pencil, studying me.
“You have really good bone structure,” she said.
I smiled but held my pose. “Thanks.”
“Your eyes are pretty, too.”
I fluttered my lashes at her. “You think so?”
She laughed and took my chin to guide my face back where she wanted it. “Sit still.”
Silence settled over the kitchen. The only things I heard were the sounds of my own breathing and the scratch of Sondra's pencil moving across the page. I glanced to her every now and then, and she looked deep in thought, like she was lost in another world while she was drawing.
At least an hour passed. Occasionally, she'd sigh, like she wasn't pleased how it was turning out. She held the pad up so I couldn't see the drawing.
Eventually, I broke the silence. “How's it going?”
Sondra chewed her lower lip. “It's getting there. I think maybe we should take a break. I can finish this up later.”
“Can I see it?” I asked.
Sondra pulled the sketch pad protectively to her chest. “It's, uh, not done. I'll show you later, once I fix all the shadows and stuff.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, eyeing her. Sondra wasn't usually so protective of her art. I was starting to worry, but I didn't want to push her, either. I stood. “Goodnight.”
“Night.”
The bed was cold when I returned to my room, as if reminding me of the days that Venn hadn't been there with me. I thought he'd be back by now. The fact that he wasn't sent a chill through my body.
After changing into pajamas, I curled under the thick comforter and pulled out m
y phone. I found Venn's number in my contacts and held my breath as the other line rang.
“Hello?”
My breath came out in a puff of relief. I couldn't read Venn's tone, but I was happy to hear his voice.
“Hey, it's me,” I said quietly so I didn't bother anyone in adjoining rooms. “Did I wake you?”
“Rae,” Venn sighed, like he was relieved as well. “No, you didn't wake me. I couldn't sleep anyway.”
“So… how's it going?” I didn't know what else to say. I just wanted to hear his voice and make sure he was all right. “Will you be home soon?”
“I don't know,” he admitted sheepishly. “It's taking longer than I thought.”
“Do you think Tyson's okay?”
Venn paused for a moment. “I don't know right now. I'm trying to get a private investigator to help, but the process is slow. It might be a few more days before we find anything.”
“Maybe you should come home,” I suggested. “Let the detective do his job.”
Venn sighed. “I can't, Rae. Not until I know for sure.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I didn’t like the way he said that.
“Venn, are you sure you're okay alone?” I asked. My heart ached for him.
“I'm fine,” he insisted, but he didn't sound fine. He sounded scared, agitated, and lonely all at once, though I knew he'd never admit it.
“I'm here for you,” I told him honestly. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it.”
“I know,” Venn whispered, like he couldn't find his voice.
After a beat of silence, he perked up. “How has the studying been going? Find anything useful?”
“Some,” I admitted. I sat up and pulled one of the books off the nightstand. I opened it to one of the pages I'd bookmarked. “Most of it requires new magic, though. The good news is I've been reading so much that I'm starting to memorize some of these incantations, not that it's much help to us now.”
Venn chucked. He knew all too well how much I sucked at remembering spells. I was glad to lighten the mood.
“I know,” I said. “Can you believe it?”
“Of course.” Venn sounded like he was smiling. “You're amazing.”
