Straightening, Amaliya was shocked to see Bianca standing before her, and took a hard step back, reaching out to brace herself against the counter. The blonde’s dark fringed blue eyes gazed at her with desperation in their depths. It took a second for Amaliya to realize Bianca was translucent. The ghostly aspect of the girl was unexpected and sent her mind whirling.
“Bianca,” she whispered.
“I’m not dead,” the girl answered, her voice imploring Amaliya to believe her. “I’m not dead. I’m still here.”
Beatrice scampered into the kitchen, Samantha right behind her. “Bad kitty, Beatrice!”
Amaliya glanced away from Bianca for a scant moment, but when she looked back the apparition was gone. With one quick movement, Amaliya snatched up the hissing cat and handed her over to Samantha.
“Little bitch, we need to go now,” Amaliya said, grabbing Samantha by the arm and pushing her into the living room.
“I had to get my cat!” Samantha protested, but shoved Beatrice into a fancy pink cat carrier.
“Let’s go now. We got her,” Jeff said, grabbing the carrier. Over his shoulder were two bags. “And I got your overnight stuff.”
Samantha held out her hand toward the depths of the house. “I can’t just go!”
“Yes, you can,” Jeff answered.
Amaliya understood Samantha recognized the truth of the situation, but was reluctant to admit that she was about to lose a part of her life. It reminded Amaliya vividly of the moment she had stood in her dorm room and realized her life as she knew it was over. She wrapped her fingers around Samantha’s outstretched hand and pulled her out of the house. The blonde phasmagus came willingly, but her sadness was tangible. Cian and Cassandra fell in behind them as they walked to the cars.
“Nothing stirring,” Aimee said. Her long bronze-colored hair rippled around her making her look even witchier.
“Let’s get out of here before they regroup,” Jeff said.
The group split between Cian, Jeff and Samantha’s vehicles. Amaliya was relieved that she and Cian were riding to Jeff’s home alone. She didn’t want to tell the others what she had seen. At least, not yet.
Grabbing her unburned hand, Cian kissed it while he drove out of the darkened neighborhood trailing behind the red lights of Jeff’s Land Rover. “You did good back there even if you don’t think you did.”
“I failed. I could have brought the dead up, but I got blocked. And I ruined the ward.”
“Baptiste was just trying to help,” Cian said, continuing to hold her hand against his lips.
“Yeah, well, fuck him. I could have taken everything out with a good zombie rising,” Amaliya said, scowling.
“But we survived without that happening. You’re not always going to be the rescuer of everyone, Amaliya.”
Tilting her head, Amaliya gazed at Cian’s profile. There was no doubt in her mind that she loved him, but he didn’t fully understand yet what she felt inside.
“That you have to win this war alone against him?” Cian said, smirking.
“Oh, fuck you. This mind reading thing is going to be annoying.” Amaliya withdrew her hand from his grip, but only to rest on his thigh.
“Yes, you’re both very powerful vampires and necromancers, but you have a strong group of people around you. Samantha killed the were-bear-”
“Was that what it was? Gross!”
“-and Baptiste helped vanquish the demon. Aimee and Cassandra killed several vampires. We held our own.” Cian slid the small glowing orb out of his pocket and tossed it onto her lap. “One very trapped demon right there. Courtesy of me.”
Amaliya picked up the sphere to see it was a crystal that had been shaped into a ball. The heat pulsing inside of it was disconcerting. “Can it get out?”
Cian shook his head. “No. Not on its own. Maybe a black witch could do it, but not without a lot of trouble. Aimee gave me that just in case there were demons about.”
“We weren’t ready, Cian,” Amaliya said, her voice barely above a whisper. “We’ve been talking about this shit for weeks now and we weren’t ready.”
“I know.”
The sedan sped up to follow the other two vehicles on to Interstate 35. The black smoke from the burning building was a haze against the moon. Sirens still sounded in the distance. Amaliya wondered if the blaze was under control yet.
“He came for Samantha. Not me. Her. She’s dangerous to him. She can’t go home.”
“I agree. She’ll stay with Jeff. Next to our house, his place is the most fortified magically and otherwise.” Cian reclaimed the orb and shoved it in his pocket. “We’ll figure it out.”
Amaliya swept her hair back from her face, keeping it off the burns on her arm. What she was about to say was not going to make Cian happy.
“Why not?” Cian asked.
She frowned at him. “Now you’re just showing off.”
“You’re actually projecting your thoughts quite loudly.”
Staring out at downtown Austin as they made their way to the Travis Heights area where Jeff lived, Amaliya felt unexpected tears in her eyes. “I saw Bianca.”
“The Summoner? At Sam’s?”
“No. I saw Bianca. Not The Summoner. I think she was astral projecting. Something I totally need to learn to do, by the way.” Amaliya peered up a side road toward her old home. The road was clogged with emergency vehicles. “Anyway, Bianca appeared to me in Sam’s kitchen. I know it was Bianca, not The Summoner.”
The silence from the vampire beside her lasted much longer than she anticipated. Glancing over at Cian, she saw his eyebrows were drawn downward over his hazel eyes. At last he said, “All right, but what does that mean?”
“I think she’s trapped inside her own body. The Summoner may be controlling it, but she’s in there. I...uh...have talked to her in my dreams. Each time she begs me to find her. I talked to Benchley about it. About possession. He’s doing some research for me. So I can rescue her.”
Another long stretch of quiet filled the air between them as Cian switched lanes to follow Jeff’s vehicle across the bridge out of the downtown area.
“Cian?”
“Your grandmother saw Bianca and ended up dead. It was a trap, remember?”
The memory of her grandmother’s death at the hands of The Summoner hit her like a bullet. It was too fresh, too new, to fully accept as truth. She kept forgetting Innocente was gone. “Right.”
“Don’t sound pissed, Liya. Your grandmother saw Bianca’s spirit several times before she died. She was trying to save Bianca, too. Remember? What’s to say that The Summoner isn’t once again trying the same ploy as a trap? You know I’m right.”
“But what would be the point?” Amaliya asked. “We know it’s a ploy, a possible trap, so why try it again?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe he would do the same thing twice?” Cian glanced at her briefly, then slowed the car to stop for a red light.
Cian had a point and Amaliya resented that fact. It hurt deep within her to realize that she had so much in common with the tiny blonde, yet had never connected with her, never truly spoken to her. All her life Amaliya had been adrift, looking for an anchor, trying to understand who she was. As a child she had told her mother she heard voices and sometimes saw people who weren’t really there, but she had been told it was just her imagination. Now, in retrospect, Amaliya knew better. Those old memories were surfacing more and more now that she felt strong enough to actually look into her past for the truth about her existence. The Summoner had killed and transformed Bianca and Amaliya because they were the descendants of powerful mediums. He had managed to make two more of his kind, but Amaliya hadn’t known that when she had first risen. By the time it had been revealed, it was too late. Bianca was possessed by The Summoner and Innocente and Pete were dead.