“What’s wrong, honey?” I asked, pulling out a long black skirt and a lacy off-white top.
“I think there’s a man in Amanda’s room with her,” she whispered conspiratorially.
My eyes widened. “A man?”
“I saw him go in there last night. The vampire with dark hair.”
Now my eyebrows practically shot right up into my hairline. “Lucas?”
Rebecca pursed her lips and twisted the hem of her top. “I don’t know his name.”
Yeah, it was definitely Lucas. I quickly dressed, washed my face, and brushed my teeth, while Rebecca followed my movements and played with a gold charm bracelet on her wrist.
“That’s pretty,” I commented. “Did your daddy give you that?”
She nodded. “He said it belonged to my mother.”
Huh.
Once I was done getting ready, I told Rebecca to stay put and that I’d be back in a minute. Then I marched straight to Amanda’s room like a woman on a mission. I didn’t even bother to knock. I simply pushed the door open and strode inside. The blinds were drawn, the room encased in darkness. For Lucas’s sake, I presumed.
A lamp flicked on, and I saw the vampire fast asleep in bed before I noticed Amanda staring at me, looking equally surprised at my invasion and embarrassed at being caught.
“Tegan,” she gasped. “You should have knocked.”
“Why, so you could hide the naked, two-hundred-pound vampire in your bed?”
“Talk quieter, you’ll wake him,” she replied in a hushed voice.
I rolled my eyes. “A chainsaw wouldn’t wake him this early in the morning. Fuck, Amanda, I didn’t nurse you back to health only for you to go straight back to square one again. Yes, he saved your life, but still. I thought you were smarter than this.”
She winced at my words. “I am smart. It’s different this time. He said he wants things to be different, and I do, too. I won’t ask him to feed on me. He threw himself in front of a bullet for me, Tegan.”
“Yeah, well, it might not be as valiant as you think. Vampires getting shot is like a human getting hit with a paintball. They heal from it pretty easily.”
She grew agitated now. “Please don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
I threw my hands in Lucas’ direction. “Someone with an addiction to vampire bites sleeping with a vampire is pretty stupid.”
“That’s rich coming from you, standing there pregnant with a vamp baby. Yeah, I heard everyone talking about it.”
“That’s different!” I argued.
“No, it’s not. You think you’re the only one special enough for a vampire to want to be with you. It’s obvious.”
“That’s not true. You know Ethan can’t drink my blood the way Lucas used to drink yours. That’s why our situation works. How do you know Lucas won’t bite you in the heat of the moment?”
“We had a really long talk last night. He doesn’t want to be alone anymore, and I believe him, Tegan. He’s jaded with his life and wants to make a change.”
I sighed, knowing there was no talking her out of this, but perhaps there was a good compromise. “Okay, well, maybe that’s true, but will you do something for me just in case?”
“What is it?”
“If I can come up with a potion that will make your blood taste awful to Lucas if he drinks it, will you take it for me?”
She nodded. “Sure, if it will put your mind at ease.”
“It will.”
Returning to my room and Rebecca, I grabbed a magic book that Rita had given me a couple of weeks ago from my bag and brought it downstairs with me. I laughed when Rebecca and I reached the kitchen and found Finn standing by the cooker wearing an apron and making breakfast for everyone.
I peeked over his shoulder to stare at the pan and my mouth watered. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much bacon before.”
He laughed and patted me softly on the back. “You having any strange cravings yet, preggo?”
I scrunched up my face. “Don’t ever call me that again, and yeah, not exactly cravings for any food in particular, just food in general. I literally feel like I could eat anything and everything.”
“Okay, well go and sit down. I’ll bring a plate over to you.”
I sat in between Rebecca and Delilah and began flicking through the magic book. I found the spell I was looking for easily enough. The main ingredient I needed was rosemary. Apparently, vamps couldn’t stand the herb and found the taste of it sickening in the extreme. So, if it was ingrained in Amanda’s blood, then Lucas would probably vomit if he tried to bite her.
There was a spell on another page that really caught my interest. It was similar to the one Rita cast to find my dad when he’d been kidnapped by Marcel and Ridley. This one didn’t require the use of dowsing rods, but it did allow you to find a person’s location if you had something personal that belonged to them.
My eyes flicked to Rebecca, catching on the shiny gold bracelet around her wrist. I never did get Pamphrock to tell me the location of her mother’s psychiatric facility, but perhaps I could use magic to find it by myself. It wasn’t fair for the girl to be shifted from pillar to post like she had been these past weeks. She needed stability, and the only person who could give that to her was a parent. The problem was, her mother could be so unwell she was incapable of caring for a ten-year-old.
Well, there was only one way to find out. I determined that today I was going to find Rebecca’s lone surviving parent. After I ate more than my fill of bacon, eggs, pancakes, and maple syrup (and after Finn set a second plate down in front of me with a wink after I’d shovelled down the first), I enlisted the help of Gabriel and Alvie to cast the spell.
It took a bit of persuading to convince Rebecca to temporarily give up her charm bracelet, but I eventually managed by promising to let her have ice-cream for dinner. And okay, perhaps that was an easy bargain since I could definitely go for a whole tub of the stuff in my current condition.
We completed the rosemary potion for Amanda first, and I sealed it away in a glass bottle for later. Then we cast the location spell for Rebecca’s mother with a map of the country spread out on the floor between the three of us. I briefly remembered Pamphrock saying her name was Felicity when he spoke of her. The spell worked kind of like an Ouija board. We placed the charm bracelet beneath an upturned glass, and the glass moved to the location of the person we were looking for. In this case, it slid straight across the map, landing on a small town on the other side of the country, thousands of miles from Tribane.
“It’s too far to go there right now,” Gabriel said. “You should wait a few days until Theodore has been taken care of before you start looking for this woman.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” I agreed.
The door creaked open and Ethan stepped inside, taking in our spell with a bemused expression. “What are you three conspiring about?” he asked, coming to sit beside me as he eyed the random assortment of items for the spell.
He picked up the potion for Amanda, popping open the cork and taking a whiff. “Ugh, this smells awful.”
“We were casting a spell to find Rebecca’s mother. I’m going to find her once the Theodore situation is dealt with. That,” I said, grabbing the bottle from him and recapping it, “is for Amanda. She and Lucas are all shacked up again after his valiant attempt to save her life, so I’ve concocted a potion to keep her safe. Once she’s taken this, Lucas will be vomiting his guts up for days if he tries to drink from her.