Page 13 of Secret of the Vampire
One side of her mouth lifted in a patronizing smile. “How do you know what I’m feeling all the time?”
Tipping the bottle to my mouth, I chugged down half of it before I could meet her eyes again, and changed the subject. “Why do you think that is, Alice?”
She shrugged. “It’s a twin thing. It’s always been like this with us.” She shoved at my shoulder playfully. “It’s the same reason I’m not afraid of your temper.” Her expression got serious. “I know it’s only because you feel things so deeply, Alex. And sometimes it’s too much for you, and it has to come out.”
But I shook my head. “It’s more than that. And don’t try to tell me it’s not.”
“Your temper?”
“No. You know what I mean.”
Alice just looked at me with that patient expression of hers, the one that made me want to scream in her face.
Instead, I cocked my head to the side, regarding my sister with narrowed eyes. “Do you really believe this is just normal magic? And don’t fucking lie to me. Because you know damn well there’s something else with you and me, Alice. Something within us that’s not the same as the rest of the family.” I paced to the window and back, unable to stand still. “Not one witch was able to help Kenya at the swamp that night, Alice. Not fuckingone. Even Judy, who, as the High Priestess, is supposed to be not only the eldest but the most powerful, didn’t know what to do.” I leaned down into her face. “Idid, Alice.Iknew what to do.”
She backed away. Not because I was in her face, I knew better than that, but to hide her own. “It was a lucky draw—”
“No! It was more than that and you fucking know it. It was,”—I looked around the room, desperately searching for an explanation on the beige walls—“I don’t know. Instinct. Something dark inside of me that responded to the evil inside of her. I’d sensed it before that night, but I’d never tried to tap into it.”
“Why not?” she challenged. “If it’s been there all along, why haven’t you tried to harness it before now?”
She didn’t believe me. “Because I was fucking scared,” I told her gruffly, afraid if I said the words too loud the shit inside of me would hear and make itself known, just to fuck with me. “And stop acting like you didn’t feel it, too. We were linked. All of us were linked. There’s no way I could have done what I did without drawing on the magic of the entire coven. So don’t stand there and act like you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“If you’re so sure about this, why are you just saying this to me now, brother? It’s been weeks.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
“Because you’ve been too busy obsessing about your vampire,” she answered for me, getting back to her original subject. “You have to stop, Alex. You can’t just go to the vampire’s club by yourself without permission. If you get caught sneaking around to see that vampire, the peace between our covens will be over.”
I didn’t bother to ask her how she knew where I was. It was obvious now why she was here, other than to lecture me. She’d needed something of mine to do a tracking spell. “How long have you been here tracking me?”
“Long enough to know you had the balls to not only go to The Purple Fang, but to go to their house. Theirhome, Alex. How would that not have come off as a threat if you’d been caught?”
“I wasn’t caught.”
“But. What. If. You.Were.”
Finishing my beer, I went to the fridge and grabbed another. She was right. She was completely fucking right. If I’d been caught, there would’ve been no getting out of it. I doubted Killian would’ve listened to Kenya long enough to give her a chance to fight for my life, even if she would have.
As I stood staring into the open fridge with a cold beer in my hand, I felt my sister’s touch on my arm. Turning my head, I looked down at her, letting her see the anguish on my face. She was the only one I ever exposed myself to like this. “I had to do something. Whatever had come after her the first time is back. It’s here, in New Orleans. And it’s not here to sightsee. It’s here for her.”
“Perhaps you should just let it have her.”
She didn’t mean it in a hateful way. I could feel her emotions nearly as well as my own, and they were as heavy as mine. She was only trying to keep me safe. To keep our coven safe.
“You’ve always been so hard to control,” she told me. “But you have to remember, Alex, it’s not just you. It’s all of us.”
“You have it, too,” I told her. “Stop skirting around the subject. I feel it within you, Alice. It’s not as strong, but it’s there.”
“Alex. Stop.”
“I felt it that night at the swamp. The darkness in you flowing through the coven’s combined magic. It fed into mine. It helped me grab onto the ugliness inside of Kenya and rip it out. There’s no way I could’ve held onto it without your help. She would’ve died. Kenya would’ve died.” My voice broke and I turned away. Embarrassed.
“But she didn’t.” Alice squeezed my arm. “However you did it, howeverwedid it, doesn’t matter. We saved her, and we prevented the war that surely would’ve started if Killian had lost one of his most precious possessions. Because that’s exactly what she is, and what would’ve happened. In his grief, he would’ve come after us, and the rest of his vampires would’ve reacted the same. It was why Aunt Judy was so determined to stay out of it to begin with, until Lizzy convinced her otherwise.”
Closing the door to the fridge, I turned around and leaned up against it. “Why won’t you just admit it?”
She held her hands out, genuinely confused. “Admit what, Alex? That we have some imaginary demon magic inside of us?”
