Suddenly, she walked right through me. I gasped, braced for the contact, but nothing happened. The girl walked straight through me as if I was air. Then I realized I was air. I wasn't there in body, but in mind. I had no idea why I would want to be there, but I turned with the intention of following the girl when a shadow jerked away from the fire.
The movement caught my eye and I whirled back around, but I didn't see anything except the flames that waved back and forth in a smooth rhythm. I started to turn again, but there it was. The shadow jerked forward and this time I was able to catch where it went. I focused all my attention on it.
"Who are you?" I asked. Was this an actual shadow or a ghost or a witch spirit?
It didn't say anything. It didn't move. It glimmered there above the bag. Some embers in the fire moved in that moment and flames exploded, the sky was illuminated for a second. I saw a face in the shadow and they looked downwards. It was focused on the bag, so much that I drifted closer so I could look at the bag too. Glancing back up, I could no longer make out the shadow, but I could still feel it. The presence was strong, so strong, and I closed my eyes. I let myself feel what this shadow wanted me to feel.
Urgency. Desperation. And such clear concentration that I was jerked out of my trance-like state. The thing wanted me to look in the bag and if it could've told me in person, it would've been screaming at me.
"Tracey, where are you going?"
I jerked around. She was coming back. Talia's sister was almost to the bag, reaching down.
'Oh god…' I sucked in my breath and snatched the bag before she could. Everything whirled around me again and I knew I'd broken through the vortex. She couldn't see me before, but she did now and she was pissed. Her eyes went from shock to a murderous rage.
"Hi! Sorry!" I squeaked and then closed my eyes again. 'Vacuum away. Vacuum away. Roane. Go to Roane! Go to Roane!' I tried to command my Immortal insides and as Tracey's rough hands scraped my skin, the wind picked me up again and I was back in the same tornado.
When I landed this time, it took me a minute before I realized where I was. It was quiet, too quiet in the room, but there was loud music below me. It sounded like a bass booming underneath my feet and when I looked around, I saw a couple of leather couches, a bar, a desk, and three walls made from glass. Then I realized that it was the sound of bass under me. I was in Roane's office at the Shoilster. Then I gulped, oh goodness.
Just then the door opened, the bass sounded clearer, and I looked up.
Wren took two steps inside and froze. The papers in her hand ripped apart. She couldn't hide the terror in her eyes before I saw it. And then it was gone. She stood at her highest height and her leather corset creaked from the movement. The papers were forgotten when she moved her hand behind her back.
"What is that?" I lurched forward.
"What are you doing here?" She looked around, but no one was there. The door was closed. There was no escape.
"It's just you and me and whatever you're hiding from me."
"I'm not hiding anything from you."
I narrowed my eyes and studied her. I studied the vein that had started to pop in her neck. "Yes, you are. What's in those papers?"
"Nothing. They're for Roane, not you. And what are you doing here? I should be yelling for him right now."
I swallowed and looked back to her eyes. They were frosty now, but I narrowed mine and went inside of her. It was an old empathic trick. I sensed the disarray inside. Wren was relieved I was back, pissed that she was relieved, and another part was in chaos because she smelled something familiar, too familiar for her to handle.
I pulled out and then sniffed the air. Nothing.
"What do you have?" Her eyes looked frantic.
I lifted the bag. "This? This is what you smelled?"
"Wha—get out of my head!" She grabbed the bag from me. Her long curls whipped against my head as she moved back. "Do you know whose this is?"
"I'm the one who took it. Do you?"
Wren blanched and jerked backwards, stumbling to the door. I watched as she went through it, but gaped as the door shut behind her. The almighty hoity-toity vampiress had just ran from me—me! She was scared of me for some reason. My gaze shifted to the bag. I doubted she was terrified of a bag so that left only one possibility…She knew the owner of the bag. Wren was scared of Tracey, not me. Who was Tracey to Wren? How did they know each other?
"Davy?" Roane was frozen in the doorway. His gaze was riveted to me.
Oh god, he looked good. His hair had been buzzed again, but it was how he was dressed that had my knees buckling. He had on black dress slacks matched with a black soft cotton buttoned shirt tucked inside. Roane looked like a business owner, one that oozed sex appeal from extreme confidence. And he didn't care, which made him even hotter. He looked so different from the college student he'd been in the beginning.
I swallowed, my throat was tight. "Hey," I choked out with a small wave. When I saw that my hand was trembling, I stuffed it behind me.
I didn't know what to say. He didn't move. He didn't speak. And my feet were glued to the floor. Maybe I shouldn't have come. Maybe Sireenia had gotten it
wrong and I wasn't my strongest around him. "I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry."