Chapter 27
River
The next day I found myself sitting on Ursula’s sofa, bouncing an incredibly energetic kid up and down on my knee, and staring off into space until the young witch snapped her fingers in front of my nose.
“Ursula to old lady—you having a vision or something?”
It took a few more moments of Ursula waving her hand in front of my face for me to register that I was being spoken to.
“Hmm?” I blinked rapidly, resurfacing from the depths of my own head.
“Yeah. I mean no—no visions.” Like I could be so lucky.
I set a wriggling Hazel down on her feet and she immediately sped off to bother her sister.
I balanced my elbows on my knees and dropped my head in my hands. “Just… distracted today.”
Distracted was an understatement. I was downright distraught. Laurie’s scream still echoed in my ears; her broken voice had been ringing through my head all night. I couldn’t stop replaying it—I couldn’t get over her confession. Her ‘grand plan.’
She was hurting, so much more than even I had managed to notice. Her aura had overtaken the room last night when she’d dropped to the floor and wailed. It exploded outward with such incredible force I thought it would shatter the windows.
It broke my heart.
I sighed into my hands, pressing fingers to my temples like that could quiet the calamity in my skull. “There’s a lot going on right now.”
Ursula tilted her head to the side and scrutinized me, taking in the fatigue in my features and the dark rings under my eyes. “Are you sleeping all right?” When I slow blinked back at her, she narrowed her eyes. “Are you sleeping at all?”
I closed my eyes, sinking backward into the sofa cushions. “A little… now and then.”
That was a lie—I hadn’t slept a wink last night.
I’d been up until the early hours of the morning, wandering the hallway outside Laurie’s bedroom and working to keep her nightmares at bay.
It had taken every ounce of concentration this time.
The bad dreams rushed at her like moths to a flame and I had fought desperately to keep her shielded from those night terrors.
Now I was walking around like a zombie, powered by a few vials of fresh blood and sheer force of will. But it was worth it, if it meant Laurie could get a good night's sleep. It was the least I could do—seeing as I couldn’t seem to do anything else.
I couldn’t help her. There was not a single thing I could say to make her change her mind, change her plan. I’d been racking my brain for some way to fix things, to make life a little more bearable for her, but I kept coming up short.
Ursula must have noted the way my face crumpled because she nudged my knee with hers. “Hey, whatever’s going on with you—I’m happy to help. I can craft some kick-ass sleep potions. Just say the word.”
I forced out a laugh and straightened my spine again. “Thank you, but I’ll be fine. There’s actually something else I wanted to discuss with you—”
We both glanced up when the twins came roaring by, Hazel pelting Hilda with an arsenal of stuffed animals clutched in her chubby arms.
“Hazel! Leave your sister alone!” Ursula’s stern tone fell on deaf ears, but Hazel got her comeuppance a moment later when Hilda grabbed a handful of Lego bricks and retaliated with a cackle of glee.
Under a hail of colorful plastic blocks, Hazel turned tail and dashed back the other way, dropping stuffed animals as she went. With her sister out of the picture, Hilda bumped down onto her bottom and began building Lego towers in peace.
After the unexpected drive-by, Ursula turned back to me, shaking her head with a sigh. “Jordan really has to stop feeding them cereal right before she drops them off. That shit is like 99% sugar and it turns them both into little monsters.”
A muffled crash from the other room drove her point home and Ursula rolled her eyes. “One sec.” She jumped to her feet, swearing under her breath as she stomped away to investigate the commotion. “Hazel, I swear to god, if you’re climbing the shelves again—”
I laughed, settling back against the sofa when I noticed Hilda approaching. “Why, hello, little witchling.” I nudged my chin toward the next room where Ursula was scolding Hazel for playing with her potion bottles. “Don’t tell me you put your sister up to that.”
“Nu-uh,” Hilda answered—a little too quickly.
Her sheepish expression gave her away. Hilda may have been the more reserved of the two, but I knew for a fact she was just as much a trouble maker as her sister. She was just a little better at hiding it.
“Hmm, all right then.” I reached over to ruffle her hair and the little girl shot me a toothy grin, pointed vampire fangs on full display. As she scampered off, I let my thoughts wander.
Hazel and Hilda—two halves of a whole, born of a union between witch and vampire. Hybrids, like Mary and the others we’d rescued. My thoughts slipped to Laurie and the child she’d lost. Her own hybrid daughter.
What happened to her baby? I didn’t know. Whether she’d died in the same facility Laurie escaped from, I couldn’t say. All I knew was that her loss bound Laurie to this fight, fueled her need for vengeance, and left her teetering on the edge of despair.
And there was nothing I could do to help her. I couldn’t even look to the future to see if it all worked out. It was like Laurie said; she had no future, because she had no intention of sticking around.
I should have realized what it meant before. I should have understood when I looked into her future and saw nothing, no one. It was because her path was set in stone and her mind was made up. I couldn’t see her future, because Laurie would not be there for it.
I huddled over my knees, so wrapped up in the agony of that singular thought that I barely noticed Ursula returning.
She was shaking her head as she sat down beside me, grumbling something about Jordan's bad parenting when she noticed my hunched position. “River, are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yep.” I kept my head down, grasping for the calm mask I wore daily.
After a brief moment of collecting my thoughts, funneling all of my spilled melancholy back into the hallways of my heart, the mask settled into place on my face.
I sat upright again, smoothing down my hair with a deep sigh. “All good.”
Ursula looked unconvinced but she let it slide, gaze drifting to Hilda who was thoroughly invested in picking her nose. “Hazel is in timeout and Hilda seems… occupied.” She glanced back at me, pensive in her assessment of my expression. “So, what did you want to discuss?”
Right—that. I was here for a reason.
I crossed one leg over the other, shifting to business mode in the blink of an eye. “I assume Jordan’s already filled you in on the ‘organization’ and the facilities we’re trying to track down?”
Ursula snorted a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, I heard all about it—the hybrids, the human captives. It’s the kind of stuff to give you nightmares.”
I kept my expression passive. She had no idea how right she was. “We know they’ve been targeting supernaturals too. Have there been any reports of witches going missing?”
“Not that I know of.” Ursula bit her lip, thinking it over. “But we’ve got a council meeting coming up this week—I’ll bring it up, make sure everyone is on high alert for anything suspicious.”
“Good. Thank you.” I glanced over at Hilda, still peacefully building her Lego empire with her finger up her nostril. “No one is safe with the organization still operating out there somewhere. It’s going to take all of the city’s supernaturals working together to figure this out.”
Ursula followed my gaze, a twinge of fear twisting her features. “I won’t let anything happen to the two of them. Whatever this organization is up to, they’re not getting anywhere near the twins.”
I believed her. For someone so young, Ursula had already been through so much.
She’d lost her sister—the twins’ mother—and she’d lost plenty of her coven members back when the witches and vampires had been mortal enemies.
But she still faced the world head-on, furious and fierce when it came to protecting the people she loved.
A part of me was tempted to tell her about Laurie. The two of them were alike in so many ways, right down to the perpetual wrinkle in their brows. But to explain the situation with Laurie would mean explaining my connection to her.
And that was something I still didn’t understand myself.
Something in me was determined to protect her, to defend her at all costs. Something drew me to her side—and it wasn’t just because of what she’d been through. It wasn’t some innate drive to collect broken things. It was something else, something deeper.
The same something that drove me to lean forward the night before, when she parted her lips like she wanted to kiss me.
That small moment, slim and tender, a preliminary to the turmoil that came afterwards, left me more confused than before. I couldn’t be falling for her, this wasn’t a simple crush. It was something more, something stirring in my heart—something ancient flaring to life.
My phone buzzing in my pocket wrenched me out of my musings and I hurriedly fumbled for it, mouthing an apology to Ursula while I pressed the phone to my ear.
Dylan’s voice burst through the receiver, breathless and urgent. “River? I think I found him.”
My heart gave a particularly harsh thump. “Found who?”
“The doctor—you know, the one you wanted me to look into.” Dylan growled out the answer, gasping as she fought to catch her breath.
“I tracked down a potential suspect. He’s a lone vampire, no ties to any known coven, acting as a low-profile surgeon by day and operating in a hospital where a few patients have gone missing—” She heaved in another breath, then spat out the rest of her sentence.
“I’ve got eyes on his apartment, and a way to break in while he’s away. But we have to be quick.”
The thumping in my chest ramped up another notch. The Doctor. I’d asked Dylan to do some snooping after Laurie and I interviewed the captives. I asked her to track down the man they all mentioned, the one who was apparently still hunting Laurie to this day.
I hadn’t expected anything to come from it, but Dylan had once again proven that her title of Spymaster was well-deserved.
“Got it, hang tight.” I jolted to my feet, rushing out a farewell to Ursula, and headed for the door. “I’ll be right there.”
This could be the lead we needed, a chance to get closer to the leaders of the organization. But the darker part of my heart whispered that it was more than that. This was my chance to take down a monster, a man who had hurt Laurie personally.
A shot at revenge.