Page 120

“I have looked at the magics she is doing. With my light, I mean.” The green-eyed seer exhaled, looking at both of them almost apologetically.

“It is some pretty dark shit,” Dalejem admitted. “I think it is possible there could be real power behind it. It’s clear the leader of those vampires feels it. The one Dorian follows during that time seems to have some real power of his own. I could feel it on that leader when we saw him in that first vision, when we all sat together in the sunroom. That vampire believed something she was doing had drawn them there. I don’t know if that’s like a seer following a pull in the space… but it felt very similar to this. Like certain energies pull on vampires, too. Perhaps outside their control.”

Nick frowned, thinking about that.

He remembered when he’d felt pulled to San Francisco.

He hadn’t fully realized it at the time, but he’d felt excruciatingly drawn to Miri and Black, and even to Kiko and Dalejem, back when he’d first been turned.

It had been maddening, that pull.

Nick suspected now that he’d been feeling Miri and Black looking for him frantically, scared that he was dead. He’d been feeling the intense punch of their emotions. He’d felt those emotions because most of those emotions had been aimed at him. They’d likely been aiming their seer’s sight at him, possibly without being fully conscious they were doing it.

At the time it felt to Nick like he was being controlled, even manipulated. It had fueled his anger against them. He felt like they were screaming in his ear in the space. He hadn’t been able to feel the love and worry and fear behind it.

He’d only felt the intensity of that pull.

He’d felt the near-compulsion to obey it.

Since he hadn’t really wanted them to see him like that, he’d resented it.

He’d resented it, and let it fuel his anger at being turned at all.

Dalejem looked at him thoughtfully.

Still studying Nick’s face, he nodded, almost to himself, glancing at Dex.

“It feels possible to me, too,” Jem said. “But I still don’t know that it answers our question. I doubt this is anything Brick wouldn’t already know about what happened here.”

Nick felt his jaw harden.

It always came back to that. What could Brick possibly need them for?

Why would he share so much about his family with all of them?

Nick looked at the door of the kill room, where Black now stood with Miri.

They had their arms wrapped around one another now, and from their faces, they were probably talking to one another, using their psychic thing. Nick looked past them, at the room which had faded back to its original form. He glimpsed the gray, stained carpet, the white paint gone yellow from smoke, the moldy ceiling and graffiti-marked walls.

Exhaling, he looked apologetically at Jem.

But his seer mate had already come to the same conclusion.

Clicking under his breath, Jem nodded.

“We have to do it up here. The seer circle.” Gritting his teeth, Dalejem glanced at Dex, then back at Nick. “In the ritual room… the kill room… maybe the room with the baby, too. Ugh. I am not going to like this.”

“Do we know anything about that baby?” Nick asked, frowning. “Did anyone look in the crib?”

“I did,” Dex said. “It was a baby with brown hair, blue eyes. Maybe eight months. Not more than a year old. I couldn’t tell the sex. All the babies wore those long white dresses and bonnets back then. But I think it’s safe to say Brick had a sibling.”

“Had he ever mentioned that to you?” Jem asked Nick. “A sibling?”

Nick shook his head. “No.”

Just then, there was another anguished yell.

That time, it wasn’t Kiko.