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“Bianca is still alive and retained all her powers.”

“Which means The Summoner has all her powers, plus his own. And Amaliya is totally going to want to rescue her.”

“Fuck me.” Jeff exhaled long and slow. “Fuck me!”

“Amaliya has been badgering me for this information. I gave her all the details on Josephine Leduc like she wanted. All the stuff on astral projection. But I held this back because once she knows about it...”

“I getcha. Totally. She’ll take off to San Antonio to save her.” Jeff folded his arms over his chest and glowered at nothing in particular. “Go ahead and tell Amaliya before she does something crazy anyway. But I’m going to tell Cian, too. We can’t have her going off without us. He can keep her from doing something nuts.”

“We are talking about the same Amaliya, right?”

“Point.” Jeff sighed.

“Look, I hate all this sitting around bullshit, but I also don’t want us to lose Amaliya on some crazy rescue mission. She is our big gun. We don’t even know where The Summoner is located.”

“That won’t stop Amaliya. She’ll tear San Antonio apart.”

“Exactly. And drag Samantha with her.”

Outside the tall windows the summer sun was busy scorching Texas. The bright light washed over the tall trees which in turn cast long shadows over the backyard that appeared to reach toward the house like inky claws. Jeff couldn’t help but take it as a sign. Darkness was coming.

“You have a point,” Jeff said at last. “We’ll hold it back from Amaliya, but I’m going to tell Cian tonight.”

Benchley made a scoffing noise as he slumped on the sofa and picked up his controller.

“Bench, seriously, the others were right about Cian. He’s the guy we’ve got to trust.”

“Even though he has been a self-serving prick in the past?”

“Yeah.” Jeff shrugged. “Because the truth is that we’re doomed without that self-serving prick and his girlfriend.”

Turning his game back on, Benchley’s fingers flew over the controller. “Life was so much easier when I thought the monsters were only make believe.”

Jeff had to agree.

Slumping onto the computer chair next to Alexia, Cassandra peered at the array of monitors. “What’s up, Lex?”

The younger woman sighed. “Same bullshit as always.”

Alexia spent most of her days in Cian’s basement hub doing research and chatting with the remnants of The Assembly. Since the area was remodeled to look like just another swanky floor in the vampire’s home, it wasn’t like she was situated in a musty, ratty basement. Yet, it was still cooler than the floors above, so Alexia was wearing two hoodies instead of one. Her fingers fidgeted with both sets of strings.

“No one knows anything and they wish us good luck?” Cassandra rolled her eyes.

“I hate people.”

“Well, a lot of them suck.” Tapping in a lascivious message to Aimee on her phone, Cassandra grinned with pleasure. “Some better than others.”

“You’re so lewd,” Alexia said with the wrinkle of her nose, but she looked amused.

“I have it on good authority that you spend quite a bit of time flirting with some Russian guy online.”

“Aimee is a snitch.” Alexia stuck out her tongue as she opened a message box on one screen and typed a quick line before closing it again.

An alarm beeped on Cassandra’s phone just as Aimee sent a message back. Blushing slightly, Cassandra killed the alarm before she opened her contacts list. “Time to behave and call my mom.”

“Oh, tell her hi for me. I miss her. She’s so sweet.”

Galina’s photo filled the screen. She greatly resembled Cassandra, but with much longer hair and a few more lines. Due to the blood she had imbibed while part of the Austin cabal in the seventies and the drops of Cassandra’s blood she took every day (thinking the bottle in the refrigerator contained B-12), she appeared to be in her early forties and not at the tail end of her sixties. The photo had been snapped while Galina had been in a very happy mood one day and her smiled was radiant. A pang of homesickness resounded through Cassandra. She missed her mother so much. Calling the number, she listened to the phone ringing.