The Long Lost

by Patti Larsen

  Her own daughter. “You have proof?”

  “Not enough,” he said. “But I only need a little more to connect her to Batsheva. It was the Moromonds who killed them, that much I know. But without the last link, I can’t bring them down. And they will all pay, I swear it.”

  “I can help.” I twisted the soft cotton of his shirt in my fingers, already knowing what he was going to say.

  “I have to do this alone.”

  “Stubborn idiot.” My anger flared. “No you don’t. Mom can help. Gram. She’s a freaking Enforcer, in case you missed it.”

  “I didn’t.” He grinned at me. “I might use her help, at that.”

  “Jerk.” I sank against him. “Fine. Run off. Be the avenging angel. But Quaid, I’m worried. What if they figure it out? That you’re playing them? They’ll kill you.” Literally. No jokes. Odette would, without a doubt.

  “I’ll be okay.” He stroked my hair. “As much as I wish you could help, I can’t involve you. The High Council ordered you to stay away, remember? We’re breaking coven law right now.”

  “Screw coven law.” And to prove to him just how little I gave a crap, I leaned close and kissed him. His lips parted under mine, soft, hot breath in my mouth, in my lungs. Power rippled through me and into him, binding him as close to me as I could get. I heard his soft moan, felt it and answered it with a deeper kiss.

  He finally pushed me away, panting, eyes burning with the same emotions I was feeling. I wanted to jerk him close again, devour him, eat him alive. But he held me off with a soft chuckle igniting my entire body on fire.

  Quaid stood slowly, setting me on my feet, hands in my hair, leaning close. He brushed his hot lips over my brow, my cheeks, the tip of my nose.

  “I’ll be back,” he whispered. “With Mia, if I can save her. I promise.”

  More tears. Damn it. “You have to be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.” He kissed me then, and as he did, as our power linked, I felt the connection we’d lost, the one he’d severed, flare to life again, stronger than ever. As he pulled away, the strength of his touch dimmed, but remained with me.

  I hugged myself as he stepped back as if I could embrace that link.

  “Now I’ll always be with you,” he said. “I love you, Syd.”

  “I love you too.” Finally. Finally I was able to say it, even though he was leaving me again and might never come back, might die for his revenge. At least he knew.

  And I’d said it.

  It was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life, harder than any horror I’d faced, any threat to myself for my family, to simply stand there and watch him walk away.

  ***

  Chapter Forty Seven

  What a summer.

  Mom spent the next two weeks going from house to house, connecting and reconnecting with every single member of our coven. Including, it turned out, those who were willing to betray her. Imagine. I would have kicked their sorry asses out and let them join the Dumonts, but Mom had a longer fuse than I did and, clearly, some other agenda I didn’t know about.

  Turned out I was right about Celeste being a Purity member. James too. They and a handful of others were the only ones who survived the battle, adopted into the Hayle family when the Dumonts refused to take them in.

  When Naudia committed herself, losing her family magic to Gram, it didn’t just drive my grandmother crazy. It killed most of her followers. A massacre of the woman’s own making. I couldn’t imagine committing that much power to hate, enough to destroy those who looked to me for leadership.

  No wonder Gram went crazy. All those people’s dying energy? I’d have gone around the bend and never come back.

  Guess her Enforcer training was good for a lot of things.

  I was still in awe of her, though every time she caught me staring she’d either make a funny face or stick out her tongue. Which naturally made me giggle.

  She was my Gram. No matter what.

  Mom’s decision to let Celeste and company remain in our family didn’t sit well with me. Or many others in the coven. When I confronted her on it, she just told me she knew what she was doing.

  Okay then. Although after I had a few days to think about it, I was pretty sure I understood. At least this way she could keep an eye on them. And, through them, the Dumonts.

  Because you just know Celeste hadn’t given up on seeing Mom deposed.

  Or dead.

  Alison was getting better. She didn’t seem as frail, anyway, and was out of the hospital. Angela had as yet to revert to her old habits too, so I had hopes for them both.

  Uncle Frank didn’t come around much, even now that Mom convinced the coven the real threat wasn’t the vampires in the family. The few times I’d seen him he acted angry and obsessed. I could hardly blame him for that.

  I still worried.

  I got my first email from Blood out of the blue, which actually made me smile. He and his family were settled nicely in Prague. He even sent goofy pictures of himself doing the tacky tourist thing.

  At least one of us was safe.

  Simon seemed to be distancing himself. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was prepping for leaving us behind or what, but he stopped answering my emails and refused to talk on the phone. After his mom politely asked me to stop calling, I did.

  Sucked.

  Beth was so busy with her new boyfriend and her job, happier now that the crisis was over, she barely had time to chat, even when I stopped in with Alison for ice cream. At least she seemed happy.

  Galleytrot told me, when I thought to ask, that the now free werewolves disappeared shortly after I left to go to the hotel. He’d tried to contact them, and I did too, but wherever Charlotte was hiding with her pack mates, she didn’t want me to find her.

  Whatever. I had my own worries.

  Mom and Dad seemed to be fighting a lot. From a couple who never fought, it was shocking. And awful. So I tended to avoid them. Easier since Dad continued to spend his time in the basement.

  I comforted myself every single day and night with the feeling of Quaid. I’d have these panic moments, like mini anxiety attacks, only to calm the moment I felt him there inside me, his power connected to mine.

  I worried constantly and found it very hard to sleep.

  But the hardest part of that summer was hearing Dorothy Hammond was found floating in the local lake, at least a week dead. While the authorities called it a suicide and Jerry Hammond mourned his wife’s loss along with the disappearance of his only daughter, I seethed inside.

  Suicide. Yeah right.

  I knew better.

  One more thing Odette Dumont had to answer for.

  ###

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  ***

  Check out this sample of a brand new Dystopian series

  Book One of the Clone Chronicles

  Clone Three

  Chapter One

  I open my eyes. It’s the first thing I think to do. The world is tilted sideways, the angles all wrong. I turn my head, feel hard, thin metal behind me, hear it bend and warble as I move. My whole body is limp, useless for the time being. Where am I? What is this place? The walls used to be blue, now coated in crusts of mold and running rust like an old disease left to fester.

  On my left, what remains of a toilet bowl, the top smashed, jutting jaws of jagged porcelain teeth aimed at the ceiling. One single, flickering fluorescent bulb dangles over head, swinging softly back and forth from the wires holding it suspended just past the dented frame.

  A bathroom stall? The floor is icy cold under me, my fingers registering the stickiness of old traffic and a film of moisture left behind.

  There, opposite where I half lie, half sit, my back propped against the wall of the stall. I see something waver at eye level, a hologram of some kind, projected onto the pitted and angry metal.

  A man’s face. Do I know it? I fe
el I should know him, from somewhere. I’m just not sure where.

  “Clone Three.” His voice is a softly echoing sound, volume and pitch altering as he speaks, as if over a great distance. “Pay attention, dear. Final instructions.”

  Is he talking to me? He must be. His eyes seem to be meeting mine, he looks at me with great expectation. And yet as I lie here and begin to regain sensation and control, I realize I not only have no idea where I am, what I’m doing here.

  I haven’t a clue who I am.

  Clone Three. Is that me?

  “Not again.” His face isn’t angry. Why did I fear he would be angry? Instead, even through the unclear and twitching image I can see his desperate concern.

  “What’s happening?” The view seems to widen as a woman’s face joins him. I’m smiling suddenly. I know her, and very well. She’s tied to my heart, isn’t she?

  Isn’t she?

  My smile fades as her own worry reaches me. “Clone Three,” she says, her voice calling to me as much as her words. “Please, you must listen.”

  “It’s useless.” The man sags. “She was our final hope. There is no more.”

  She ignores him, focused on me. I’m happy she’s still there. I’m worried myself. What if she leaves me? And why does the idea of that make me so afraid?

  “It’s going to be all right,” she says, smiling. I smile back. Yes, this is better. This is right. “You just need to listen carefully to what I say.”

  I listen with every cell in my body, every single thread of my being.

  “This is so hard.” She looks at the man. “We have no idea how much she remembers.”

  “We are lost. We’ve failed.” He turns away from her, leaves the image. She sighs and meets my eyes again.

  Distress makes my body shake. I want to reach for her, feel my fingers twitch in response. My body is coming (back?) to life.

  “Don’t listen to him,” she says. “Just to me. You must find the others, do you hear me? Clone Two and Clone One. It’s imperative you find them. Do you understand?”

  I nod. My head and neck seem to work just fine.

  “You’ll know them,” she says. “Just trust me.”

  I do. With everything.

  Her image begins to crackle, waver, breaking up. A soft grunting whine escapes me as my fingertips scrabble on the dirty floor, my mind reaching for her as my body tries to obey.

  She is speaking but her words are garbled, cut into bits and bites, and I cannot understand her. A film covers my vision, the blur disappearing as something wet runs down my cheek.

  I’m crying.

  She looks afraid, so afraid, and she is reaching for me too. She finally points at me, then at herself and her image fades. In her place is the vision of a statue, a tall woman, softly green, holding a book and a torch, crowned in thorns.

  It too fades, softly, shrinking, until it flickers once like the flame of a candle and goes out.