Page 47 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

“I got used to not talking about it, I guess. And I know it’s not the same thing as what Lisa went through, but I get what it’s like, for your whole world to be ripped apart by this stuff. Which is, I guess, another reason to do this.”

I realized that, now that we’d met Lisa, now that we’d seen what she had been through, that maybe Tobias needed this too. His reasons weren’t the same as mine, but maybe he needed to set this one thing right for her, now that he’d seen for his own eyes the pain that the wraith had caused. And my reasons weren’t really the same anymore either. I wanted to keep Tobias as far from the hunters as possible, but now I also wanted to do what I had come here to do for Tobias’s sake, every bit as much as mine.

“What are you thinking?” Tobias asked, eyeing me warily.

“I’m thinking that we know it’s a wraith now, so we need to go and kill it. Any idea where we can get some blessed iron?”

“So, we’re back on board with hunting this thing?”

“We can’t undo what happened to Lisa, but we can stop it from happening to anyone else. We can fix this one thing. Together.”

Tobias’s answering smile was slow to start but it took over his whole face. And I couldn’t help but smile back, even though my heart was hurting. And I had known that Tobias would do anything for me since pretty much the first moment we’d met. But the part that surprised me, the part that made no sense at all—except that it made every kind of sense—was that maybe I would do anything for him, too.

“You know, I do actually have a friend in the city,” he told me, after a long moment had passed. “I’ll call Ethan, just to get a sense of what to expect from the hunters. And then we’ll hit up my friend and get some supplies from her. We’ve got a wraith to banish.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN || TOBIAS

“You want me to check the mirror again?” Ethan asked twenty minutes later, sounding incredulous, after I had given him a run-down of everything that was going on. “What are you guys even still doing there?”

“This is important to him. Would you be able to take something that mattered away from Nathaniel, knowing you might hurt him if you did?”

“Way to play dirty,” Ethan sighed. “I see your point. I’ll take a look to see what I can see with the hunters. But Poppy and I need to go check in on the stone people first. My mother and Wynn have been wrangling them, but apparently a couple of them are having trouble adjusting.”

By ‘stone people,’ he was referring to the more than one hundred witches, warlocks, and possibly even mundanes that had been turned into marble statues about eighty years ago as a result of the stone skin incantation. The curse was completely irreversible, with one exception: Ethan’s blood. Still, he had been transforming the victims back slowly, only a few at a time, since they had all been statues for nearly a century and had no idea how to exist in the modern world anymore.

“How is that going?” I asked, feeling a flash of guilt. “Um, in general. Since I left, I mean.”

I had been tasked—at first—to help them transition back into society. That had lasted roughly a month before the witch queen told me that my talents were needed elsewhere. I suspected her reasoning had been related to the fact that anyone looking at me probably could have seen how wrecked I was after Bryan left.

But it was for the best, ultimately. I hadn’t been in a position to empathize with a bunch of very confused and distraught witches and warlocks who’d had their entire lives ripped from them in the blink of an eye. Wynn, the quiet and sensitive member of the witches’ council who had served the coven for most of her life, was a much better candidate to spearhead what they were doing. But she needed a lot of help.

“We’re managing,” Ethan replied. “We’re talking about doing a support group or something. Or, I don’t know, maybe counseling?”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed. “Though, where are you going to find a therapist willing to council a bunch of pissed off witches and warlocks?”

“That’s a really good question.” Ethan sighed, sounding frustrated. Then he paused and added, “So, anyway, I’ll be able to check the mirror in a couple of hours, after I’m done. Until then, stay away from the hunters.”

After we hung up, Bryan and I got out of the car and crossed the street, heading for the row of single-story shops with a shared wooden shingle awning and matching large glass windows. I opened the door for Mystical Dreams Spiritual Supplies, one of the stores in the area that catered to magical witches in addition to the various types of spiritual seekers out there.

“Tobias!” Ella De Luna grinned at me the very moment I stepped into her shop, her eyes lighting up in recognition. “What brings you to Portland?”

“Ella,” I greeted her, returning her grin. “I was afraid you might not remember me.”

“Of course I remember you,” Ella scoffed, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “You helped me banish a demon. That’s not exactly an everyday occurrence for me.” She was referring to an infernal entity that had been hunting the confused spirits of the recently dead and consuming their essence. As a former resident of Seattle, she had connections with my coven, and when she had reached out to them for help, they had sent me. But that was almost three years ago. “And then, afterward, you drank me under the table. And then you drove out of town and broke my poor little heart.”

“Oh,” Bryan looked up from the truly massive display of crystals he was examining. He glanced at me first, and then at Ella. “Err. So, you guys were… involved?”

He sounded almost alarmed. He gave Ella a once-over, and I found myself attempting to see her as he did, for the very first time.

Ella was stunningly beautiful. Her flawless skin was a deep shade of mahogany, and her eyes were deep, dark, and clear, like twin scrying pools. Her hair was dyed shockingly white, and she’d buzzed it close to her head. She wore a flowing ivory dress that hugged her willowy form, but with her dark eyeshadow, plum-colored lipstick, and black talon-like fingernails, she was a study in opposites, embracing her extremes effortlessly: she was soft and strong, light and dark, all at the same time.

Ella’s eyes flashed with amusement as she sized Bryan up, and it was clear from the expression on her face that she recognized him immediately. “No, young one, it was always strictly professional between us. Despite my best efforts, I might add.” She shot a smirk in my direction before turning back to Bryan and adding, “Tobias has been saving himself for the right person.”

Then her gaze slid back to me, and she gave me a knowing smile. “The Verum Amor truly is never wrong, is it?”

She was referring to the spell I had cast when I was fourteen years old, a year after my parents had died, in order to see the face of my true love. Despite the fact that our grandparents had taken Poppy and I in and given us a place to live after our parents were gone, I had been feeling so alone at the time. Poppy had been completely shut down and I was so filled with anger that I had pushed pretty much everyone else away. In a moment of desperation, needing to know that how I was feeling wouldn’t last forever, I had cast the Verum Amor. And then the spell had shown me Bryan’s face. Up until that moment, I hadn’t even realized I was into guys yet. And I hadn’t realized I could love a vampire, either.

Ella had seen all of this by accident when we’d joined our powers in order to banish the demon before it could snack on any other innocent spirits.

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