Page 12 of A Touch of Darkness

Isabel cocks her head, her gaze unblinking. “Your sister, Lara,” she says softly, and my heart pangs when I hear her name. “She’s not just missing. She’s been taken.”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut. My heart skips, then stutters, a cold shiver racing down my spine. “Taken?” I repeat, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to hold it steady in front of this stranger. “What do you mean,taken?” I need all these women to stop talking in riddles. I’m about to lose my damn mind. “How do you know anything about her?”

“Your sister is missing, Sylvie,” she repeats. “I’m aware of this. You’re aware of this. These two…” She pauses as if she’s trying to decipher Rebecca and Nicole. “These twowomenare probably aware of this. No one is helping you, am I correct in that assumption? Your twin is missing, and you are no closer to finding her than you were when she first didn’t turn up for your dinner plans last night.” Isabel stops, clearly trying to let her words sink in, but I’m so confused and disoriented my head is spinning.

She gives me a small, eerie smile, and it chills me to the bone.

“How do you know we were going to have dinner?” I ask her, as if that’s the important question here. “How do you know any of this at all?” I can’t make sense of how this person, that I’ve never even seen let alone spoken to, knows anything about me—or Lara.

She completely disregards my question and continues, “Things are happening at Blackthorne that you couldn’t possibly understand, Sylvie,” Isabel says, her voice gentle but firm, knowing. “There are forces at work here, things older than the university itself. And they’vetakenLara—they’ve taken yoursister—for a reason.” Isabel emphasizes weird buzz words, like it’s going to make me trust her. This entire thing only makes me even more wary.

I open my mouth to ask more, but Nicole is already stepping forward again, a protective wall between Isabel and me. “You don’t know anything,” she snaps. “You’re just an outsider coming in here and acting like a damn savior. You’re trying to manipulate her. I bet I know exactly who you are…” She trails off as she ties her curly hair up, like she’s getting ready to brawl with this girl, and I can’t help but feel a flicker of gratitude for her.

Isabel’s eyes shoot briefly toward Nicole, then back to me. “She’s right about one thing,” Isabel says, acknowledging Nicole for the first time, her voice soft with amusement. “Iama stranger. But I know more than you think. Haven’t I proven that? And you need to hear me, Sylvie. If you want to find Lara, you have no choice but to listen to my words.”

Her words are strangling. Nicole’s face is twisted in distrust, and Rebecca looks like she’s waiting for something to break. But something inside me—something primal, raw—compels me to step forward, to push past the uncertainty, to hear her out. It can’t hurt anything.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my voice steady now. “What do you want from me? Stop talking in vague circles andsay what you mean if you really have something to say.” My words come out harsher than intended, more ballsy than I’ve ever been, but I guess that’s what this situation is doing to me. I feel myself changing, shifting, and I don’t know that it’s for the better.

Isabel’s gaze flickers with something akin to satisfaction, like she’s been waiting for me to ask, to give in. “The Solstice Society,” she says, her words hanging heavy with meaning as if she’s dangling something shiny in front of a toddler—though I don’t understand. “We’ve been watching you, Sylvie. We know what you are.”

I freeze, my spine tingling. They’ve been watching me?

They knowwhatI am?

“What Iam?” I repeat, confusion and fear swirling together in my chest. “What the hell does that mean, Isabel?” I shake my head and run my fingers through my hair, incapable of staying strong in this moment. Incapable of ever fucking staying strong. If there’s ever been a time when Lara has needed me, it’s now. And I’m falling apart.

“I think it would be better if we speak in private,” Isabel says, but I shrug it off.

“You can talk to me in front of the girls,” I tell her. I’ve only known them a couple days, but they are the only two people in this entire place that I feel have good intentions toward me, that I’ve made any kind of connection with at all. Everyone else either keeps to themselves, is incompetent, or is affecting me in ways I can’t even begin to fathom—aka the man in the window…Professor Draedon.

Isabel sighs, as if she would much rather be talking without Nicole and Rebecca, but she humors me all the same. “You’re not just some ordinary student,” Isabel continues, shrugging as her voice drops low. “Your bloodline—your family—it’s tied to something much older. Something incredibly powerful.Something you cannot possibly understand, but we can help with that.”

The room spins in time to her words, and for a moment, I feel like I’m going to collapse from the pressure surrounding me. I sit back down on the bed and shake my head. I feel like I’m in a glass cage, with people looking in, unable to have a second to think on my own.

I take a deep breath, like Lara would tell me to do.

“What are you saying? I don’t understand.” I bring my fingers to my temples, trying to soothe the dull ache that’s beginning to roar, to take on a life of its own inside my head.

“I’m saying that you have certain…abilities,” Isabel says, her voice soft but full of an unsettling certainty as she looks from me to the girls, and back to me again. “Abilities you haven’t tapped into yet. Abilities that the Solstice Society can help you unlock to use for the greater good. Abilities that will help get your sister back while helping all of mankind.”

“Abilities?” My breath catches in my throat. What the hell is this chick on?I really need to remember to lock my door.

Rebecca chuckles, and the three of us turn to her. Nicole shoots her a glare and Isabel shakes her head.

I’m apparently the only one lost—go figure.

The only one not in on the joke.

“What kind of abilities?” I ask, deciding to circle back to Rebecca later. “I honestly have zero interest in the greater good right now. I want to find my sister and get through these next four years. That’s it.”

The look in Isabel’s eyes is knowing,tooknowing. Unsettling. There’s something about it that makes me second guess allowing her to stay in this room.

“Sylvie. You’re part of a bloodline that’s been protecting the world from creatures like vampires, witches, and other supernaturals for centuries. Your family—your ancestors—wereamong the first to stand against them. But that’s not all. You’re connected to something much bigger. To the vampire relics, to the veryheartof the ancient magic that controls their blasphemous kind.”

I go to stand up again but immediately fall back to the bed, my mind reeling. “You’ve got it all wrong,” I whisper, my hand instinctively flying to my chest. “I’m just a student. I’m just... just Sylvie. My sister is missing. That’s what matters.” I can’t look back up. Can’t meet her eyes—can’t meet any of their eyes. I think about Isabel’s words, running them over and over in my mind, truly taking in what she said.

Vampires.

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