“Come in, Fiona,” her Great Aunt Regina said. “Meet your Uncle Tobias.”

  Uncle? A streak of panic slithered down Fiona’s spine. What if this man, who appeared to be in his early forties, wanted her to live with him until she graduated from high school? Her great aunt was getting awfully old, even if she didn’t look or act her age.

  Fiona closed her gaping mouth.

  “He’s not really your uncle, dear. You really ought to learn to hide your feelings better. If he wasn’t so easy to get along with, he might have been wounded by your reaction.”

  Another lecture. Fiona swore her great aunt gave her five a day on school nights. More on weekends.

  Tobias’s eyes held Fiona’s hostage for a moment, as if challenging her. She couldn’t fathom his role here. Yet, she suspected he wasn’t going to be just a casual acquaintance. Then he turned away, as if he’d become disinterested in her, the conversation, and the party. Which reminded Fiona, where were all the partygoers?

  As if on cue, the sound of car engines roaring to life forced her to go to the picture window. Like in a race, nine of the ten cars parked out front peeled down the street. Where had her great aunt’s friends been all this time? Had they sneaked around the back of the house, then dashed for their cars while she was inside?

  Weird. That’s the way her great aunt and her friends were, too. Just plain weird.

  Clarissa yawned. “I’ve got to go. Are you ready, Tobias?”

  The two were dark-haired and eyed, yet neither looked like they were related. Clarissa had delicate, refined features. Tobias was gaunt, his bones raw and masculine.

  He turned his head as if he were listening to something outside, and so did her great aunt and Clarissa. Fiona strained to hear whatever they seemed to be listening to, but only heard the blood pounding in her ears.

  “It’s been a pleasure as always,” Tobias finally said, leaned down, and kissed Great Aunt Regina’s cheek.

  What was worse, her great aunt acted as though the guy had the hots for her the way she nearly swooned. Good grief. He had to be forty years her junior.

  Clarissa smiled at them, then patted Fiona’s shoulder. “We’ll have to get together again sometime.”

  “Do you go to Portland High also?”

  Clarissa glanced at Tobias as if she expected him to tell her what to say. He studied her but didn’t utter a word.

  “I homeschool,” Clarissa said, turning to face Fiona. “Maybe next year I’ll join you at Portland High.”

  “I’ll be at college with my brother in Texas.” Fiona finally said what she’d wanted to for the last three months, but no time had seemed appropriate.

  “We’ll have to talk about this later,” Great Aunt Regina countered, her voice stern.

  Instantly, Fiona went on her guard. Did her great aunt not want her to leave Oregon? It certainly sounded like it to her. But she knew her parents had left them enough money to put both her brother and her through college. Why couldn’t Fiona choose the one she wanted to go to?

  Fiona tried to keep her cool and said to Clarissa, “You must be a junior in high school then.”

  “No.” Clarissa smiled. “It’s the homeschool curriculum I use. I’m seventeen like you and a senior.”

  No one got something like that mixed up. Either she was a graduating senior, or she wasn’t. Though for an instant, Fiona had hoped she’d met another girl who could be her friend. It seemed anyone who was associated with her great aunt was downright odd.

  Clarissa crossed the floor and kissed Great Aunt Regina’s cheek. “See you later, Ms. Peckinpah.”

  “Yes, dear. See you both soon.”

  “Night, Great Aunt Regina,” Fiona said. “Tobias, Clarissa.” No way would she call Tobias her uncle when he wasn’t, and while they were still here, she had every intention of slipping away to the privacy of her bedroom.

  “Call me, Regina, dear,” her great aunt said, her voice low and hard. “I’ve told you repeatedly it makes me sound old when you call me your great aunt.” She smiled, but her eyes remained cold.

  “Right, Regina.” Ugh, it sounded so disrespectful, and downright weird. Fiona’s mother had taught her better.

  When Fiona reached her room, she swore she heard whispers from the living room. Was Tobias telling her great aunt she better put a tighter leash on Fiona? For whatever reason, that’s the way she felt about him. Where Clarissa seemed cheerful and sweet, he was dark and ominous. How could Clarissa like such a person?

  It took all kinds, Fiona guessed.

  She walked into her dull black and white bedroom and decided she had a new mission. If she had to live here for several more months, she wanted everything in blue like the vivid azure waters of the Caribbean. It was her room for the school year after all, wasn’t it? Surely, her great aunt wouldn’t object if she spent some of her parents' money to make the room more her own.

  The front door slammed shut, and Fiona plunked herself down on the queen-sized bed. She shoved off her shoes, but the sound of something brushing against her window caught her ear. She’d heard it last night also and vowed to see if shrubs rested next to it, while the breeze stirred the branches and scraped across the pane. Of course, she only remembered to check when it was as dark as the deepest part of the Marianna Trench out there.

  When it was light out this morning, she’d forgotten to check it out.

  She pushed her shoes back on and walked out of her room. All the candles had been extinguished. The scent of vanilla and incense still wafted in the air, and the whole house was cloaked in darkness. Her great aunt’s bedroom door was now closed, which meant she had retired to bed.

  Fiona was relieved she didn’t have to speak to Regina further tonight as she was always grilling Fiona about her grades, her friends, her life in general, and it was too late in the evening to put up with that nonsense.

  She opened the patio door to the backyard and walked outside. Except for one security light in the corner of the wooded acreage and a ghostly white half-moon clinging to the black satin night, everything was immersed in darkness or shadows.

  The breeze stirred the trees, inspiring them to sway in an unchoreographed dance, but she swore something crunched on the leaves clustered at their base. Yet, she couldn’t see anything that might have made the sound.

  An owl hooted behind her, and she whipped around, seeing no sign of the feathered fowl, but she now faced the house and her bedroom. The only thing that moved beneath her windowpane were wisps of grass that reached only a couple of inches high and caressed the red bricks near the base of the house. No shrubs sat beneath her windowsill, and the branches of a small tree perched at the corner of the house didn’t reach that far.

  Gooseflesh erupted down her arms, and she automatically rubbed them. What was the sound she’d heard last night, scraping softly against the glass?

  “Fiona,” she heard whispered on the breeze that sent a chill straight into the marrow of her bones.

  “Fiona!” Regina snapped. “Get yourself to bed. It’s not safe for you to be wandering outside alone at night.” She stood on the back porch in a black robe, her shimmering hair fanned out across her shoulders. Her shadowed face scowled, but then she lifted a brow and gave her a small smile. “All Hallows Eve, you know.”

  5

  Arman wanted in the worst way to enter Regina’s house, but he couldn’t. He had to get Fiona outside. But as soon as he finally did, that wicked Regina made her return inside. He wasn’t leaving her though. He had to reach her and get her to listen to him. He would try to communicate with her telepathically. Though it was really rare for hunters to have that ability. They had been shocked to learn that Caitlin had the ability to listen in on others’ conversations. She had never had to speak with anyone using telepathic communication until she’d learned the vampires used it to communicate with each other.

  Arman couldn’t leave just yet.

  Levka communicated to him, “We are all waiting to hear how it is going for you.” He sounded exasperated with Arman for not telling him what was going on all along.

  “I haven’t been successful. Regina is keeping tight control of Fiona.”

  “Then return to the house.”

  “I will. I’m going to try one more thing.” Arman hoped it would work. If it didn’t, he would call it a night and try again tomorrow when they were all at school. For now, he perched in the tree, watching her window, the lights out, the curtains closed. He was just glad Regina hadn’t called for backup to see if someone was coming after Fiona.

  The only thing scary about All Hallows Eve was her great aunt, Fiona decided as she returned to bed and pulled the black comforter under her chin.

  Just before she drifted off to sleep, she had the worst urge to look out her window again, but she was afraid she would wake herself too much, and she would never get back to sleep.

  Not moving from her bed, she stared at her window, straining to hear any sound. Nothing, this time. Her eyes slowly shut.

  In the darkness, blanketed in sleep, she heard someone calling to her from far, far away. Just a voice without body, a figment of her imagination—had to be.

  “Fiona, dearest, come out to me.”

  Where had she heard that voice before? Mesmerizing, intriguing, solicitous, deep, and dark like a fathomless pit.

  “I will give you everything in my power.”

  Fiona turned over in her bed and hugged her pillow to her cheek. “Who…?”

  “I am your sweetest dreams and your protector against your darkest nightmares. Take my hand and come away with me.”

  “Where? I don’t understand. I don’t know you. I⁠—"

  “Fly away with me. Together we will find⁠—"

  Fiona waited for the rest of his words, longing to hear his hypnotic voice, but silence ensued. “What do I call you?” She sighed under her breath and opened her eyes.

  The voice was so real, she felt as though the speaker had stood in her bedroom while talking to her. He was a conundrum, a revealer of nothing but riddles.

  “Not real,” she said, and closed her eyes, but then the whispers renewed. She turned her head toward the bedroom door.

  The hushed voices continued. From the living room?

  After slipping out of bed, she tugged a robe over her green tank top and matching pajama bottoms decorated in whimsical frogs wearing golden crowns and silly expressions on their green faces. Her watch indicated three. At this rate, she would never get any sleep.

  When she opened her bedroom door, a powerful spicy incense wrapped around her. She noticed at once that Regina’s bedroom door was open, and the voices continued to whisper in the living room.

  A spy she was not. The only time she’d tried to overhear what her brother and mother fought about—him telling her she needed to leave their dad for all their sakes, and her mom telling him their dad needed her—Fiona had been caught eavesdropping.

  Goose bumps trailed down her arms when she inched her way down the hall, the sound of her footsteps cushioned by the black carpeting.

  “He must be stopped,” a male voice whispered.

  “She must be the one to do it,” Regina said, her voice hushed.

  “She’s just a child.” Fiona swore it was Clarissa, the Egyptian princess, speaking.

  “You must tell her,” the man said, only this time she believed him to be Tobias.

  Her great aunt gave an abrupt laugh. “She’s entirely too headstrong. She wouldn’t listen to me or believe me, and we need her cooperation.”

  Clarissa said, “Then you will lose the chance to control her power.”

  “True and if that happens, she dies,” Tobias whispered, and he sounded like he wouldn’t regret that at all.

  Fiona’s heart hammered as she drew closer to the living room, where not a single light illuminated the darkness. When she reached the end of the hall, the voices abruptly stopped.

  For what seemed an eternity, she stared into the darkness while she leaned against the wall, wondering what everyone was doing in there. They couldn’t see her, any more than she could see them. Had she made some noise that she hadn’t detected, but they’d heard?

  She waited, hoping she would hear them leave before she attempted to go back to bed. Fearful that if she turned her attention from the living room, someone would come up behind her, yet, she felt something urged her to look toward the end of the hall.

  With a quick look, she blinked to see Regina’s bedroom door closed. She nearly had a stroke, and without waiting a moment further, she hurried back to her room.

  She slipped into bed and covered herself with her comforter, the words spoken in the living room running through her mind like a broken record. None of them made any sense. If Clarissa had been speaking about Fiona, why would she call her nothing more than a child? They were both seventeen and not children anymore.

  Who had to be stopped? A guy. But who? She shook her head. They weren’t speaking about her. Someone else. New mission. Find out who needed saving. Not that she thought she could be any help, but maybe if they let her in on the problem, she could offer…to help. What was all this business about someone having some power. And if they lost it, she would die. Was it some kind of political situation? She’d never heard Regina speak about politics though.

  Fiona yawned and closed her eyes.

  The wind grew, the scratching at her window vaguely stirred her, but she was so tired…she couldn’t fully wake.

  Then she finally drifted off to sleep and slipped into and out of dreams. Suddenly a blond-haired man appeared to her and said, “You need assistance. I’m trying to get aid for you. You must go with him. Go with him, Fiona. Don’t delay. He’ll help you get free. He’ll help you escape. You’re not safe. He’s…safer.”

  “Escape?” she tried to say to the man. But she couldn’t speak. Yet, she didn’t feel he was actually speaking to her either. More like he was sharing his words in her brain, not out loud like she had first thought. His green eyes pleaded with her, and she thought he wanted to draw closer, to hug her even.

  But she didn’t know him, yet something seemed familiar. She couldn’t figure out why. She was sure she had never met him before.

  “We want you safe. We have always wanted more than anything else for you to live a full and happy life. But now you’re in danger.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone who cares about you more than anything else in the world.”

  She felt he was speaking the truth. Who was he? He wasn’t telling her anything. Why was he keeping who he was secret from her? If she was in trouble, why not tell her what the danger was? Who he was? Why did he care? But when she tried to ask him any questions, she remained mute, unable to voice a word. She tried to force out a word, struggling, screaming, until she made a squeak and…woke herself up.

  For a moment, she just lay there, trying to figure out what was going on, not wanting to go back to sleep, not wanting to return to the weird dream she’d had.

  “Come out to me,” a man said, the same one who had spoken to her earlier, not the one in her dream. Someone who had the most glorious, appealing, and enthralling dark voice.

  But more, she thought she’d heard it before, not now, but in real life. But when? She couldn’t remember for the life of her. “Who are you?” she asked in her head, because like the man in her dream, this guy wasn’t speaking to her out loud.

  None of this could be real. Could it?

  Arman tried to reach Fiona again, shocked to the core that she could actually talk to him telepathically, but he knew Tobias would return and they would make a concerted effort to find him this time and eliminate the threat to their plans. He told her his name was Arman, but she didn’t say anything back. “Fiona? I’m Arman. I’m trying to bring you to safety.”

  He waited and she didn’t respond. “Fiona?” Arman said to Levka, “I’m returning to the house we’re renting out. I was able to reach Fiona telepathically though.”

  “No way. Really?” Levka asked.

  “Yeah, just like Caitlin. Are you sure Fiona isn’t a vampire? That would explain why we can’t control her thoughts also, if we’re wrong about her being a huntress,” Arman said.

  Stasio said, “According to the history books, she’s a huntress. But you know, they can be wrong. Or information recorded to make people believe one thing when it’s all lies.”

  “Oh, that’s not good. I thought this was a for sure thing. She seems to be asleep. Regina is asleep. Regina and Tobias don’t plan to do anything tonight. They didn’t come looking for me so I suspect they don’t know that I’ve been here,” Arman said.

  “Good,” Levka said.

  “I’m returning to the rental house.” Arman hated to leave without Fiona, but he had suspected this wasn’t going to be easy. Why hadn’t Ruric just grabbed her when he had the chance? The girlfriend would have been a witness. But Ruric could have just wiped her mind of seeing him and made her think Fiona had returned to her house.

  When he arrived at the rental house, everyone was waiting to see him. He didn’t want to talk about it any further. He was disappointed in how things had not worked out for them.

  6

  The next thing Fiona knew, it was Sunday, and it was already afternoon. She couldn’t believe it!

  Rubbing her eyes, she wondered how she had managed to sleep so late. She rolled out of bed and yanked her pajamas off, then slipped into her bra and panties, jeans, and a T-shirt, socks, and shoes. As soon as she had breakfast, er, lunch, she needed to write her social studies paper and do some, ugh, algebra.

  Hurrying down the hall, she rubbed her temple, wondering if all that had happened last night had really occurred. The scent of the pungent incense still lingered in the air. Worse, she heard the same voices in the dining room. Tobias and Clarissa?

  Groaning, Fiona had wanted to discuss things privately with Regina. That would be hard enough to do alone with her, but she really didn’t want to discuss it with the others around.