Power (Soul Savers) (27 page)

Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. It’s not all about
you. I don’t want any of you to know all the things I’ve done in the past. This
life is gonna be hard enough without everyone’s judgments.”

“It’s not our place to judge,” I said. “If it were, you
wouldn’t be here.”

Sheree threw an annoyed glare at me before turning to our
patient. “She’s right—the Amadis don’t judge, I mean. Our place is to
help you reclaim your soul so it can be saved, and then simply to love you.
After all, pretty much everyone in the Amadis has committed some of the worst
sins and crimes imaginable.”

“Except little miss perfect,” Vanessa sneered, her hand
twitching toward me.

“I thought this wasn’t about me,” I retorted. After another
warning glance from Sheree, I cleared my throat and added, “
Nobody’s
perfect. Not me, for sure. And
we already know you’ve murdered, lusted, envied, stolen … I’m sure the list
goes on.”

Vanessa hissed at the accusations but didn’t deny them. “Why
don’t you confess for me, if you know so much?”

I rested my hands on my hips. “I’m just saying that we’re
not stupid and God isn’t blind. The thing is, you’re
here
. That means more than anything you’ve done in the past. We’ve
already forgiven you, Vanessa. Don’t you get it?”

“If everyone knows, including
God
, why do I have to confess?”

“Because
you
need
to know,” Sheree said. “You can’t repent if you don’t know what you’re
repenting for.”

Vanessa looked out the window. “Like I said, I’ve been
working on it on my own.”

We let it go that day, but a week later, Sheree tried again.
Vanessa gave us the same response.

“It’s between God and me,” she said. “I won’t do it with
you, so forget that idea. But you know I’m serious. You know I want nothing
more than to put this all behind me and never think about it again.”

Sheree and I exchanged a look, both of us at a loss. We
couldn’t force Vanessa to voice her sins to us. We could only do so much for
her, and beyond that, this was like most things in life—she’d get out of
it what she personally put into it. If she really wanted to heal her soul, she
couldn’t avoid this step, whether she did it with us or without.

“As long as you know what needs to be done so you can move
on,” Sheree said with resignation. Then her tone perked up. “Once you get
through all this, do you want to change your name, like Tristan did?”

Vanessa’s eyes snapped toward Sheree’s, and she cocked her
head, as if considering this idea for the first time.

“No,” she finally said. “I always thought my name sounded
kind of like a combination of valor and strength. It doesn’t mean that, but
maybe that’s why it was given to me. Maybe I’m still being stupid, but valor
and strength—they have a special meaning to me.” She must have read my
expression that I was impressed, because she added, “Yeah. Believe it or not, I
have values. What the fuck of it?”

I withheld a snarky retort and smiled sweetly instead. “What
do you value now, Vanessa? Do you value the Amadis?”

She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “I’m supposed to say
yes
, but I feel like you’re setting me
up.”

“No, I’m not. I’m hoping you really do value us all. You’re
one of us now, right?”

“That’s what I’m doing here, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” I agreed. “So you understand all that it
means—that the Daemoni are now your enemy?”

Her eyes flickered, and she swallowed before nodding. “When
they find out what I’ve done … that I’m with you … they’ll kill me.”

“But we’ll protect you. We’re always here for you. At least,
that’s the plan. But you’re a vampire, which means you’ll likely outlive most
of us. The future of the Amadis is
your
future.”

She chuckled but without humor. “I get where you’re
going—you need the fertility stone. I can’t believe I let you lead me
through all this BS.”

“It’s not BS,” I said. “If we don’t have the stone, we don’t
have a future.”

“Well, let’s hope someone figures something out, because I
can’t help you. I don’t know where it is.”

“Did you lose it?”

She groaned with exasperation. “I haven’t seen it in months,
okay? In fact, the last time I saw it was before I saw you and Se—Tristan
in South Beach. End of story.”

She hadn’t exactly answered my question about losing it, and
she’d learned, probably from Owen, to focus her mind on mundane subjects when
she thought I might be poking around her mind. Right now she thought hard about
the color of the tile in her room, whether she would call it toffee or
coffee-with-cream or flesh. But her intense efforts to avoid thinking about the
stone meant she hid something. So
did
she lose it? Or did she know exactly where it was but had some reason to keep
it from us?

“Can I be alone now?” she asked. “I have some talking to do
with God, right?”

With a shake of my head, I strode out of the room, my work
done here for the day. Sheree followed me out.

“I think she’s telling the truth,” she said as we walked
together toward my office. “About working on it on her own. She’s made too much
progress otherwise.”

“Every time I assess her, her Amadis power is stronger, so
there’s no doubt.” I opened my office door, and we both entered the elaborate
room.

“I feel her strength, too,” Sheree said as she stepped up to
the front of my oversized, cherry-wood desk as I walked around it. “So … uh …”

She picked up a ceramic bowl Dorian had made for me when he
was in kindergarten and studied it as though it might have come from another
planet.

I sat in the leather executive chair, folded my hands on the
desk and eyed her, feeling all boss-like. “You’re stalling. Spill it.”

“Well, I know you postponed the whole Sonya-Heather thing
because of Vanessa and not knowing if she’d freak out on us and go on a
rampage. But she’s doing so well. You just said so yourself.”

I already knew where this headed, so I nodded. “Vanessa’s
probably more harmless than Sonya. You think Heather should come for a visit?”

Sheree put the bowl down, then wrung her hands as she looked
at me sheepishly. “I promised Sonya I’d ask you. Of course, she can’t
leave—I don’t trust her out of the safe house yet—but I think it
would be safe if Heather came here. With you and Tristan in the room, too, of
course,” she quickly added.

I leaned back in my chair. “You still think seeing Heather
will help her make a breakthrough?”

“She’s in a better mood every time they talk on the phone.
The effect is temporary, but maybe seeing her, being with her … maybe even
getting to hug her … with all that, we might see more lasting effects.”

“Well, then, I guess we give it a try.”

Sheree’s face broke into a big grin. “She’ll be so happy
about this! This could be it for her, Alexis. She really does need this.”

The way she practically bounced out of the room and down the
hall toward Sonya’s wing made me think of Tigger, and I giggled. But then the
weight of it all pressed down on me. I crossed my arms on my desk and lay my
forehead against them. What if we were wrong about Sonya? Or Vanessa? What if I
was putting Heather’s life at risk?

A longing to talk to Charlotte, Mom, or Rina suddenly overcame
me. I wished they could be here to provide guidance. I’d managed to convert
Vanessa and run this place, though barely occupied, without them, but I often
felt so alone. Tristan helped where he could, but ultimately, the decisions
were left up to me, and so many of them felt like life-or-death. So many lives
in my hands. And this was only a tiny hint of what I’d have to face when I
became matriarch.
How does Rina do it?

I lifted my head enough to rest my chin on my arms, and my
gaze swept over my office. When we first purchased the mansion for the Amadis,
I’d thought I should decorate my office like Rina’s, with a solid but elegant
wood desk, lots of bookcases, and a fancy seating area, hoping the look would
grow on me. But it hadn’t yet, and I seriously considered redecorating in
purple and black zebra stripes. At least something more
me
, because, although it looked like Rina’s space, the wisdom and
sophistication it represented hadn’t rubbed off. Not yet. I wondered if it ever
would.
Will I ever be the leader Rina is?

Without lifting my head, I reached out with one arm and slid
my cell phone from the corner of the desk to the space in front of me and
stared at it for a long moment. The temptation to call my mom nearly
overwhelmed me. It was almost midnight on the Amadis Island, not terribly late.
Surely she wouldn’t mind a call from her daughter at any time of day or night.
But what would I say? That this was too much for me to handle on my own? That I
needed my mommy? Of course, then she’d want to know everything going on, and
since there’s no point in lying to her, I’d have to tell her about Vanessa and
converting her by myself, defying all of their specific requests, let alone
betraying the people here who trusted me with their safety. No, I couldn’t call
my mom, not even to hear her voice. She’d know immediately something was wrong.

So I picked up the phone with a sigh, sat up straight and
called Heather instead.

“Telepathy, huh?” Heather asked me as she sat on the couch
in my office, and stared up at Tristan and me.

I’d never told her about my gift before because even our
kind, who knew the ability existed, had issues with it. Vanessa served as a
prime example. But Tristan had pointed out that we could use it to our
advantage during this supervised visit.

“I’m not going to listen to your every thought,” I said,
“but if you feel frightened or simply uncomfortable, you can silently tell me.”

She squinted her eyes as she considered my suggestion.
“Because if she knows I’m afraid, it would upset her.”

“She’ll smell your fear as soon as you feel it,” Tristan
said, “and yes, she’ll feed off of it. But if you don’t panic, it’d be a lot
easier to get you out of there. If you feel at all that you don’t want to be
there, silently tell Alexis.”

“Okay,” she said simply. “Now, can I see her?”

Tristan and I flanked her sides as we took her to Sonya’s
room, where Sheree waited outside the door. I’d wanted Owen there, as well, but
we’d decided he’d better stay with Vanessa, just in case she caught a whiff of
Heather’s human scent and freaked out. Sheree stepped inside and closed the
door for a minute or so, then opened it wide.

Sonya sat on her loveseat, dressed in street clothes and a
smile. Heather lurched forward, as if to run to her sister, but caught herself.

“It’s okay,” Sonya said, her grin widening as she spread her
arms open. “I promise not to bite you.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Heather ran into her older
sister’s arms. They laughed and cried and talked at the same time, overjoyed to
be reunited. I couldn’t help smiling myself, and a peek out of the corner of my
eye caught Tristan grinning, too. With everything we’d been through with
Sonya—the ups and downs, the mood swings, the worry that she’d never
complete the conversion, and the more permanent concern that she may never be
able to live in Norman society again—this made everything worth it.

They chatted on and on, sometimes pulling Sheree, Tristan,
and me into their conversation, but mostly reminiscing about childhood
memories. Sheree eventually made herself comfortable in the chair by the bed,
and Tristan and I shared the chair by the loveseat, me in his lap. We talked
and laughed, not realizing how much time had passed.

“
Alexis!
” Owen’s
voice called into my mind.

Yeah?

“
Sun goes down in an
hour. Things could get bad fast.
”

It’s going
really—

“
Sonya’s not the only
vampire in the house!
” If the words didn’t alarm me, the warning in his
tone did.

I jumped out of Tristan’s lap. “Sorry, girls, but time’s
up.”

Heather looked up at me with puppy-dog eyes. “Just another
hour. Please?”

“Or two?” Sonya asked.

“Maybe I could stay for din—” Heather stopped herself
as she realized what she was about to say—or possibly offer. Her hand
flew to her mouth, and her eyes grew wide as Frisbees.

Sonya laughed. “I don’t want
you
for dinner!”

“No, but we’re taking no chances,” I said. “Sunset isn’t far
off.”

And that was so the wrong thing to say.

Heather understood the exact meaning of my words, and, with
no warning, her fear spiked. Sonya’s nose twitched and her face became stone at
the scent. Her hand went to her throat, and her eyes changed, growing deadly
serious. Tristan and I both moved, grabbing Heather by the arms and pulling her
away from the vampire, but then Sonya exploded into laughter.

“Kidding!” she screeched.

We all froze and stared at her for several loud heartbeats,
then Heather burst into a fit of giggles.

“You … were always … so good … at getting me,” the younger
girl gasped, doubling over. “I’ll never forget …” And completely relaxed again,
she delved into a story from when they’d gone camping with their grandparents.

“
Alexis!
” Owen
called out again. “
Seriously. If you
don’t get that Norman out of here now—
” His voice went from mental to
audible, but since our minds were connected, I still heard him. “Vanessa! Relax!”

Oh, crap!
Through
Owen’s eyes, I saw Vanessa blurring around her room in an angry maelstrom. The
warlock knew powerful magic—he’d restrained Tristan for hours, after
all—but again, I’d take no chances with Heather.

“Now!” I barked, grabbing Heather’s upper arm once again and
pulling her back toward the door. “Sorry, but no time for goodbyes.”