“We’re gonna make it out of here, Frank!” Lawrence cried, but I heard the fear in his voice. He knew this was the end of the line.
Magic exploded ahead of us on the road. I swerved to avoid it, and drove right into an oncoming battle orb.
Frank jumped out of the moving vehicle with the box and managed to roll safely to the side of the road, but Lawrence and I didn’t make it in time. The battle orb collided with the engine, and the car exploded. The screams of Lawrence and I mingled with the night as the flames instantly overtook the car, singing our marble bodies to ash.
My eyes shot open.I hurried to touch my skin, certain the flames were still licking up my sides.
They were gone. That had happened in the past, over a hundred years ago, and I was Ava-Marie now, not Lucille.
I managed to sit up. Charlie blinked a few times as he came to, and he instinctively reached for my hand. I took it. The feelings that flowed to him to me through our bond werepowerful. We both remembered details of previous lifetimes, and though we couldn’t remember everything, I knew we’d loved each other back then as much as we did now.
Amber gasped above me. Her orangutan Familiar was slumped on the ground, taking shallow breaths.
“Are you all right?” Wykoff asked in concern, and she laid a hand on Amber’s back.
“I barely got through,” Amber said weakly. “The ancestors nearly didn’t respond to my request.”
She put a hand on her Familiar, to steady her. Undergoing the ancestral chant and calling to the ancestors for aid had completely worn Professor Amber out. What she’d done had been difficult magic. She must be a talented supernatural for her to pull this spell off, especially since she’d had to reach past the broken boundary between Earth and the spiritual realm for the ancestors to hear her.
Oberi had changed into her phoenix form sometime during the meditation. She blinked her cool eyes and ruffled her feathers, seemingly puzzled.
“I had multiple visions,” I said, and I looked at my husband. “What about you, Charlie?”
“I did, too,” he confirmed. “In the first one, we were Hawkei Elders. Oberi was there. We spoke Hawkei, and though I don’t know it, in the vision, I understood every word. We hid the key in a waterfall outside of Kinpago, because the ancestors had told us it would be safe there.”
“I experienced it just like you said,” I added. “Did you see the second vision, during the 1920s?”
“Yeah. But we didn’t get to the end of that one,” Charlie said darkly.
Hell no, we hadn’t. We’d died in a flaming car wreck. “Masci Taurus— the Warden’s father— he sent those men to kill us. He knew we had the vampire key. And that vampire who leapt outof the car with the key. Frank Coffrey— I remember his name,” I said. “Do you think that was?—?”
“It was definitely Chancey,” Charlie confirmed. “I felt it, in my spirit. He was helping us. He must’ve died at some point after he took the key. That’s why he’s reincarnated now, as an angel.”
“We were taking the key to some vault in Paris. Do you think Frank got the key to the vault before he died, or do you think Masci killed him first?” I asked.
“Either are possible,” Charlie said. “We can’t be sure.”
“But we do know that in our previous life, we did our best to hide the vampire key,” I insisted. “I think I can recall the name of the bank. It was theBanque Surnaturelle de Paris.We need to check to see if it’s still there now, and if Frank made the deposit.”
“I’ll tell my team to look into it right away,” Charlie said. “At least we’re making progress.”
“I’m glad you guys got some clues. I didn’t see anything,” Kallie said. “My mind was blank.”
“Marcus?” I asked. “What did you see?”
He cleared his throat. “I… I saw…”
He jumped to his feet and swallowed visibly. “You know what? It’s nothing.”
Without another explanation, Marcus ran out of the training arena. Kallie’s expression became deeply concerned.
Wykoff helped Amber to walk, and the orangutan Familiar hobbled after. “I think we’ve covered enough today. Well done, Charlie and Ava. Hopefully this tip about the bank vault will lead us somewhere.”
“Are you going after Marcus?” I asked Kallie as she stood. Charlie helped me back into my chair. Kallie paused for a second before shaking her head.
“No,” she stated. “I can’t quite be sure, but I think whatever he saw has something to do with me. We still share a bond. Andif I didn’t see what he did, that means he’s either blocking me out, or I wasn’t around to witness whatever he did back then.”
There were no clear answers, and until Marcus fessed up, we weren’t getting any.
