Page 62 of Vampire Visions

Sloane lifted her shirt to her nose, wrinkling her forehead as she sniffed. “What do I smell like?”

Grim rolled his eyes at her. “About forty-seven different things, but none of them were bad.”

“Uhm, right…” She dismissed his words with a wave of her hand. “So, Blaire likes to shop. You could have warned me about that.” She pinned exhausted eyes on Novak. “She bought a ridiculous amount of shit. I bought a pair of shoes.”

“You mean you replaced a pair of shoes that Helios ate.” Jack laughed as he called her out.

“Yep, that.” She grinned at Jack. I scooted my chair back, patting my leg for her to come and sit down, since we’d taken up all the chairs. Strolling around the table, she draped herself across my lap and laid her head on my shoulder. “I’m fucking tired. I didn’t realize that shopping was a sport. Blaire needs a gold metal. Bitch has stamina for days.”

“Speaking of Blaire, what did she say to you, Novak?” Vaughn asked. “Before you fought Gideon.”

We watched him close his eyes and shake his head. “She told me that he used something she called a ‘date rape spell’ on females that he wanted to fuck. He’d tried to use it on her the last time she was in town, but she’d been with a friend who was able to break his hold on her.”

Sloane snorted. “That’s a good name for it.”

“What do you mean?” Briggs focused on her, and I felt her take a deep breath.

“Well.” She sighed. “Gideon had trouble getting dates.”

Jack huffed his disagreement. “That’s an understatement, and you know it.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking at the sky for a moment before she picked her explanation back up. “So, he made this spell, right? To help him get the suitors he thought he deserved. Blaire’s right to call it a date rape spell.”

“What does the spell do?” I asked her softly, running my hand up and down her back.

“It made his targets lust after him, and it didn’t end until he said it did.” Sloane shook her head. “It’s kind of what I imagine a love spell would be like if it was mixed with blind trust and obsession. You wouldn’t know that you’d been hooked until he released his hold over you or someone else broke it. That’s what happened with me, anyway.”

Stone looked downright murderous. Not at Sloane, but for her. “He used that on you?”

“Yes, but I’ve never really felt like a victim. I wouldn’t have been with him if I hadn’t been so blissfully unaware of what was happening.”

“It was seven months, Lo.” Jack gently recalled, sounding like he was reminding her.

“I know, but it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t remember any of it.” She shrugged. “One day, he stopped Jack and me to ‘talk’ after seeing my father. And the next, I hated him just like I always had. There’s no in between for me. It’s lost time that I don’t want back. It could’ve been worse. I could recall the months I spent trapped with him, but I don’t, so I’m calling that a win. He’s dead now, and the female vampire population can breathe a little easier knowing that he isn’t prowling around with his date rape spell at the ready.”

Novak fisted his hands on top of the table. “I wish he was still alive so I could kill him again. Slower, now that I know all that.”

Briggs nodded his understanding. “I see why you fucked his car up. Why didn’t you kill him?”

She tossed her hand out to the side, palm up. “I had no proof that he was the one who’d spelled me.”

“Yeah, she burned his house to the ground, though. With him inside.” Jack gave her a proud smile. “They couldn’t prove that she did it, but there was supposedly a witness that watched her total out his car.”

Sloane grinned, shaking her head at her memories. “Lies. They may have seen me steal it from his driveway, but they didn’t see anything else.”

Jack pulled his hand over his mouth, gleefully stage whispering, “She took it to one of those auto impound places, and crushed it into a cube. Then she left it on his doorstep.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Anyway… when are we going home?”

“You should teach them how to travel through the Void.” Jack’s recommendation caught me off guard. “Grim and I will bring the Nav back, but for the love of everything unholy, take those fucking hounds with you. I will not drive eight hours with those assholes in the car.”

“Teach us ta travel through the Void?” I parroted back, unclear about what he meant. Sloane sighed, snuggling closer into my lap, and Grim shook his head, grinning at her.

“Lo can step through the Void similar to how a reaper does. She doesn’t follow death like a reaper would, though,” Jack answered, confusing me further. “Basically, you have to look at this like a map with pins in it. Places that she travels to frequently, she puts a pin in. Then she’s able to step through the Void and get to those places, but she can’t get just anywhere like that. She sets up a magical calling card of sorts so the place will recognize her. We were also taught to do that with each other. That’s how Grim and I were able to travel through the Void to the exact location of that power farm in Kentucky without actually knowing where it was.”

Stone looked thoughtful throughout Jack’s explanation. “So you put a type of tracker on each other?”

“Kinda,” Sloane mumbled against my neck.