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“That’s good and all,” I muttered. “But what are you going to say to everyone once they wake up? How are you going to explain what you did to them?”
She hesitated, eyebrows drawn together, and then she finally shrugged. “Dane and Gretchen will come to their own assumption about the spell. But I need you to help my father. I know he’s trapped, and Dane told me he senses my father’s despair.”
Sadness filled her features for a split second before her expression firmed and shoulders squared. “You’re only thinking of yourself and Kipp. I can’t allow you to do that anymore. Now I have a way to ensure you save my father before you do Kipp.”
My crushing headache showed itself again with a deep throb to the front of my skull. I had already solved her father’s murder, and if the damn woman hadn’t done what she’d done, she probably would’ve known that.
For now, I kept that little information to myself, since her haughty half-grin concerned me. “Which is?”
Her chin lifted. “I’ve taken your ghost out of the Netherworld and have him trapped at another location.”
I blinked at her. Of all the things I expected her to say, no matter this was all entirely confusing and frustrating, what she told me now wasn’t anything I could’ve dreamed up. “Say what?”
“Your ghost, Kipp,” she repeated, and her expression twisted. “How do you think he suddenly returned to you the other night? Who do you think is responsible for bringing him back?”
A slow slide of worry washed over me like a nasty heat wave. Even if I knew what she proposed was impossible, since I’d seen Kipp leave the Netherworld. For the oddest reason I couldn’t pinpoint, her admission scared me stiff.
I shook my head to stop the slow spin creating a horrible hard feeling in my stomach. “You were the one who pulled him out of the Netherworld?”
She nodded.
Of all the possible scenarios that had gone through my mind when Kipp suddenly arrived at the end of bed at the Animus headquarters, this truth wasn’t anything I could’ve possibly imagined. Amelia had been welcoming to me, and was the only person at the Animus I didn’t mind, besides Gretchen and now Dane, too.
Sure, Amelia seemed pushy and urgent to solve her father’s murder, but I understood that well enough, who wouldn’t be? What I couldn’t believe was that she’d gone to these extremes to ensure I helped her. I expected this from Wayde, not from Amelia.
I could only gape at her, as she added, “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I forced Kipp’s return so you could witness the power I hold. So, you’d believe me now when I told you this.” Her stare on me became ice cold. “And to show you what I can take away.”
“Well, you’re right.” I rubbed at my temples as the pain in my head became intense. “It did prove the power you hold. But you’re also wrong—Kipp isn’t trapped anywhere except back in his body, which is in a Memphis hospital.”
“Impossible.” Her eyes widened in surprise. “After the spell put you all to sleep, I did a spell to call him to me and placed him in another location.”
Again, I could only gawk at her as the flashlight lit up the left side of her face, while the other side remained in the shadows.
Could that be true?
I pondered the possibility of her statement. However, I couldn’t see that in the exact second Kipp had made the decision in the Netherworld to join his body, Amelia had done a spell that sucked him out.
Kipp had always said he didn’t believe in coincidences, and this one seemed so far out there, but a scary truth rose. I still didn’t know if Kipp had been saved, and I wasn’t confident it had worked.
Amelia’s spell to pull him out of the Netherworld actually seemed a much more likely scenario to my logical mind than that his soul returned to his body. “How do you know you’ve trapped him?”
“Because I did the spell.” She snorted, flicking her hai
r over her shoulder. “It’s why I had to leave you down here. I had to do the spell outside, and it’s complicated so it held me up. Plus, I had to wait for the spell to wear off you, too.” She waved out to the others. “I put another spell on them before I left to keep them asleep.”
Was that proof enough?
She could’ve done the spell, but it didn’t mean it had worked. Unless she saw Kipp—which she couldn’t—then there was no way she could know for sure.
I pressed harder against my temple, watching her shift uneasily on her feet. Christ, I had reached my limit of going through this emotional roller coaster of could be’s, what if’s, and maybe’s.
Besides, now, she had me worrying. As far as I’d seen, and from what Nettie had thought, Kipp had returned to his body, but perhaps that hadn’t happened at all. Maybe the time he vanished was also the same time Amelia trapped him.
Had the biggest of all coincidences happened?
With all that hanging over my head, and the sudden realization I had no clue what was true, I felt more exhausted than I ever had in my entire life. I had allowed hope to creep up and my heart couldn’t possible bear the thought that Nettie had been wrong.
I lowered my hand from my temple into my lap and even I heard the misery in my voice. “What do you want, Amelia?”
