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She glanced again at Arman. She remembered vague visions, surreal, oddball dreams, nightmares too, and Arman looked like the man of those dreams. And she remembered more—kissing him and feeling safe in his arms. “Alright, but when we get to Dallas, I want to speak to the police about my brother.”
“We can certainly make arrangements for that,” Levka said.
“What about my clothes?” Fiona asked, as the others packed their backpacks.
“You can use our money to buy whatever you need when we reach our destination,” Levka said.
Then, before she was ready to move again, Arman wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll be stopping a few times because it’s too far to travel in a day for us.”
“Next stop, Nevada,” Levka said, and then they all vanished.
They were flying, Fiona realized, but she couldn’t see anyone or herself even. They were just soaring above the world, the wind in their faces, clouds cloaking them, Arman’s arms around her, keeping her safe.
“Caitlin made us invisible so that we can fly without anyone seeing us,” Arman said. “Normally, we would only fly at night. Another thing we need to mention to you. Your family—mother, father, and brother—weren’t blood relations.”
“What?” The story kept changing. Okay, so Regina had told Fiona that her father hadn’t been her father, and her brother was a half brother, but she’d said her mother was her mother. “Regina told me my father wasn’t really my father, but my mother was really my mother.”
“Regina lied.”
Fiona didn’t know what to believe anymore. “She said Tobias was my father.”
“Another lie. Tobias isn’t either,” Arman said again. “And Regina isn’t related to you at all.”
“I didn’t believe Tobias was. Regina? I’m glad she’s not. But my mother and Justin?” This was just too unreal. Yet Fiona had often thought that she didn’t look like anyone in the family, her mother, father, and brother having had dark hair and eyes while she had blond hair and green eyes.
“No. He wasn’t any relation to you, and the woman who claimed she was your mother wasn’t either,” Arman said. “You were placed with the family for safekeeping.”
“My father, or the man pretending to be my father, was a drunk. He beat my mother. How would my real parents have thought that was a safe place for me to grow up? Wait, so if my parents placed me with them, are they alive?” Fiona hoped that she still had a family.
“It’s possible. We’ll use every resource available to us to learn the truth,” Arman said. “I don’t know why they would have picked that particular family to be your foster parents. They probably didn’t know about your foster father’s alcohol problem and other abuses.”
Fiona didn’t entirely trust these people.
Then Arman started explaining how he and the other guys with him had been turned into vampires by the Black Death, but that some had survived as humans, and others were hunters of rogue vampires.
“But Jasmine is a vampire, and she hunts vampires,” Fiona said, at least so they said.
“Right.” Arman explained about the League of Vampires in various places in the States and also around the world.
When they finally arrived in Nevada, they stayed at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas, and this was where it got kind of dicey. Arman wanted to stay with Fiona. She wasn’t staying with anyone but a female. Caitlin was obviously with Levka who had mentioned saving her life, and Fiona could see that Stasio was with Jasmine. But both ladies said they would stay with her and keep her safe.
Fiona was glad for it. She hadn’t ever had a decent relationship with a guy before and she wasn’t going to jump into one like this when she still wasn’t sure about these people. They were vampires! What if Arman wanted to feed off her in the middle of the night? At least she thought she would feel safer with Caitlin and Jasmine.
Fiona suddenly remembered that she had left Emma behind without a word that she was going to disappear. “What about my friend?” She felt terrible that she’d forgotten all about Emma.
“We were in her class,” Jasmine said, “and we convinced her that you didn’t exist.”
“What?”
“You can’t go back there. It’s too dangerous for you.” Jasmine abruptly changed the topic. “Let’s go. We need to shop and pick up what you need in the line of clothes and personal items.”
“They had to do the same thing with my foster parents and foster sister,” Caitlin told Fiona, sounding sympathetic. “That way no one’s looking for us, thinking we were kidnapped, or were just runaways.”
“What about school?” All this was just sinking in for Fiona.
“I am taking advanced college-level witch’s training,” Caitlin said. “All online. We can find an online curriculum for you too. Regular education, of course. Not witch’s training.”
“The Black Death was a long time ago. How long have you been with them?” Fiona asked them as they found a shop to go into that had extravagantly-priced jeans and jackets—really high dollar items. She was going to leave, but Jasmine stopped her.
