An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,28

back. “Astra can do the soul checking, and she’s got Daughter mojo to work with, too. Besides, we’re working against a foreign magic, anyway. Neither ours nor yours seems equipped to handle it.”

“Soul and I work better together,” Kelara added, then gave me a small coin which she fished out of her pocket. “Consider this a tracking device and an alarm. If you need one of us, just break it, and I’ll know where to find you.”

“Why aren’t my parents here? They should’ve been here by now… If the terrace was attacked, they would’ve come to the hospital, looking for me.” Astra nervously glanced at the path that led to the restaurant area beyond the greenery.

“I don’t know, but we will figure it out,” I told her, hiding the charmed coin in a back pocket. “We just need to be extremely careful and stay out of sight. We can’t handle large numbers of potential clones for the time being. We can’t leave anyone a note about this, either. There could be more doppelgangers roaming through The Shade, so we have to work on a case by case basis.”

She sighed heavily but didn’t disagree. “Okay. So, we head west and check the terrace first before meeting back at the Great Dome. If our people aren’t in one place, surely they’ll be in another. Soul’s right about the lack of bodies. It’s a good sign.”

“Yes. We’ll do east, including the Vale,” Voss said. “We’ve got this, cuz.”

“You’re damn right we’ve got this,” Soph replied. “There’s no way I’m letting these knockoffs cause any more trouble.”

“Paladin” had become a salute for those of us in this initial core group. We hugged one another and hoped for the best as we split into two teams and set off to find others to bring into the fold. I wanted Mom and Dad with us most of all, along with my brother and sister. Not only because they were my family, but also because they were among the most experienced in The Shade in times of crisis.

Since we couldn’t communicate in any way, I had to think of where I remembered seeing them last. I felt like we were about to go swimming blind in the ocean, but this was The Shade. There were only so many places they could be, especially right now. Anxiety crept up my spine, piercing through my innermost self and threatening to dismantle my defenses.

But I did my best to shake it off. Mom and Dad were out there. Rose. Ben. My family. I couldn’t leave them, and I certainly couldn’t allow the clones to cause any more damage to my beloved island. They’d brought the war to my doorstep, and I was ready to fight back. With Astra, Jericho, Dafne, and Soph by my side, I was confident we’d overcome anything the clones might throw at us.

Tristan

We took our time surveying the village. It was surrounded by an invisibility cloak of death magic, similar in effect to what GASP had used to conceal sensitive locations but likely different in how it worked and how it could be broken. Unending and I had agreed to keep quiet and stealthy as we looked for a way in.

Her scythe’s blade glimmered as she brought it closer to the translucent membrane. The tip pushed into it but bounced back. Everything else around us was quiet and mostly dark, with the exception of illuminated veins on nearby leaves. The jungle was signaling our presence, and it made me feel uneasy as I watched Unending trying to figure out how to breach the protective spell.

“I think I know what this is,” she whispered after a while. “I’ve seen this used before. It’s not the kind of magic I’d make with those specific words and sub-words, but I know someone who did.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

She looked at me. “Death. I think Death gave Joy the recipe for this.”

“Okay. That doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. What do we do? How do we breach it?”

Unending took a deep breath and started moving along the edge of the protective shield, carefully watching her steps. “We need to find a weak spot. I remember Death observing a small flaw in its design. The greater the surface it covers, the thinner it gets. There will be portions of it where the magical fabric is delicate enough that I can affect it with my scythe. We just need to find one of those places. The hole will heal itself, eventually. Probably in