He frowned. She is a young vamp we recruited about five years ago, isn't she?
Yes. I promoted her to my personal staff last year. Last week she tried to kill me in my sleep. Then she didn't know you as well as she thought. Or she'd have known Seline never slept without at least two protection spells being active.
Few people know that. Most think I set only one spell, and I prefer to keep it that way. It was the second spell that caught her. She'd gotten past the first.
How? Nadine wasn't a witch, and few on your staff know much about magic. Only Camille, and as acidic and annoying as the colorful crone could sometimes be, Michael trusted her—not only with Seline's safety, but Nikki's. Which is why Camille was here supervising Nikki's training rather than the usual trainers.
Someone obviously taught her enough to pass common protection spells. So did she say why she wanted to kill you?
No. And interrogation proved useless. Whoever sent her made sure they'd erased that section of her memories.
Then you still have no idea who is behind the attack?
No. Seline hesitated. But I've had more visions, and I'm more than certain my suspicions are correct.
And those suspicions are? In the room below, Nikki took another step. Michael found himself clenching his fists again, and he flexed them, trying to relax. Which was hard to do when her fear was all but smothering.
He was tempted, so very tempted, to stop the test, run down there, and ask what the hell was wrong. Only the knowledge that she'd be furious, that she'd think he was still trying to prevent her from joining him on his missions, stopped him.
Remember Hartwood? Seline asked.
Of course. We watched it burn together, remember.
Then you remember Emmett Dunleavy?
He smiled grimly. How could he forget him? The bastard had killed Christine, one of the few people Michael had cared about in those dark years, a woman he'd spent ten years loving. Worse still, Emmett had turned her into one of the living dead.
He'd spent twenty years hunting Emmett down and a week making him pay. I killed him, then I burned him, and then I consigned his soul back to the hell it came from . All of which Seline knew, because she'd been by his side during the hunt in Hartwood. What neither of us knew at the time was that Emmett had a twin—Weylin. Emmett died just over a hundred years ago. Surely if Weylin Dunleavy intended revenge over his brother's death, he would have done something before now.