Present Tense (Out of the Fire #3) - Candace Blevins Page 0,123

so she hadn’t bought anything. What had Fabio done?

Less than a minute later, she had her answer in the form of a deep blue brand-spanking-new Dodge Charger. She clicked the unlock button on her key fob, opened the door, and slid into the driver’s seat.

“The trunk has been modified a little,” Fabio told her, “so it’s reinforced and light-tight. If you happen to find yourself out past sunrise, you can take refuge in the trunk. Once you’re in, it’s nearly impossible to open from the outside. There’s an access to do it, but it’s a hidden mechanism. If someone knows about the mechanism, they’ll also know not to open the trunk unless the car is out of the daylight.”

“You can open it easily enough from the inside,” Eunice added. “Oh, and there’s a gun safe hidden under the dash, to the right of the steering wheel.”

James leaned down so he could meet her gaze. “Playtime’s over. Kiss him and thank him and then we go back inside so you can open your next gift.”

She’d put the key fob in her bra, and she checked to make sure it was there before she closed the door. It wouldn’t do to lock her key in her new car before she’d even driven it. She jumped into Fabio’s arms and wrapped her legs and arms around him. “Thank you so much. I love it! I’d been debating between that color and the deep red, and I’m glad you picked the dark blue. It’s perfect.”

When everyone had taken their seat in the living room again, she looked around at the room, and at them. “Guys, my heart is so full right now. This room, all of you. I never expected to find a family when I came to America.”

Before she got too terribly emotional, she tore into Eunice’s gift, which turned out to be two boxes wrapped together — and then sucked air in when she recognized one of the boxes. Middle-earth. Had Eunice bought her something from the movie as well? The other box was clearly jewelry, but she focused on the ancient looking one first, with a picture of a mallorn tree on the outside. She looked up to Eunice, much as he’d done when he’d read the Elven script on his gift, and then looked back down and opened the smaller box.

And held her breath as she took the brooch out. In the movie, the Fellowship were gifted with cloaks and brooches by the elves of Lothlorien. The brooches were in the shape of the leaves of a mallorn tree, and they were beautiful. The movie versions weren’t made exactly as they’d been described in the book, but she didn’t care. It was perfect.

“That one is from the movie,” Eunice told her. “Your other gift is not. It’s a custom piece I had a jeweler make.”

She set the brooch aside and looked at the box. It was the size of a ring box, and she now paid attention to the gold writing on the white box. In Elvish, large and bold, Nenya, and then below, as if a signature, Celebrimbor.

Nenya was the Ring of Adamant, one of the three elven rings — the one worn by The Lady Galadriel, in Lothlorien. The elven rings were made by Celebrimbor.

She opened the box and lifted the ring. It looked silver, but she knew it wouldn’t be. It was probably titanium, and she focused on the fact the diamond setting looked both like a flower and a star. Then she focused on the diamond, and her vampire eyes told her it was nearly flawless, and that — somehow — he’d infused power into it.

She looked up to him in wonder. “What have you done?”

He grinned. “Blood magic, done in sunshine. My blood. Kirsten helped me with it, so it’s a ring of power for real. Kind of.”

She put it on and had honest-to-goodness goose bumps. She smelled the sunshine, the green of the forest, and she felt the cycle of life as it pertained to trees, growing from the nutrients in the soil, water, and sunlight. Reaching for the sky, putting out seeds in whatever form — flower or cone or nut — and then eventually falling, rotting into the ground, becoming earth again, so another tree could grow from those nutrients. Vampires are taken out of the circle of life, but she had it on her finger, in the form of a circle, and she was speechless. All she could do was hug