A Search for Death (A Shade of Vampire #73) - Bella Forrest Page 0,4

finger in that direction. “Come on, he’s looking right at us.”

But there wasn’t anyone there. Not even a silhouette or a shadow. I, for one, was downright puzzled. Amelia, on the other hand, was getting genuinely alarmed. She glanced around, then gasped.

“What?” Raphael blurted, on the edge of his seat, so to speak.

“Oh, come on, you can’t see them?” Amelia croaked. “There are people here! Not just that guy, but all around us.” She started pointing in different directions. “Four over there. Two there. A few more on that side. I can’t be the only one seeing them! You guys should be able to see them, too!”

“Amelia, I swear, we can’t,” Lumi said, trying to reassure her, though she was clearly baffled. “What… What do they look like? Can you describe them to us? What are they doing?”

Amelia chuckled nervously and covered her mouth for a moment. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and popped them open again. The tremor in her lower lip didn’t go away. Judging by her expression alone, she could still see them.

“They’re not… They’re not doing anything. Just standing there and watching us. Only, they’re not full… Gah, how do I explain this?” she stammered. “They’re… translucent… half-visible… like holographs. And they look different. Some are young, some are elderly. Male, female. Kids. Different species, too,” she added, turning around several times, as if to take it all in. “I see humanoids… maybe Imen and people of Earth. Fae… I see a couple of daemons… Hell, there’s a couple of species I certainly don’t recognize. This is weird. And creepy!”

Raphael put his arm around her and held her close. I amplified my fire enough to cast a brighter light around us. Lumi helped, and we lit the forest up on a hundred-yard radius. We noticed animals rushing left and right, but certainly none of the people Amelia had just described.

It hit me, then, what this could be. But it was highly improbable, since there were no actual accounts recorded in GASP of such sightings.

“Could she be seeing… ghosts?” I asked out loud.

Lumi was the first to react. “I’ve never heard of people actually seeing them. Regardless of their species. Maybe feeling them, sometimes, in certain conditions,” she said. “Of course, every culture has its folktales about the dead and the afterlife.”

“Okay, now they’re gone,” Amelia snapped, putting her hands on her hips. She gave me a worried look. “Am I losing my mind?”

Did I have an answer for that? No, I didn’t. Multiple possibilities thundered in my mind. Visions. Actual ghosts. Hallucinations. Mirages. Projections from some kind of spell. But nothing else happened—a magic offensive seemed rather far-fetched.

Maybe they were just local creatures. Or, perhaps, Amelia was right. Maybe she was suffering from some kind of breakdown. I found that even harder to believe than the idea that a witch was messing with us, though. Amelia’s psyche was ironclad. Everything that had happened to us so far would’ve been enough to send a human off the deep end, but certainly not a creature like Amelia.

No, something else was going on here, and it warranted further investigation. Since we were still waiting for a sign from Phoenix, we basically had nothing better to do. I advised our group to keep moving and pay attention. Something told me this wasn’t the last sighting Amelia would come across, and my instinct was rarely wrong.

Eva

In a way, my experience in the Volcrun caves had transformed me. I was no longer the Eva who had first gone down there. I found myself in awe of Kabbah, Nevertide’s Earth Hermessi. He was old and powerful—enough to deter the other Hermessi from attacking him. It didn’t stop them from coming after us, sure, but Kabbah sent a clear message across when he obliterated their Shills. Fortunately, his brethren’s desperation to kill us had made him tell us about Death.

I was inclined to believe that Kabbah wanted to do more, but, since they held his daughter hostage, he didn’t dare. He hid behind that grumpy and uncaring façade, but deep down, I knew he was worried. He’d been against the first ritual. He couldn’t be okay with this one, either.

But what had really changed me was my own interaction with him. I’d been fearless—or, better said, numb. Kabbah could’ve easily crushed me for my insolence, but I stood by every word I’d said to him, and it seemed to have earned me his respect. I wondered if he would’ve been as