“Warning,” her strange, ghostly voice replies. “Need to warn you…” She trails off and tumbles to her knees. Her form quivers in and out of sight, like she’s losing energy. Shit! I stand up from the table instinctively and go to her. But my hand just goes right through her. She’s not solid. Not a person, but a ghost. I have to remind myself.
“What’s the warning?” I ask her shakily, my stomach turning at the sight of her slit throat up this close. Now I’m kneeling before her so that I can meet her gaze. My trousers sinking into her ghostly blood, but I don’t care about that right now.
One sad eye meets mine, the other is hidden beneath the black patch. This girl must have suffered so much in her life, only to be killed carelessly by a vampire who I have no doubt doesn’t possess a good bone in his ancient body.
“Find him,” she says, “before it’s too late.”
And then she’s gone. No! That’s not enough. Find who before it’s too late? My dad?
“Jennifer,” I call, “Jennifer, come back please,” I whisper then, knowing it’s useless. I peer down at the floor to find that the puddle of blood has disappeared. The surface is completely clean. What the hell? Maybe this was just a hallucination. Perhaps. Then again, with the way things have been going for me recently, seeing a ghost is the cherry on the cake so to speak.
My thoughts are cut short because Finn walks in the door with Wolf at his heels and he looks like he’s aged a decade, his hair is all rumpled and his face is etched with worry.
“Where’s Rita and the rest of them?” I ask him, as he sits down across from me at the table.
“I sent them to try and scope out Whitfield’s mansion, I normally wouldn’t bring them into this but our best slayers are inside with Pamphrock. For all I know the vamps could have slaughtered the lot of them by now.” Finn sighs and curses under his breath. “I don’t know how I’m going to get them out of there. There’s only me and a hundred odd new recruits, but they haven’t been properly trained yet so they aren’t going to be much help.”
“This isn’t your fault Finn, so stop blaming yourself.” I tell him.
He’s nervously running his hands through his brown hair, messing it up even more. His eyes meet mine. “I’m not blaming myself. I just don’t know what to do right now.”
At this moment, Rita, Alvie, Gabriel and Noreen arrive home. They enter the kitchen and silently join us at the table.
Gabriel is the first to speak. “It looks like they’ve just about doubled the security at Whitfield’s place,” he says, “however difficult it might have been for Pamphrock and his men to breach the building tonight, it’s going to be even more difficult now. There are vampires everywhere.”
“We almost got caught snooping around,” Rita adds. “Luckily we got away before they could catch us.”
The squeak of Noreen’s chair sounds as she rises from the table, we all look to her. “I’m going to bed, I’m very tired,” she whispers, and then quietly, she leaves the room.
“Mum’s been out of sorts since the house got burned down, I don’t think she’s able for all of this excitement,” Rita explains. Her eyes are lit up, showing that unlike her mother, Rita thrives on the kind of excitement that is currently afoot.
“That’s understandable,” says Finn. “Look, I’m sorry to have to do this, but I have no other choice right now, I need all of your help to get Pamphrock and the rest of them out of there before the vamps kill them. I’m not going to force you though, so tell me now, are you lot in or out?”
“In,” says Rita happily.
“In,” Alvie adds, earnest but vaguely reluctant.
“You are one of my closest friends Finn, of course I will help you in any way that I can,” says Gabriel sincerely.
Then everyone at the table looks to me. My decision is not as clean cut as everyone else’s, especially since I am now intimately involved with a vampire who I will be betraying if I decide to help Finn. Then Rebecca’s face flashes in my mind, and my heart swells. The reaction is somewhat foreign, as although I would always feel for the child and her situation, the strength of my emotion for her is uncommon. I don’t know where it comes from. I feel like she’s my own flesh and blood even though we aren’t related in the slightest. Odd.
This is the sole reason why I finally say, “I’m in too.” They all breathe a collective sigh of relief, and then Wolf lets out a loud bark to signal his involvement in the rescue also.
It makes us all burst out laughing for a moment, but then the mood turns serious again when the laughter quietens down and I look at Finn and say, “Whitfield’s having his party tomorrow night, and I’m supposed to be accompanying Ethan, perhaps that would be a good time to make your move. Once the party is in full swing you’ll be able to catch them unawares.”
Both Finn and Gabriel seem to be regarding me strangely, then the two make eye contact as though conducting a silent conversation.
Finally, Finn says, “This is ideal Tegan, you will be entering the building as the companion of a powerful vampire without any suspicion whatsoever, we can really work with this. I just need to figure out how we can use your position to our best advantage.”
“Ah!” Rita exclaims suddenly. “She can use the dowsing rods to find out where in the building Pamphrock and the slayers are being held, that will save us the wild goose chase of going searching for them.”
“Um, the last time I used those fuckers I nearly went off the edge of a skyscraper Rita. I’m not touching them again, they’re lethal.”
“But you’ll be in a house this time, so there won’t be that kind of danger Tegan. Besides, they really responded to you, it will be simple for them to lead you through the mansion to Pamphrock.”
“Even so, I’m not comfortable using them,” I reply, crossing my arms over my chest. The fear I’d felt earlier tonight when I’d nearly met my maker is still too strong a deterrent for me to agree to do this.
“How about a willow branch,” Alvie suggests. “Like the original dowsing rods, it will still lead you to what you’re looking for but the reaction will be more natural, more organic. I think it might have been your magic reacting with the harshness of the metal that caused such a violent reaction on the roof of the building earlier tonight. With wood, the magic won’t flare up so dramatically, metal comes from the earth but it’s too watered down and manufactured. A branch comes directly from the earth with no human interference. I assure you Tegan, you won’t be harmed with one of these.”