Tegan clasped her hands together, and a thoughtful expression came over her, but she didn’t say anything. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was concocting something that was going to get her into trouble. But no, she wouldn’t be that stupid, not in her delicate condition.
I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal, then returned to bed, climbing in beside Alora. I wrapped my arms around her, making the most of the time we had left because, if Theodore got his way, we’d all be done for soon enough.
17.
Tegan
I couldn’t stop thinking about the All-Knowing Tome. It showed me how to kill a sorcerer. I had this innate feeling that I couldn’t seem to shake. What if the book told me how to kill Theodore because it was my responsibility to do it?
Cut off his head.
Burn his body.
I could do that, right? I had killed Eliza, after all. Theodore might be a little trickier, but it was still doable. There was the small obstacle of having to find him first, but I had a plan.
There was a scarf among my things that belonged to Rita. I borrowed it and forgot to return it, which was lucky because I could use it to cast a location spell. If I found out where Rita was, it went without saying that Theodore would be somewhere close by.
Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your Aunt.
Sure, I suspected it wasn’t going to be that simple, but I had to try.
Very early the next morning, when Ethan was out of the house, I got to work on the spell. I cut off a piece of the scarf and placed it under the glass on the map that was spread out on the floor. With bated breath, I watched as it moved along the paper and finally landed on a spot close to where Emilia’s barrier was. I recognised the area, but as far as I knew there was nothing there, no buildings to hide inside anyway.
With this information, I steeled myself to talk to Emilia. I’d been putting the conversation off since she was brought here, but now I really needed to get it over and done with. I found her sitting on the bed in her room, her legs crossed and her hands in her lap. Always so prim and proper.
She didn’t say anything to me as I entered and leaned back against a wall to study her. “So, I guess you know why I’m here.”
“You want to save yourself,” she answered evenly.
“I want to save myself and my baby, Emilia. Can you tell me how to do that?”
She glanced down at her hands and then back to me. “If I do this, will you instruct your vampire to set me free?”
“If you agree to leave Rebecca alone, yes. But not before then and not before I see that your method works.”
Her eyebrows shot up as she let out a hard laugh. “So, I will have to wait here, confined in this room, until you give birth?”
I sighed and slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. The idea of keeping Emilia captive for the next however many months was exhausting. “I don’t see any other way right now.”
Her eyes narrowed as she watched me, a million thoughts flashing in her gaze. A couple of minutes of absolute quiet passed before she spoke, “Go and get a pen and paper. You’ll need to take down a list of ingredients.”
“For?”
“For the medicine that you’re going to take to make sure the child you’re carrying doesn’t die. There’s no sure-fire way of saving both of you, but there is a potion that will at least ensure the baby lives.”
“Fuck.”
“This is all I have to offer. Also, your language is unseemly.”
“Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. If I couldn’t save myself, then I could at least save my baby. I couldn’t stand the idea of Ethan losing another child. I’d go to the ends of the earth to prevent it.
I left the room and returned with a pad and pen, taking down the ingredients as Emilia called them out. Once she was finished, she instructed, “You will drink this medicine every morning and every night for the duration of your pregnancy.”
“Right,” I replied, scanning down the list and trying to figure out where I was going to get a three-to-four-month supply of all this stuff. Then I remembered Rita’s RV back at Finn’s house and how it was jam-packed with spell ingredients.
“We never had to be enemies, you know,” I said, facing Emilia. “I could have been a granddaughter to you. Sometimes you just have to accept the imperfections in people to find the pearl inside the ugly oyster shell.”
She held her silence, so I gave up and thanked her for the list of ingredients. Just as I returned to my room and started packing away the location spell from earlier, there was a light tapping on the window. I turned and found Roman hovering in the air outside. What on earth? I hurried to the window and let him in.