A Shade of Vampire 43: A House of Mysteries(2)

“Why are you up?” I asked, before noticing their pale, horrified expressions. Clearly something had happened while I’d been gone. I scanned the room, trying to gauge the danger. I could see nothing unusual—well, nothing other than the same dilapidated, shabby room that looked like a movie set for a historical drama, completely at odds with the modern-day nightwear of my friends.

“I saw something,” Vita whispered. “In the mirror…”

Her hands had started to shake, and she held them tightly together in her lap. Whatever she had seen had obviously terrified the life out of her. Aida placed her hands over Vita’s, trying to provide a wordless comfort that our friend so clearly needed.

“Vita?” I pressed. She wasn’t the most forthcoming person, even under normal circumstances. I wondered if I should just hear the story from Aida, but when I turned to her, Aida’s golden eyes were as troubled and confused as I imagined mine were.

Changing tack, I sat down on the bed. My news could wait until Vita shared her burden. It wasn’t like we could do anything about the circumstances we were in anyway—there was no action to be taken, only acceptance of the fact that we were in far deeper trouble than we’d previously imagined.

“I’m sorry,” Vita replied, shaking her head as if to remove some mental image she didn’t want lodged there. “It was terrifying. I just…God, I hate this place.”

I knew exactly how she felt. Would there be any moment here when we wouldn’t all be terrified out of our minds? For both Vita and Aida, it was worse. I was afraid for them, and what might lurk outside of our safe-house…they were afraid of what they might become, what was happening to their bodies and minds as they transformed into all-seeing Oracles—a ‘gift’ (in the loosest possible definition of the word) left to them by the Oracle our parents had discovered living in Nevertide almost two decades ago.

“Just tell us what happened,” I replied gently. “We need to know. We can help.” Vita looked over at me with a look of disbelief mirrored in her turquoise eyes.

Yeah, okay. Overstatement.

We probably couldn’t help at all, but that wasn’t the point. Whatever Vita had just seen in the mirror, she needed to share it.

She nodded, and started to tell us what had happened, her voice high and tight, as if she only half-believed what she was saying.

“I was in the shower, because I was too hot and couldn’t sleep. When I got out, I looked in the mirror. Then my face—it started to change, to distort. I thought it was me. I was tired…but then the face definitely became someone else. It was a woman, with pale blue eyes and white hair. She called out my name, asking me if I was there—if I could hear her. I couldn’t reply. I just froze… I wanted to say something, she sounded so desperate to speak to me. Then she vanished, and I called out, but she’d gone.”

“Was it a vision?” I asked. So far, Vita was the only one who had been experiencing the ‘gift’—I thought that was maybe because of her latent fae genes, that somehow they made her more attuned to the change, but I wasn’t sure.

Vita shook her head.

“I don’t think so… it was different. I didn’t feel the nausea, and it wasn’t images in my mind—it was real. I promise you it was real.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I hastened to reassure her. I almost wanted it to be a vision because the alternative was another layer of weirdness on our already totally bizarre circumstances.

“The woman sounds familiar,” Aida replied slowly. “From the description—”

“I know,” Vita agreed. “It sounds like the Nevertide Oracle was trying to make contact.”

We all looked at one another, falling silent. It seemed we were all trying to work out whether this was good news, or bad. I guessed only time would tell.





Vita





[Grace and Lawrence’s daughter]




“We need to fetch the others,” Serena said eventually. “I have some news of my own—it’s not good.”

“Did you manage to mind-meld with the Druid?” Aida asked, reminding me of Serena’s mission tonight. She had waited till we thought the Druid would be asleep, planning to syphon off him while he was unprotected and hopefully unaware of what was happening to him.

Serena shook her head. “No. It didn’t go as planned. He woke up—he’s too on guard. But then he showed me something… I’ll tell you everything when we’re all here. I’ll get the boys.”

Serena stood up, moving toward the doorway. She had changed into a nightgown that she’d found in the closet—a white, frilly thing that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but managed to make Serena, with her poker-straight black hair that fell like a waterfall around her shoulders and her large blue eyes, look like a romantic heroine, about to be swept off her feet by some dashing highway robber or something.