The woman wrapped her arms around Eli and hugged him. “I still care about you so much. I do.”
He hugged her back stiffly.
“I hope you won’t hold any grudge against Aiden. He’s been nothing but honorable. He urged me to come back to you when I left you.”
Eli nodded.
Adelle sounded close to tears. “I think I’m going to leave The Shade.”
Eli raised a brow. “Leave?”
“Yes. Not forever, but for a while. I need to take some time out… reorient myself.”
“Where will you go?”
She bit her lip. “I’m not sure where I’ll end up exactly. I’d like to travel a bit.”
Eli paused, then said, “I think that’s a good idea.”
“I’ll move my stuff out of your apartment tonight. And I think I’ll leave the island tomorrow morning. One of the other witches will have to step in as headmistress while I’m gone.”
“Okay… You go ahead and do what you have to do. The front door is open. I need some time alone.”
Adelle drew Eli in for another hug, and then—to my shock—she vanished from the spot.
Wow. Could she be… a witch?
Recovering from the surprise, I felt bad for listening in on such a personal conversation, but I needed to speak to someone, and didn’t want to interrupt.
Now that this Eli was on his own, I crept out of the trees and approached him.
“Um, excuse me,” I said tentatively.
He spun around, and his eyes widened as he looked me over.
He frowned. “Who are you?”
“My name is River. River Giovanni. I’m a friend of Benjamin Novak. He sent me here and I need to speak to his parents, Derek and Sofia. Can you please take me to them?”
His expression turned from surprise to shock. “Y-Yes, of course. But, how on earth did you get here?”
“Ben brought me,” I said.
“Ben? He’s in The Shade?”
“He’s waiting in a submarine just outside the island.”
“Follow me,” Eli said at once.
Clearly this person was a vampire. He began speeding away too fast for my half-blood legs to keep up.
He stopped when he saw that I was lagging behind, and hung back for me to catch up. “What are you exactly? Your skin is pale like a vampire’s, but you’re clearly not one.”
“I’m a half-blood.”
“Half-blood?” he said, peering down at me all the more curiously though his glasses.
“Please, I can explain everything, but I need to speak to Derek and Sofia urgently.”—I kept thinking about Ben with my container of blood. I was still having doubts how long that would last him before the human blood of The Shade began calling to him.
“Of course I’ll take you there,” Eli said. “You might want to climb onto my back though since it will be faster.”
I climbed onto the vampire’s lean frame and he began racing off into the darkness of the woods. He was so fast it was hard for me to see where we were going, but when he stopped, it was at the foot of a towering redwood tree. But I was confused. This part of the woods seemed just as bereft of vampires as the one that I had left.
“Where—?”
He pointed upward.
I gasped. “Oh, my.”
Benjamin had described something of The Shade to me, but he hadn’t described these. Stunning penthouses built atop the giant redwood trees.
Wow.
Eli took me to the thick trunk of the tree, and led me toward an elevator shaft that had been hidden round the back. He stepped inside with me, and we ascended the towering tree. It took my breath away to look down and I began to feel dizzy as we arrived at the top. Stepping out of the elevator, we emerged on a gorgeous veranda lined with pretty plant and flower plots. And the view from this height… it was unearthly. A sea of treetops spread out for miles. In the distance was the sparkling ocean and to my right was a sprawling mountain range.
Once I tore my eyes away from the heart-stopping view, we stopped outside a large wooden door.
Eli knocked.
“Sofia! Derek!” he called. “Open up!”
I heard the sound of a door opening inside, and then footsteps. The front door swung open a few seconds later.
Standing before me in the doorway, over six feet tall and wearing blue pajamas, was the spitting image of Benjamin Novak. Except for his eyes, the similarities were stunning.
Although there was something that struck me as odd about this man who could only be King Derek Novak… His skin had a light tan glow to it. He was clearly not the vampire Ben had described him as.
I felt shivers run down my spine as the king’s piercing blue gaze settled on me. He looked me over curiously, then back at Eli.
“What is all this? At this time of night?”