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Will lowered his head. “Stubborn woman.”
He’d said “woman,” Amber noticed. Not “kid.” She appreciated that. “As stubborn as you are, Will. And far from ready to give up on you.”
“Even if we don’t go after Stiles right away,” Morgan said, “we can still begin doing some of the work of tracking him down. We’ve brought our files, everything we’ve been able to dig up on the man, and if you don’t mind, we can set up a computer here, hook up to the ‘net and continue following the leads we dug up at home.”
Sarafina nodded enthusiastically, only to pause and look at Will. He nodded as well, sighing deeply. “Just be careful. I do not want word leaking out that Amber is here. It would put her at too much risk.”
Amber rolled her eyes when Dante said, “Agreed.”
“Now that you’re all here,” Rhiannon said, “I suppose it’s safe for me to be on my way. I will trust Sarafina and Amber Lily to fill you in on our other little complication.”
“We don’t know he’s a complication,” Amber said quickly.
“But we will find out,” Rhiannon replied.
As goodbyes were said, Rhiannon hugged Amber fiercely and whispered in her ear, “Do not let your guard down with that Edge character. He’s powerful, child. Not old, but powerful all the same. And dangerous. I feel it wafting off him in waves.”
“He must be related to you, then.” Amber walked her outside to the waiting vehicle.
Rhiannon scowled. “If he wasn’t up to something involving my favorite female in the universe, I might actually like the man.”
“I promise I’ll be careful. And, Rhiannon?”
The vampiress looked at her, one brow cocked. “Oh, no,” she said. “You’re not going to ask me to keep my knowledge of Edge from your parents.”
“I’m not going to ask you,” Amber told her. “I’m going to insist on it.”
Rhiannon thinned her lips, crossing her arms over her chest. “Amber …”
“They’d come with flamethrowers and machine guns firing garlic-coated wooden stakes shaped like crosses, if they knew. You know they would.”
Rhiannon smiled a little at Amber’s use of every cliché, including those that had no more effect on the undead than on the living. But her smile died slowly. “They’re going to have to know sooner or later, Amber.”
“I prefer later.”
“They’ll hate him on sight, you know. Just on principle.”
“Then the later, the better,” Amber said.
“I don’t know.”
“Rhiannon, Will had a point about my lack of experience. Let me do this. Let me figure out on my own just what Edge is up to and why he’s homed in on me as his tool to get it.” She shrugged. “Besides, there’s always a slight chance he might just be smitten. Bewitched by my beauty, captivated by my sharp mind and entranced by my infinite charms.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that,” Rhiannon said, smiling. “As you pointed out inside, my blood is running in your veins.”
Amber rolled her eyes and watched as Rhiannon got into her Mercedes and drove away into the night. Then she turned toward the doorway, where Dante and Morgan waited—two vampires who had not, thank God, known her from birth and who did not, therefore, see her as a child but as she was.
She joined them inside, and being one of the only two mortals in the house, claimed she was tired and needed some rest. It made as good an excuse as any to slip out and stroll along the beach.
She rolled up her jeans, kicked off her shoes and waded through the ice-cold waves that washed up onto the sand and rock shore. But it wasn’t a walk she wanted, and it wasn’t solitude she sought, and she knew it.
She quieted her mind, then opened it, and put Edge’s face before her eyes. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know his face intimately. She’d been seeing it for a long, long time now, in her dreams.
Silently, she called to him.
Immediately, he answered. And she got the feeling he’d been expecting her summons.
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