“Y ou phone your parents right now.” Aunt Agnes glared nearsightedly at Sophie and then turned to Josh, who was closer. “They’ve been worried sick about you. Phoning me every day, twice, three times a day. Only this morning they said if you weren’t home today they were going to contact the police and report you as missing.” She paused and then added dramatically, “They were going to say you’d been kidnapped.”
“We weren’t kidnapped. We talked to Mom and Dad a couple of days ago,” Josh muttered. He was desperately trying to remember just when he’d talked to his parents. Was it Friday… or was it Saturday? He glanced sideways at his sister, looking for help, but she was still staring at the woman in black who looked so astonishingly like Scathach. He turned back to face his aunt. He knew he’d gotten an e-mail from their parents on… was it Saturday when they were all in Paris? Now that he was back in San Francisco, the last few days were beginning to blur together. “We just got back,” he said finally, settling on the truth. He kissed his aunt quickly on both cheeks. “How have you been? We missed you.”
“You could have called,” the tiny woman snapped. “You should have called.” Flint-gray eyes magnified behind enormous spectacles glared up at the twins. “Worried sick, I’ve been. I phoned the bookshop a dozen times looking for you, and you never answered your cell. Not much point in having a cell if you don’t answer it.”
“We had no reception most of the time,” Josh said, sticking to the truth, “and then I lost my phone,” he added, which was also the truth. His phone and most of his belongings had disappeared when Dee had destroyed the Yggdrasill.
“You lost your good phone?” The old woman shook her head in disgust. “That’s the third phone this year.”
“Second,” he muttered.
Aunt Agnes turned and climbed slowly up the steps. She waved away Josh’s offer of help. “Just leave me be; I’m not helpless,” she said, and then reached out to grip his arm. “You could help me, young man.” When they reached the door, she turned and looked down to where Sophie was still standing in front of the red-haired woman. “Sophie, are you coming?”
“In a minute, Aunty.” Sophie looked at her brother, then her eyes drifted toward the open door. “I’ll be there in a minute, Josh. Why don’t you take Aunt Agnes inside and make her a cup of tea?”
Josh started to shake his head, but the old woman’s fingers bit into his arm with surprising strength. “And while the kettle is boiling, you can phone your parents.” She squinted at Sophie again. “Don’t be long.”
Sophie Newman shook her head. “I won’t be.”
As soon as Josh and Aunt Agnes had disappeared inside the house, Sophie turned to the stranger. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Aoife,” the woman said, pronouncing the name “E-fa.” She bent and ran black-gloved hands over the limo’s punctured tire, then spoke in a language Sophie recognized as Japanese. The young-looking man Josh had encountered in the house took off his jacket, flung it onto the front seat and then popped the trunk and pulled out a brace and jack. Fitting the jack under the heavy car, he levered it up with ease and started to change the tire.
Aoife brushed her gloved hands together, then folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head to look at Sophie. “There was no need to do that.” There was a hint of a lilting foreign accent in her voice.
“We thought you were kidnapping our aunt,” Sophie said quietly. The name Aoife had sent a dozen strange thoughts and images whirling through her brain, but Sophie was finding it hard to distinguish between memories of Scathach and those of Aoife. “We wanted to stop you.”
Aoife smiled without showing her teeth. “If I had wanted to kidnap your aunt, would I have turned up here in the middle of the day?”
“I don’t know,” Sophie said, “would you?”
Aoife pushed her small dark glasses up her nose, covering her green eyes, and considered for a moment. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But,” she added with a smile that exposed her vampire teeth, “if I had wanted your aunt, I would have taken her.”
“You are Aoife of the Shadows,” Sophie said.
“I am Scathach’s sister. We are twins. I am the elder.”
Sophie took a step back, the Witch’s memories of Aoife finally falling into place. “Scathach told me about her family, but she didn’t say anything about a sister,” she said, unwilling to reveal to the woman that she knew about her.
“No, she wouldn’t. We had a falling-out,” Aoife muttered.
“A falling-out?” Sophie asked although she already knew they had fought over a boy, and even knew his name.
“Over a boy,” Aoife said, with just a hint of sadness in her voice. She looked up and down the street before turning back to Sophie. “We’ve not spoken in a very long time.” She shrugged, a quick roll of her shoulders. “She disowned me. And I her. But I’ve always kept an eye out for her.” She smiled again. “I’m sure you know what it is like to look out for your sibling.”
Sophie nodded. She knew exactly what Aoife was talking about. Even though Josh was bigger and stronger than she was, she still thought of him as her baby brother.
“He’s my twin.”
“I did not know that,” Aoife said slowly. Dipping her head slightly, she looked at Sophie over the top of her dark glasses. “And you are both Awakened, too,” she added.
“What brought you here?” Sophie asked.
“I felt Scathach… go.”
“Go?” Sophie didn’t understand.
“Vanish. Leave this particular Shadowrealm. We are connected, my twin and I, by bonds similar to those which undoubtedly exist between you and your brother. I have always known when she was in pain, when she was hurt or hungry or frightened…”
Sophie found herself nodding. She had felt her brother’s pain at times: when he had broken his ribs playing football, she’d felt the sting in her side, and when he’d nearly drowned in Hawaii, she’d woken up breathless and gasping. When she’d dislocated her shoulder in tae kwan do, her brother’s shoulder had swelled up and discolored with a bruise that matched hers precisely.
Aoife barked a question in rapid-fire Japanese, and the driver answered with a single syllable. Then she turned to Sophie. “We can stand here and talk in the street,” she said, smiling, flashing the tips of her canines, “or you can invite me inside and we can talk in comfort.”
A tiny alarm bell went off at the back of Sophie’s head. Vampires could not cross a threshold unless they’d been invited to do so, and she instantly knew she was not going to invite this vampire into her aunt’s house. There was something about her… Slowly and deliberately, Sophie allowed the remainder of the memories that had been crowding at the back of her head to come surging forward. Suddenly-shockingly-she knew everything the Witch of Endor knew about Aoife of the Shadows. The images and memories were terrifying. Eyes wide with horror, Sophie took a step back, away from the creature, realizing just in time that the driver was behind her. Immediately, she reached for the trigger tattoo on her wrist, but the man caught her arms, holding them to her sides, before she could make the connection. Aoife stepped forward, caught Sophie’s wrists and twisted them to expose the design Saint-Germain had burned into her flesh. Sophie tried to struggle, but the driver held her tightly, squeezing her arms so hard that she could feel her fingers begin to tingle. “Let me go! Josh will-”
“Your twin is powerless.” Aoife pulled off one leather glove and took the girl’s hand in her cold fingers. Filthy gray smoke coiled off the vampire’s pale skin. She rubbed her thumb across the ornate Celtic-looking band that wrapped around Sophie’s wrist, and stopped on the underside at the gold circle with a red dot in the center. “Ah, the sign of tine. The Mark of Fire,” Aoife said softly. “So you would have tried to burn me?”
“Let me go!” Sophie tried to kick out at the man holding her, but his grip on her arms tightened and she suddenly grew frightened. Even the Witch of Endor was wary of Aoife of the Shadows. The vampire turned Sophie’s wrist painfully and bent forward to examine the tattoo. “This is the work of a master. Who gave you this… gift?” Her lips curled in disgust as she said the word.
Sophie pressed her lips together. She wasn’t telling this woman anything.
Aoife’s glasses slipped down her nose, revealing eyes that were like chips of green glass. “Maui… Prometheus… Xolotl… Pele… Agni
…” Aoife shook her head quickly. “No, none of those. You have just returned from Paris, so it is someone in that city…” Her voice trailed away. She looked over Sophie’s shoulder at the black-suited driver. “Is there a Master of Fire in the French capital?”
“Your old adversary, the count, lives there,” the man said softly in English.
“Saint-Germain,” Aoife snapped. She saw Sophie’s eyes widen and she smiled savagely. “Saint-Germain the liar. Saint-Germain the thief. I should have killed him when I had the chance.” She looked at the driver. “Take her. We will continue this conversation in private.”
Sophie opened her mouth to scream, but Aoife pressed her forefinger to the bridge of the girl’s nose. The vampire’s gray aura leaked from her fingers, the smoke curling around the girl’s head, seeping into her nostrils and mouth.
Sophie tried to bring her own aura alight. It crackled faintly about her body for a single heartbeat before she slumped unconscious.