Michael Scott - The Necromancer

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.

Agnes hit a speed-dial number on the phone and handed it to Josh. “You speak to your parents, right now,” she ordered. “And where is Sophie? Who is that girl she’s talking to outside?”

“The sister of someone we know,” Josh said, pressing the phone to the side of his face. The line rang only once before it was answered.

“Agnes?”

“Dad! It’s Josh.”

“Josh!”

The boy found himself smiling-the relief in his father’s voice was clearly audible-and then a wave of embarrassment washed over him and he felt guilty for not getting in touch with his parents sooner.

“Is everything all right?” Richard Newman’s voice was almost lost in a crackle of burbling static.

Josh pressed his finger to his ear and concentrated hard on the sounds. “Everything is fine, Dad. We’re OK. We just got back to San Francisco.”

“Your mother and I were starting to get worried about you. Seriously worried.”

“We were with the Fla-Flemings,” Josh quickly corrected himself. “There was no cell-phone reception,” he added truthfully, “though we did manage to get your e-mail on Sunday night. I got the jpeg of the shark teeth. I didn’t recognize the type, but from the size, I’m guessing a freshwater shark?” he asked quickly, deliberately changing the subject.

“Well done, son. It’s a Lissodus from the Upper Cretaceous period. It’s in very nice condition too.”

“Is everything OK with you?” Josh pressed on, trying to keep his father talking. He glanced at the door, wishing his sister would come in. He could distract his father with questions, but the same trick wouldn’t work with his mother, and he guessed that she was hovering at his father’s shoulder and would pluck the phone from his fingers at any moment. “How’s the dig going?”