Sacrifice in Blood

Chapter 31: Birthday

Three weeks passed and I didn't see or hear back from Talon. I seemed to be in a perpetual bad mood lately and had trouble sleeping. I kept going over that incident outside the cafe over and over again.

It made my blood boil. I was so stupid. I had let my emotions run wild and had started to have feelings for the guy. Well, I was swearing off him. We may be blood-bound but that didn't mean we had to be friends or even see each other. Right?

Ava had been acutely aware of my bad mood lately and had asked what had happened. Embarrassed and not wanting to share the details, I said Talon and I had had a fight and decided to stay away from each other. She could tell I was upset but didn't want to push me so she thankfully left me to my wallowing in self-pity.

Work kept me busy which I was grateful for and when we didn't meet up with the coven, I was secretly working on my elemental magic in Ava's backyard. Frustratingly, ever since I conjured wind to make Talon back off, I could barely light a candle.

My elemental magic seemed to only show up when I desperately needed it but I couldn't call on it any other time. This just made me more annoyed at the world.

Bridget still hadn't gotten back to me about this Elemental stuff which left me with heaps of unanswered questions. She also said the council would not discuss details about Morgan's rescue, that we witches were still potentially on the brink of war with the Children of the Night so it was all classified information.

Horrified that Morgan was being abandoned for the sake of keeping the peace, I tried multiple different locator spells to try and track the camp myself.

My theory was: if I could find out the exact location of the camp, the council would have no choice but to intervene and save her. I would tell them about my dream and how I knew she was being tortured and being forced to help them, they wouldn't be able to ignore her then.

But so far, no locator spell would work. With Talon and I not on speaking terms, I couldn't even force him to tell me where the camp was. I didn't want to drag them back into this mess but desperate, I had even tried calling Zach and Miriam to ask if they could remember the location of the camp. But neither of them could pinpoint a location, they hadn't paid much attention when we'd escaped and had since been trying to erase all the unhappy memories.

A number of forests surrounded our town of Woodcreek as well as a bunch more in towns nearby. The camp could be anywhere.

I had thought about hiking out in the forests until I stumbled upon it but even I knew this was a stupid idea. Even if I did happen to find it, I couldn't take on the vampires by myself, especially since my Elemental magic was M.I.A.

So I was left feeling hopeless and waiting for the council to share information about Morgan and Severus' camp.

On top of all this my parents had called to say they had gotten an amazing work opportunity and so were staying in Europe for another couple months.

Nothing seemed capable of curing me of my foul mood. Even Ava's cat Cleo, stayed clear of me.

It was a dead afternoon at the cafe, with just myself and Pat on. I was on my fifteen minute break sitting outside, trying to manipulate the water in a puddle to no avail, when my mobile rang. It was an unknown number. I answered it, frowning.

"Hello, this is Leina Thornton." I mustered as much cheeriness in my voice in case it was someone important.

"Hey stranger" came Alistair's voice.

"How did you get this number?" I fumed but was also generally curious.

"Not important. What is important is, you should come to the house tonight. We're having a party." Alistair said, apparently confident I would accept.