Read Online 2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5 by Vicki Keire - Free Book Online

exercise some damage control.”
    “So you won’t be working today?” Mrs. Alice asked, less surprised than I would have expected.
    “Like you didn’t know already.” Her great-granddaughter rolled her eyes. “She’s got more than a touch of the Sight, you know,” Cassandra stage-whispered. “Probably planned this whole thing right down to the rescue.”
    “Sss…sso she really can see the future?” I asked, terrified all over again, remembering Mrs. Alice’s Foretelling.
    “You’ve scared her into stuttering.” Cassandra shot Mrs. Alice a dirty look before marching me out of the store.
    I had never really liked Cassandra Blackwood. With her billowy skirts, waist-length blond hair, and profoundly New Age ideals, she always struck me as a privileged neo-hippie. That was before I’d discovered she was a member of the most powerful family of witches in Whitfield. Now that she’d rescued me from her great-grandmother and proceeded to pour strong red wine down my throat, I was ready to erect a shrine in her honor.
    I hadn’t known there were different kinds of witches, either. We talked about the different kinds as Abigail sniffed her suspiciously. Cassandra called herself an Elemental with an affinity for earth. “That explains the patchouli,” I said, after one and a half bottles of wine. “And the dolphin music.” The words were already out before I realized I might have offended her. We stared at each other for a loaded minute before exploding into drunken giggles.
    “I guess it does,” Cassandra sighed. “Grand’Mere thinks a lot of you, Caspia. She meant well. But at a hundred and ten, she’s a little out of touch sometimes. I’m sorry.” She crooked her index finger at a gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream. It flew three feet across the floor to rest right in front of us. She’d kept it in her backpack along with the wine, and it hadn’t melted all day. “We need more wine.”
    “Yes we do,” I seconded. “Because I thought you said one hundred and ten. Mrs. Alice is eighty. That means I’ve had too much to drink, or not enough.”
    Cassandra snorted. “Eighty. Hah. She wishes.” I watched as her backpack unzipped itself and a fresh bottle rolled out. A gold foil box of chocolates followed. Abigail, hiding under the couch, decided to attack it. “So. Did she talk to you about what happens when mortals and immortals…”
    “Please, Cassandra,” I slurred. “No more. Not after that bizarre ‘Foretelling’ of your great-grandmother’s.” I sketched phantom quote marks in the air. “I can’t handle it.”
    The bottle froze between us, hanging suspended in the air. “Grand’Mere had a Foretelling?” For someone on her second bottle of wine, she sounded remarkably alert.
    “Mmm-hmm. Something about linked souls, and intimacy, and…” I could actually feel myself blushing. “It doesn’t matter because it made no sense and it’s not going to come true anyway.”
    “If you say so,” Cassandra said doubtfully. Sighing, she pushed the bottle my way. “You need some more wine.”
    “Definitely,” I agreed, sure my face was tomato red. We pushed the bottle through the air between us. I giggled to see it floating through space. Poor Abigail inched out from under the sofa to bat at it longingly.
    “I was going to ask if she talked to you about the Compact between Light and Dark, or what makes Whitfield a refuge in the first place, or the four Guardian races. You know, the important stuff.”
    “Um, no. We didn’t get much beyond Foretellings and my dreams.” Alcohol allowed me to say this without sarcasm.
    Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Figures she’d fixate on the embarrassing parts.” She frowned in concentration. “Is your brother going to kill me when he finds out I got you drunk? No, he’ll pretend, but secretly he’ll think it’s funny. And he’ll give me a ride home. But Ethan…” Her head snapped up. She looked utterly shocked. “There’s nothing there.