Hi,

Anna is learning more about herself and, in my opinion, continues to grow as a person, particularly in this chapter. So, I have a question for you.

Has this ever happened to you? You do something and it takes you months or maybe even years to understand why you did it? Something that maybe didn't make sense at first, but when you look back - it just clicks?

Lara

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Chapter 15

I paused. Listened.

Even slow intakes of breath. Turned out not all rumors were true. Raphael Medici was there, collapsed beside the table strewn with city maps and what might have been war plans – or the scribble of a half-mad conqueror with a mind sharp as a blade.

He did sleep, and just as I anticipated, once and if he did, it was because he was utterly exhausted. I knew that the last three days had been taxing, even for someone like Medici.

I approached him, slowly, and stopped in front of the table.

A two-day old newspaper, a silver pen, and a car magazine; small details that struck me as hilariously out of place in the Raven's own study. There was more. A city map, laid out carefully on the make-shift table I'd seen him bent over every time I entered.

I stared at the marked spots on the city map. Stared at them for a long moment. Things were beginning to make sense. His constant moving was indeed planned and systematic, and judging from the many marked spots around the city he was running out of safe options – at least above ground.

There was more. Dates and locations – other than hiding places...

I frowned. What was he up to?

My eyes went back to the table and got caught up on a bulge underneath the city map. I gently pushed aside papers. The book was leather bound. I opened it, glimpsed the outlines of a familiar handwriting. Elena Larosa's diary. My pulse leapt into my throat as I picked it up.

Out out out. Get out.

But I couldn't. Not yet. I glanced back to the still shape of the Raven.

Not yet.

My eyes went to the leather coat slung over the chair, then to its pockets. It was a coat the Raven had begun to wear ever since we retrieved the null bombs. Why, when before I'd seen him walking around with nothing but pants and a thin shirt? I thought I knew.

I closed my eyes and dropped the magic. The invisibility spell fell away from me in a sudden rush, like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

I didn't give myself time to revel in it but shoved myself into second sight and even further. There was a stillness and a sense of peace in the auratic gray of the in between unlike anywhere else. Layers of reality you could sink into. If I could push far enough, I could vanish, blot out from reality and get lost in them.

I slipped under and right into another layer of reality. In auratic sight the Raven looked like a blinking Christmas tree. Or, rather, his jacket did. The pockets were filled with the null bombs. And more objects of power. I stilled. Among them my cuff, and my pendant. He must have kept them invisible whenever others were around.

I stepped closer, so close I could have touched the Raven's shoulder. I did no such thing. Instead I grabbed the collar of the jacket, lifting it off the chair inch for inch.

I backed away, slipping into the sleeves in slow motion. Cold leather on my skin. My heart thumping. Power vibrating against goosebumps and wet, sweaty skin.

I slipped Elena Larosa's diary into the jacket's outer pocket and took a deep breath. Could I walk out of this just like that? I felt giddy, almost mad, fighting the urge to run and scream out loud just for the sake of releasing the building tension.

I made a move towards the door, mentally calculating the number of turns that would take me safely towards the exit.

"Where do you think you're going?" The Raven said softly.

I froze. Turned around. His figure stirred in the dark.

"You had potential. It's a pity, Anna Johnson."

I didn't wait for the end of his monologue, expected the sizzling pinprick of a deadly bolt between my shoulder blades, or some other kind of dark magic that would incapacitate me. I turned and ran, shoving my hands into the leather coat. I needed my pendant, then I had to disable the wards and portal the hell out.

Concrete exploded above my head. I surged through the rain of stones and dust, veered off into the left corridor, the one that would lead me to the only exit I knew.

I barely made it ten feet into it. Another explosion roared through the compound. I slammed into the wall, shoulder bouncing off stone in a sharp burst of pain. My eyes went back to the end of the corridor, disbelievingly, shocked to the point of disorientation.

Does he want to kill us all?

Then I realized. It wasn't the Raven's doing. It was someone from outside. And they were coming in my direction.

I blinked, fingers trying to find the pendant among the bundle of powerful objects, and failing. My fingers stung from the constant contact to barely contained, knock-you-off-your-feet-magic.

Another explosion that sent me sprawling on the floor this time. The foundations shook, creaked like an old floor board on the verge of collapsing into itself. I turned, saw the first scraps of something big coming my way. Split second, time reversed. A flash of light. Power – blinding, stunning, and violent.

I looked up, pushing hair out of my face, and froze. No, not the Raven, but someone far more dangerous. Someone who might want me even more dead than the leader of the rogue witches.

"There you are," Alexander said coolly.

Walls of air sprung up around me in a silent answer, bit into and around my core like a transparent fortress of glass and steel. I used the cuff, pulled from it whatever power I could get my hands on to enhance my magic. The walls flared with magic that, in second sight, would have looked like a wall of glistening blood.

Our eyes met, and everything around us seemed to still and fade. For a moment all I could do was look at him, as if he was the gravitational center to my world. He might have been surrounded by an undead army of underlings, by a congregation of angry humans or two-timing Circle members. Whatever lay between and behind us – it fell away.

His face was set in stone, hiding emotions I knew were behind that mask. He'd fooled me too many times for me not to know.

I rushed through it, forced myself out of this impossible stasis, muscles straining against superglue. Images. A clear head.

His second in command, Zack was behind him, a flash of green eyes and auburn-red hair. My eyes sifted through the rest. If Alexander had brought Zack, George couldn't be far. But his enforcer wasn't among the hard-lined, pale faces.

Instead, I saw her. Sonya Bernards. There, behind leather and pale flesh. I knew how Alexander found me. Whatever had kept him from finding me through the blood bond was apparently not good enough to fool the old witch.

Why? And why now? The words fell apart, bits and pieces stuck in my throat as it hit me. The witch could have identified me in Goshanger's mansion a few nights ago. When she didn't, I thought she was trying to help me.

She once told me not to get myself killed, after I obtained illegal magical objects from her. Maybe that made me believe we were something close to friends. I was wrong. Stupid to expect kindness and luck on my end for once.

In truth, Sonya Bernards had been waiting to find not only my but also Medici's whereabouts.

I shook my head. My perception filtered out the needless waste, centered on the one information that counted. The head vampire found us. Whether he came mostly for me, or the Raven, I didn't know. Maybe both. Killing to birds with one stone – two birds the head vamp thought needed killing.

The air behind my back was cold, colder than I remembered it to be. Then, a commotion from beneath the tunnels. Popping noises, shouts. Silence. My head whipped back. George was standing behind me, a silent army of vamps behind him.

Knowing Medici, it was well possible that he teleported out before they could get their hands on him. He was wise and quick enough to adjust to the shifting parameters in this game. I, in contrast, was trapped and surrounded by Alexander's vamps, betrayed by a witch I'd traded services with and I was stupid enough to trust. No matter what I did, I was the fool in this game. A fool always loses. And I was tired of losing. So damn tired.

"I took you to her. The location of Medici and the witch. I delivered both. Now fulfill your debt, so that our bargain is complete," the old witch said in a cool rush.

The head vampire didn't move, didn't even once blink, or look at her for that matter. "Your end?"

"I will not speak of what happened in the mansion, or in your realms, Alexander."

Alexander nodded, a motion so small, if I hadn't been attuned to vampiric motions, I might not have noticed. Zack stepped forward, handing Alexander a wooden box. The head vampire turned and gave it to the witch.

"All the evidence of your moonlighting practicing. You are free of your obligations," he said softly. His eyes stayed on me the whole time.

The moment her fingers touched the box I felt it. A shiver in the air, the flap of butterfly wings on a magical scale I had yet no name for. I tasted it on the tip of my tongue and understood. The old witch was clever. She had bound Alexander by magic to fulfill his bargain. No back exits, no room to wiggle out. Not even for someone as powerful as the head vampire.

She turned around then halted for a small moment. "I am sorry, girl. You were one of my favorite customers," the old witch said. Then she vanished in the shadowland behind the vampires.

That left me alone with an angry bunch of vampires, and an even angrier head vampire. Vamps in front of me. Vamps at my back. Out of the frying pan into the vampires' clutches. Things looked black.

I stared at Alexander, the biggest threat of them all. He thought he had me trapped, a marble in the palm of his hand, just one among hundreds he'd collected and slipped into his pocket with ease over the years. He knew that all he had to do was break my walls to get his hands on me. Knew that Medici would have never left me with the tools to portal out and leave on my own.

My right hand in my pocket was numb from a sick pin-prick feeling. I drew an imperial mask on my face, a human version of the vacant, blank stare the head vampire used like a weapon. Whatever he would try, this time I was ready.

"Well played, little witch," the head vampire said.

"Right back at you," I said.

"Making the rest of the city believe you were abducted by the Raven?" He laughed. "Or, were you perhaps playing a dangerous double game, believing you could worm your way back into the Circle's good graces?"

I remained silent, waiting for his deliberations. No matter what I said at this point in time, it could backfire.

He smiled. "Now, let us assume you did – play a double game, that is. What, would you have done if you had succeeded? What exactly would you have told the Circle?"

I stared at him with the knowledge of what we did the night I went with Medici, inches away from losing my coolness. The clear head I needed for this game. And in the midst of it all I had a big, life-altering revelation. The hatred against vampires and the painful memories from my past had always dragged me down, kept me from noticing things that were essential.

For the first time, I could look at Alexander without the baggage of what happened when I was a child. See things as they were. If only I could suppress the memories of that night and look past the intimacy I once thought we shared...

I fisted my hands. I could.

I forced a smile on my lips, mirroring his gesture. If I wanted to survive, I had to get better in this game.