Kitabı oku: «Edge of Twilight», sayfa 6

“What’s he up to?” she wondered aloud, pacing through the church, examining the items, which were stamped with Salem Fitness Center, Salem, MA. She crooked an eyebrow. Edge had been busy.

She looked around for his duffel bag but didn’t find it. The pew on the dais still held his strange little collection of keepsakes. There were more candles now than the three that stood on the pew. He’d affixed one on each windowsill. All unlit, of course. She wondered why he saw the need for candles, when he could see better than she could in the dark.

Where was he?

She went through a door at the rear of the church. It stuck a little, swollen from the weather and hanging by only one hinge, but she shoved it open and stepped into a dark, dusty storage room. There were shelves, a couple of disintegrating boxes with candles spilling out of them, and another door. Amber shoved that door open and stared down a rickety wooden staircase. Some of the steps were broken, others missing.

He was down there. Naturally he was down there. It would be the safest place to rest. No one in their right mind would attempt to navigate the broken-down stairs in the pitch-dark to invade his privacy. His duffel bag was apparently down there with him, since she hadn’t located it anywhere else.

Drawing a breath, she started carefully, stepping past the missing first step, past the broken second step, and slowly lowering her weight onto the intact-looking third step from the top.

The distinct sound of wood splitting told her she’d made a serious mistake.

The sensation of plummeting through the darkness confirmed it, and the impact drove the point home.

6

Edge sensed something, just beyond the fringed edges of his consciousness, whispering to him. His face tightened, and his nose twitched. He smelled her—that soft, exotic scent that was neither human nor vampire, and every cell in his body came to screaming awareness, all of them craving her. That need circled through his brain as the clouds cleared slowly from his mind. His skin prickled and tingled. He felt her. She was close.

Gradually, other sensations returned. He felt the hard packed earth of the floor beneath his back and the softness of the blanket in between. He smelled the musty scent of the cellar, the dirt. He felt the cold, damp air and tasted the sea in it. Consciousness returned, and he opened his eyes, stretched his arms and sat up.

Amber lay on the floor a few yards from him, underneath the useless, skeletal staircase. Edge came fully awake then, rolling easily to his feet, hurrying forward. She wasn’t moving. He smelled blood. And he saw the broken stair above that hadn’t been broken before. She must have gone straight through. Dammit.

Edge knelt beside her. She lay on her side, hair covering her face. He moved the hair away and saw the ruby strand, stretching from her hairline across her forehead to her cheek. It was already drying. She’d been lying there a while.

“Alby?” he whispered. She was alive. He sensed the life in her, felt her heart beating and the blood flowing through her veins. He heard her breaths whispering in and out. “Alby, come on. Talk to me now.”

No response. Closing his eyes, Edge moved his hands over her. Out along her arms, over her neck, down her spine, not quite touching, just opening his senses, feeling for injuries. He examined her legs, then ran his hands up her sides to get a feel for the ribs. He didn’t think she had any serious injuries. Gently, then, he rolled her over, scooped her up in his arms. He snatched his blanket from the floor, then stood by the foot of the broken stairway, bent his knees and pushed off.

When he landed at the top, she moaned.

Edge’s throat went dry, and he swallowed hard, realizing that he really didn’t want anything to happen to her. He told himself that was because he needed her. He needed her to lead him to Frank Stiles, and he needed her to reveal her weaknesses to him, so that he would know how to kill Stiles when he found him. And he needed, rather desperately, to get inside her, because if he didn’t, he thought his head was going to explode.

None of that explained the sick feeling in his stomach on seeing her lying there, injured. It pissed him off a bit. He made a face at his own weakness, reminded himself she was no more than a means to an end, and carried her through to the main part of the church. He laid her on a pew, then tugged the blanket he’d slung over his shoulder and arranged it across her. Then he pushed the hair away to get a better look at the cut on her head.

His fingers found it; a rather wide gash and a lump the size of a jaw breaker.

“Owww.”

He looked at her face, saw her eyes fluttering open. She met his, sighed softly and let them fall closed again. “Oh, it’s this again,” she muttered.

“What again?” he asked, leaning closer to catch every word.

“The dream. Same old dream. Where’s the box, anyway?”

He frowned deeply, tipped his head to one side. “Alby, listen up. It’s me. It’s Edge. You hit your head and now you’re—somewhat delirious, I guess.”

“It’s not the dream again?”

“No, Alby, it’s no dream.”

Her brows bent closer, and her eyes opened to squinting little slits. “Edge?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

One hand rose to her head, but as soon as she touched it, she winced and pulled her hand away. Her eyes opened a little farther.

“Awake now?”

“Yeah. What happened?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“What do you mean?” She’d been looking around the church, but now she looked at him.

“I mean, what the hell were you doing creeping around my place by day, Amber Lily?”

She blinked, seemed to search her mind, then her eyes went serious again. “I came to see you—but I got here a little early and decided to come in and wait. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

He crooked one brow at her, just looked at her, because he knew damn well she was lying. She knew better. She’d been raised by his kind.

“Well, I mean, sure, any vampire would mind having someone invading their space while they were defenseless. But it’s me. I mean, I thought you and I had a. connection.”

This time he arched both brows. “You thought so, did you?”

She shrugged. “Didn’t you?” She sat up then, saving him the necessity of having to answer, pressing the heel of one hand to her forehead. “Damn, my head hurts.”

“You came creeping into the cellar. A stair broke, and you took a tumble. Funny thing for a girl to do, when she only intended to come inside and wait.”

She blinked up at him, peering from beneath her wrist. “What, do you think I was on my way down there to pull a Van Helsing on you? Did you see a wooden stake in my back pocket?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “What were you doing, then?”

She looked away, her hair black in the darkness, falling over her cheek and hiding her expression from him. “I told you, I arrived early and decided to wait.” Edge honed his mind to hers, trying to be subtle, not too obvious about it.

She seemed to force herself to face him again, to look him in the eye and appear sincere. He wasn’t fooled. “Can I help it if my curiosity got the best of me?”

He stared at her, and he felt something tugging at him, pulling him. A little shiver danced along his nape.

Something inside her seemed to pulse with the gravitational pull of a black hole. There was a heavy emptiness there, and, consciously or not, she was aching for him to fill it.

He felt an answering demand from his own nether-regions, forced himself not to act on it, though he couldn’t exactly ignore it.

“You were curious,” he repeated, breaking eye contact to keep from being sucked in. “About what? What I looked like at rest?” He let his lips pull into a sarcastic half smile. “What I wear to bed?”

“You wish.”

He shrugged. “What, then?”

She shook her head as if angry with him, then winced at the pain the action brought and got to her feet anyway. “Look, if you don’t trust me, I’ll leave right now. You’re the one who asked me to come back here.” She took a step, swayed a little.

He gripped her shoulders. “Not so fast, now. You’re still shaky.”

“No kidding.” She sagged closer to him, the movement imperceptible, and yet his body reacted, moving millimeters closer to hers at the same time. His hands tightened on her shoulders and let the gravity take over. She rested against him. He closed his eyes and told himself he was imagining the power that seemed to meld them together. It was silly, and completely counter to his purposes.

“Don’t take offense, Alby. I don’t trust anyone. It’s nothing personal.”

“You sound like my father.”

He winced. Her father was the last person he wanted to remind her of. “Why? He a suspicious sort, too?”

“I used to think my parents were the most paranoid, overprotective vampires in existence.”

“Used to?” He forced himself to relax his hold on her, let his hands slide down her back to rest at her waist and peeled his body from her, putting healthy space between them.

She shrugged. “Until Frank Stiles kidnapped me five years ago, pretty much proving my parents right.”

The reminder that Stiles had held her pricked his soul. He didn’t like thinking about that. “Used you as a guinea pig, did he?” he asked, even as he tried to tell himself he could really care less, turning and pacing away from her.

“You know who he is, then?”

He looked back quickly. “I’ve heard of him, yes. Former DPI, self-appointed vamp-hunter-slash-researcher. Have I got it right?”

“Pretty much.”

He nodded. “He must have considered you his all-time prize catch.”

She smiled at him, flashed it so unexpectedly it temporarily dazzled him. “Wouldn’t any man?”

He shook the glitter from his head, rolled his eyes and grinned at her joke.

“So what’s with the equipment?” she asked, looking around at the items he’d acquired the night before. “Vampiric strength not good enough for you? You aspire to something … bulkier?”

He smirked. “I’ve got all the strength I’ll ever need, Alby. Don’t doubt that. I got this stuff together for you, not myself.”

“For me?” She faced him, her pretty dark brows arching over those odd colored eyes. Blue-black as oil slicks, they were. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Test yourself.”

She frowned, but when she turned to look at the equipment again, it was with a curious, interested expression.

“You talked to me in the car, remember? You told me you didn’t know the full extent of your powers.”

“And you said you would help me find out.”

He nodded. “So I thought to begin with physical strength.” He smiled at her. “And I thought I might teach you a few moves, while we’re at it. You may as well learn to defend yourself, right?”

“You think I can’t defend myself?”

He shrugged. “You said Stiles got you. He’d never get me.”

“He had an army, weapons, tranquilizers. There was nothing I could have done. Believe me, I tried.”

He looked doubtfully at her. “Tried what? Slapping him?”

She frowned, getting a little angry. “Why don’t we play with these toys of yours, Edge? Then you can see for yourself what I can do.”

He shook his head. “Not tonight, after that bump on the head.”

She strode toward him, no longer the least bit unsteady on her feet, closed her hand around his wrist and brought his hand to her head. He frowned, but obliged her, probing the spot where the lump and cut had been. But the lump was nearly gone, and the cut itself was noticeably smaller. He shot her a look.

“Quick healing. It used to take a couple of days. I healed faster than a human but slower than a vamp. But since Stiles got through with me, it’s been changing. A lot of things have.”

“So you heal faster than we do now?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have to wait for the day sleep. So it starts right away.”

Edge nodded. “Why do you suppose your time in captivity coincides with these … changes?”

She pursed her lips, lowered her head. “I don’t know.” He knew it was a lie. She did know. Or thought she did. And he could guess her theory. Stiles had killed her, only to see her revive each time. Death and rebirth, even in myth, brought drastic change. Metamorphosis.

“What other changes have you noticed?”

She only shook her head.

He tipped his to one side. “Don’t trust me yet, do you, Alby?”

She used his own words against him. “Like you, Edge, I don’t trust anyone.”

“I had that coming.” He shrugged. “So you want to play?” He moved to the punching bag, braced his shoulder against it and framed it with his forearms. “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got, love.”

Sighing, she moved to the punching bag, gave it a couple of practice jabs.

“Come on, Alby. Like you mean it.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

The laughter burst from him even louder than it would have if he hadn’t been trying so hard to keep it in. He saw her face change, saw her draw back her slender arm, raising the opposite one in a defensive pose. He braced for the punch. She delivered it. The bag recoiled so rapidly that it picked him off his feet before he lost his grip and sailed backward, hit the wall and slid to the floor.

She walked across the church, and he looked up at her, standing there with her hands on her hips. “You okay?”

“Depends. Can you see the little birdies flitting around my head?”

She extended a hand. He took it and let her tug him to his feet. “Sorry about that.”

“Hey, I asked for it.” He brushed himself off, gathered up his pride. “So you’re strong. We’ve established that much.”

She nodded. “I’m strong. I can pick up my car, one end at a time, not the entire thing.”

He could probably do the same, he thought. Yeah, he could do that.

“How about speed?”

“Dad had a treadmill custom-made for me, so I could clock myself in the privacy of our home, where I wouldn’t be seen. I’ve hit sixty.”

Then she couldn’t move with vampiric speed, so fast she would blur human vision, appearing to vanish and reappear in a new place. He could. At least in this, he was superior.

“And then, of course, there’s this.”

He started to ask what, but before he spoke, she was looking across the room, and he followed her gaze. She jerked her head a little, and the pew she seemed to be focused on rose up off the floor and shot toward them. Edge ducked, flinging up an arm to protect his head, but the thing stopped in midair and landed heavily, tipping over.

He straightened, lowering his arm, blinking at her. “Unbelievable.”

She shrugged. “That’s me.” Then she sighed. “Don’t look so shaken, Edge. I can’t control minds or hypnotize mortals or play with their memories. I can send and receive, if the other party isn’t blocking. I’m not very good at eavesdropping on thoughts.” She shrugged. “Psychically, that’s about it. Except for the—”

She broke off there, but Edge heard the final word anyway. Her mind spoke it, though her lips didn’t. “The dreams?” he asked. He searched her face, recalled her saying something about dreams earlier, in her delirium. She’d thought she was dreaming then. “What dreams, Alby?”

She shrugged, averting her eyes. “Sometimes I dream. things.”

“Things that later come to pass?”

She nodded. “It’s usually nothing significant.”

“But …?” he prompted, sensing there was more to the thought, though she was shielding more effectively now.

She faced him squarely. “Why are you so interested in me, Edge? Tell me the truth. What do you want with me?”

He smiled just a little, deliberately opened his mind to her, filling his head with images of the two of them engaged in various acts. He made the pictures as vivid and shocking as he could, and he saw her eyes widen, her face redden.

She turned away and whispered, “Besides all that, I mean.”

He brought his shields up again. “Nothing, Alby. Why can’t you believe me?”

“I know better, that’s why. I’m not stupid, Edge. You want to use me….”

“In every imaginable way.” He moved up behind her, and when he spoke those words, his cold breath caressed her neck. “I haven’t tried to hide that fact from you, Alby.”

She shivered.

He stroked his hands down her shoulders, outer arms, all the way to her wrists, then closed his hands on hers. “It’s all right. I can be patient.”

“There’s more. There’s more you want from me. I know

it.”

“I swear there isn’t.”

“I dreamed about you, Edge.”

He went very still, as stunned as if she’d hit him right between the eyes.

“I’ve been dreaming about you for nearly a year now.”

“Really?” He didn’t know how to react, what to say. But he had to know; he had to ask. “What happens in these dreams?” he asked.

“Well, most recently.” she whispered. Then, suddenly, he could see inside her mind as she opened it to him, revealing the same erotic images he’d painted for her only moments earlier. He felt as if his blood turned to lava in his veins. His mind raced, and his hunger for her burned. “Jesus,” he muttered.

“Oh, there’s more.” She leaned back against his chest, let her head fall to one side. He nuzzled her throat, let his lips slide over it, licked softly and felt the pounding beat in the jugular. God, he wanted to taste her.

“God, yes,” he muttered against her skin. “What else?” he whispered, parting his lips against her neck to speak the words.

“A couple of things. I’m overwhelmed with feelings of passion, fear and grief. You give me something.”

“Yes?” He sucked the skin of her throat just a little, scraped his teeth over it without allowing himself to bite down, and he felt the heat and the passion in her, rising to equal his own.

“Oh, yes. You give me death.”

Edge froze. Slowly he lifted his head from her neck, and, hands to her shoulders, he turned her to face him. “I … kill you?”

She nodded. “I don’t know. I only know you bring me a gift, and the gift is death. Now maybe you see why I’m a little bit wary about trusting you, Edge.”

7

Amber watched him as carefully as she would have watched a coiled cobra. He’d seemed stunned when she told him about her dream. She thought his shock was genuine.

“I’m not going to get you killed.” The way he said it, she could almost believe he was trying to convince himself as much as her. “I swear, Alby, I’m not. I wouldn’t do that.”

She shrugged. “That’s a funny way to put it.”

“What is?”

“You said you wouldn’t get me killed. I didn’t say you got me killed in the dream, I said you gave me death.”

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. Not exactly.”

He lowered his head, pacing away from her. “Hell, how could I kill you, anyway? I don’t even know if anything can kill you. You don’t even know.”

She shrugged. “Well, no, but I know what won’t. Drowning, electric shock, poisons, sunlight. Blood loss makes me pretty helpless, but who knows if it would kill me or not? I would imagine burning or beheading—”

“Stop it!”

She smiled, because he looked shaken by the images she’d painted in his mind. Turning away from him, she spent a few minutes pounding the punching bag with hooks, jabs, crescent kicks and back kicks. She was showing off, and she thought he knew it. When she stopped for a breather, he stood aside, hands on his hips, watching her. He said, “Do your dreams always come to pass?”

She sent him a glance. “So far? Always.” She gave the bag one last kick for good measure. “Walk me back to the house?”

“And give me a chance to attack?”

“I think I could take you.”

“I wish you would.”

She smiled slowly.

He said, “Why aren’t you running away from me as fast as you can? I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I. Partly because I want to know what the dream means. And partly.” She lowered her eyes, not finishing the sentence.

“Yeah, partly that. That I understand.”

She brushed the comment aside. “I want you to spend more time with the others. Get to know them a little.”

“I’m a loner, Alby.”

She tilted her head. “It’s okay, Edge. They don’t know about the dreams. No one does, except Will, and he doesn’t know the content. Only that I dreamed about you.”

He pursed his lips, lowered his head. “Besides, they’re better mind probers than you are, right? They might pick up on my ulterior motives. That’s why you really want to drag me back there, isn’t it?”

“You weren’t lying when you said you didn’t trust anyone, were you?” She sighed heavily. “Hell, Edge, if that’s what you think, it’s fine by me. So long as you have nothing to hide, why do you care?”

He seemed to mull it over for a long moment. Then he brightened a bit. “What’s in it for me?” he asked her.

She was surprised, but less so as she examined the spark in his eyes. “You mean I have to resort to bribery to get you to spend time with me?”

“I’ll spend every night with you, Alby, if you want. But with those others? Yes, it requires compensation. So what will you give me?”

“What do you want?”

He smiled, an evil smile. She knew, right to the core of her, what he was going to say. Sex. Or blood. Or both. He wanted to take her, own her, possess her, drink her, and God help her, the idea heated her to the verge of meltdown.

“A kiss,” he said then.

She blinked at him as her brain registered what he had said, and that it did not match what she had been expecting. “I’m sorry?”

“A kiss. I want one long, passionate, uninhibited kiss.”

“You’ve already kissed me.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I won’t do it again, but that’s beside the point. I want you to kiss me.”

She frowned at him. “And if I do, you’ll come back to the house with me?”

“And stay until a quarter to dawn, if that’s what you want. But it has to be a real kiss. No little peck. Kiss me like you mean it.”

She wasn’t sure she would be capable of kissing him and not meaning it, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “All right, it’s a deal. Pucker up.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at her and sat down on a bench that had probably once belonged in front of an organ. “Just so you can reach,” he explained. “Without standing on tiptoe.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She moved to the bench and turned to sit beside him, but he stopped her, hands on her waist.

“No, no. Here, like this.” He moved her sideways until she stood right in front of the bench, facing him. Then he slid his hands down her sides, over her hips. His fingertips touched her backside as he moved his hands lower, to her thighs, then downward to the hollow behind her knees. Then he tugged gently, so she moved closer, until his knees were between hers and his head was level with her breasts. Pulling on one knee until she bent it, he brought it up, over the bench, around him. Then he tugged at the other.

Amber put her hands on his shoulders, and moved the other leg where he wanted it. He pulled her down, until she sat on him, straddling him.

“There. That’s better now, isn’t it?” he asked her. His voice had gone soft, rough. She felt him getting hard underneath her. Her belly twisted, and she wanted to do a lot more than kiss him and wasn’t even bothered by the fact that his hands had settled on the curve of her ass, so they could keep her hips imprisoned against his. He moved his hips a little, rubbing his erection against her. “Yeah, that’s much better. Now kiss me.”

Amber licked her lips. His eyes followed the motion. She lifted her palms to his cheeks, tipped his head up a little and lowered hers. He didn’t close his eyes but left them open, and she couldn’t seem to break the grip they had and close her own. Not until she pressed her mouth to his.

He did not kiss her. He remained still, passive and expectant. She moved her lips over his, opening and closing, adding a little suction that tugged them into her, and she liked that. She experimented then with her tongue, pushing his lips apart and slipping inside. She traced his lips with her tongue, tickled the roof of his mouth with it, then slid over his teeth. She felt his incisors, long and razor-sharp. Then she played with his tongue until she managed to elicit the response she’d been craving.

He closed his arms around her waist, and he kissed her in return. His fangs scraped her lip, and he lapped the taste of blood from the scratch. His fingers tangled in her hair, and he seemed intent on drinking her very soul from her lips and her mouth. That was how deeply he kissed her, how much he took.

When he finally lifted his head away the blood lust was raging so strongly in him that his eyes seemed to glow. Amber was breathless, panting, her heart pounding like the bass-line of a rap song. Her entire body shook and trembled, and she felt light-headed. She twined her arms around his neck and lowered her head to his shoulder, resting against him, waiting for the high voltage charge pulsing through her to fade away.

“Alby?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“Is this another part of your … you know, abilities?”

She lifted her head slowly. “What?”

He seemed to be searching for the correct way to rephrase his question. “Have you kissed other men?” he asked, finally.

“Of course I’ve kissed men before.” Boys, she thought. No men. Not really.

“Did they … did it … was it like this?”

“Like this?” She smiled at him, realizing it had been as mind-blowing for him as for her. But she wanted to hear him admit that, so she put on her most innocent expression and asked, “Like what?”

“Like what,” he repeated, giving her a look that told her he knew exactly what she was doing. “Did their eyes roll back in their heads, doll? Did their tongues loll out to their knees? Did they go into core meltdown?”

The smile broke wide across her lips; she couldn’t prevent it. “That’s what it felt like to you, too?”

He thinned his lips, averted his eyes. “I didn’t say that.” Giving her a little nudge, he moved her off his lap, onto her feet, and got to his own. “Let’s go, then.” He flashed into motion, and before she could speak again, he was out the window, standing on the beach and waiting for her.

Amber went to the window, too, vaulted the sill and landed in a crouch, bouncing quickly upright again. She walked to where he stood, slid her hand into his, laced her fingers through his and began walking along the beach.

He looked down at their hands, a deep frown etching itself between his brows. It wasn’t exactly one of dismay or dislike. More like … confusion.

“It’s never been like that before, Edge. Never, not with anyone.”

He pursed his lips. “Then again, that’s not saying much, is it? Given your lack of experience, I mean?”

She looked up at him, and thought, You know better. It’s got nothing to do with my virginity. There’s something powerful here.

He pretended not to have heard her, though she knew he had. And together, they walked back to the house.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit,” Morgan said softly. She was sitting in a chair on the patio, a notebook computer open on her lap. It painted her worried face in a soft electric blue glow. “Where is she, anyway? Not with that Sting wanna-be, is she?”

“Sting?” Dante asked. He sat nearby in a reclining lawn chair, beside a glass topped umbrella table. The umbrella, of course, was absent. It would have shaded them only from the moonlight. Sarafina sat beside him, and Willem was at the fourth spot.

“I don’t think he looks anything like Sting,” Amber said, tightening her hand around Edge’s as she walked him up the redwood steps to the patio overlooking the beach. “Billy Idol, maybe?”

Everyone looked their way. She’d felt Edge stiffen just a little when they’d first come up and overheard the conversation. He hadn’t relaxed, even when she’d turned Morgan’s comment back on her.

Dante rose at their approach. “I’m afraid I don’t know either reference.” He smiled, nodding hello to them.

“It’s just as well, since neither is accurate, anyway,” Edge said. He glanced at Morgan, and at the laptop. “Bad news, I take it?”

She pursed her lips, shot a look at Amber.

“I’ll probably tell him anyway,” she said, interpreting Morgan’s look correctly.

Morgan sighed. Sarafina said, “If Amber trusts him, we should, as well. She’s the one in jeopardy, after all.”

Edge lifted his brows. “What makes you think Alby’s in danger?”

“Amber Lily is always in danger,” Willem said. “She’s one of a kind, Edge. Prize quarry for certain hunters.”

“Like Frank Stiles,” Amber explained in an aside. “That’s who they’re worried about.”

“And now someone has leaked word that she’s here, in Salem,” Morgan said, and she speared Edge with her eyes when she said it. “It’s all over the Internet.”

“Well, don’t look at me.” Edge glanced from one of them to the other. “I’m not exactly a technophile.”

“Edge doesn’t even have electricity where he’s been staying, much less an Internet connection.” Amber tugged him by the hand to a thickly cushioned swing that hung from chains and a wood frame. She sat there, and he sank down beside her. She drew a breath. “So do you think Stiles has heard I’m here yet?”

“If he’s alive, he’s heard,” Willem said softly. “I think you should leave, Amber Lily. Go down to Wind Ridge and join Rhiannon, Roland and your parents at Eric and Tam’s place.”

Edge looked at Amber. “If Stiles knows where you are, will he come for you?”

She smiled slowly as she thought about her answer, then let the smile widen as it came to her in full. “There’s not a doubt in my mind,” she said. “And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“Not a bad thing? In what world?” Morgan asked. “Amber, he had you once. You, of all people, should know what he’s capable of.”

Amber looked at her. “We need him,” she said. “He might be our only chance of saving Will. If my being in Salem will bring him to us, then I should stay right here. Let him come. It’ll save us the time and trouble of hunting him down. Frankly, if I’d thought of it, I’d have posted that information myself.”