I cried as my hand clamped around the lifeless organ.
“What are you doing?” Fluffikins demanded in horror.
“I’m not,” I said, beginning to hyperventilate, such was my fear.
“Then stop.”
“I can’t,” I cried, even as I tried—and failed—to yank my hand free from Connie’s chest.
But then her heart began to beat within my hand. Faint and slow at first, but then faster, stronger.
The magic released me, and I pulled my hand free, gasping and crying when Connie opened her eyes and rose to a sitting position.
“What happened?” she croaked, bringing a hand up to rub at her chest. “Where am I?”
“No, it’s not possible.” Fluffikins walked back until he bumped into the wall. His wide eyes glowed with what I took to be equal parts fright and respect. Somehow I just knew how others felt now. At least some of the time.
“Are you okay?” I asked Connie breathlessly as my frazzled nerves began to relax again.
“I feel…” she began, echoing the same words she’d spoken just before she’d crumpled in a heap on the ground.
“Alive,” she said at last, her eyes blinking rapidly as she studied her arms and chest. “How?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but there was no explanation.
Connie twisted with a grunt and grabbed the wooden stake from the holster at her ankle and dragged it across the soft flesh of her forearm.
“Ahhh!” she cried as deep scarlet blood poured from the wound.
“Alive!” Fluffikins wailed. “Alive! But no one can raise the dead!”
“Tawny did,” the vampire said with that familiar smirk of hers, and then she flung her arms around me and sobbed into my hair.
I hesitated.“Are you…?”
“Human again, yes!” She kissed both of my cheeks in such effusive delight that I could scarcely recognize her.
“It’s not possible,” the boss cat muttered again.
“The curse is gone?” I asked hopefully, hesitantly.
Connie rose to her feet and then laughed when she stumbled back a step.“I’m clumsy. And I can feel. And hurt. And, and… Thank you, Tawny. Thank you so much for freeing me from that life!”
“This is not good,” Fluffikins hissed as he ran for the stairs.
Had I done something wrong? The boss cat seemed to think so, but how could saving a life ever be a bad thing?
I let Connie wrap me in her arms and sob into my hair with wave after wave of joy and told myself I’d done something good—even if I hadn’t exactly been the one to do it.
28
“Connie,” I cried as a sudden revelation hit me. “If I raised you, I can—”
I turned to the four vampire captives hunched over in the jail cell, and Connie followed my line of sight.
“Raise the others, yes!” she squealed.
“They told me some things before…” I broke off, not wanting to describe the horrific scene I’d witnessed.
“This one.” I stopped before the second captive on the bench. “He was going to tell me more before the other stopped him, and then they… you know.”
“Can you stop them from doing it again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, but Fluffikins said—”
“Who cares what Fluffikins said. We’ve got a great chance here. You have to take it.”
“He doesn’t want me to use my magic again until I’m better at controlling it.”
“What’s the worst that can happen, though?”
“Well, I killed you.”
She broke into a huge toothy—and fangless—smile. “Only a little bit. I’m back now and better than ever.”
“Yes, you are,” I said with a grateful laugh. We actually would be friends, Connie and I, and—oh—how I’d needed it.
“They’re already dead. Raise one, ask your questions. They’re all bound and imprisoned. Literally nothing can go wrong with this. You have to do it.”
I nodded and flexed my fingers, drawing the magic forward.“It’s gross,” I warned.
Connie rolled her eyes and blew a raspberry. Wow, it was going to take me some time to get used to the new version of her.“Um, I drank human blood for more than a century until the gilded age came and changed our ways.”
“You’re not a vampire anymore,” I reminded her as a smile quirked at my lips.
“Oh, right!” She smacked a palm into her forehead then let out an oof of pain. “Wow, that’s going to take some getting used to.”
That’s what I had just thought. Well, at least we were on the same page now. I probably would have laughed had I not been dreading what I had to do next.
I sunk to my knees before my subject, closed my eyes, and took three slow breaths in and out before plunging my hand into his chest and grabbing hold of his heart.
When the vampire’s heart began to beat within my fist, I kept my hold to prevent him from being able to crush his own heart again. I was reasonably certain that he was now human like Connie, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
“What’s going on?” the prisoner asked, blinking his eyes open slowly. “What did you do to me? I don’t feel right.”
“Never mind about that. We were having a nice chat before, and you were just about to tell me your plans for uniting the world under one power.”
“Not my plans, his.”
“Who is he, this one with the plans?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are you helping him?”
“We will no longer have to live in the shadows. Magicks will openly rule.”
“What about the humans?”
“They can submit of their own free will or be forced to do so. He will be good to those who accept his leadership.”
“What about the ones who don’t?”
“Will be destroyed, naturally.”
“And you want this?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s about all of us.”
“It matters to me. Why are you going along with all this?”
“I’m tired of being made to feel like I shouldn’t exist. That my very survival is a sin.”
“But isn’t that what you want to do to people without magic?”
“No, they will be put out of their misery. Meanwhile I am trapped in mine.”
I let go and pulled my hand from his chest.“Thank you.”
“What will happen to me now?”
Connie put a hand on my shoulder.“Tawny, go. Let me tie up this last loose end.”
“But…” I wanted to argue, to defend this vampire’s life, especially now that he may be mortal again.
“He already made his choice,” Connie reminded me. “I’m just setting him back to the way he was. I promise to do so gently.”
I shook my head, not wanting to answer either way.
The magic decided for me, carrying me up the steps before I could decide what action I wanted to take.
29
Melony stood waiting for me in the warehouse.“C’mon,” she said once I emerged from the hidden dungeon. “Everyone’s gathering in the conference room. Boss cat told me to get you, so consider yourself got.”
I nodded and followed her through the office building and into the glass conference room where the board gathered to discuss its most important business. As soon as I stepped inside, the world magic unspooled from inside me and rose to the ceiling in a thick fog.
“Oh, so now you want to behave,” Fluffikins groaned.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, quickly grabbing a chair.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” the cat snapped, which I took as my cue to sit quietly and wait for whatever news the board had to share.
Connie was the last to join us, not five minutes later. When she took her seat beside me, Fluffikins assumed his war general march up and down the table.
“The rival coven has been dispatched,” he revealed, although by now, I assume everyone already knew. “Buckley was able to identify the potion they laced in the food at Bollyweird.”
“What was it?” Melony asked, drawing a look of ire from the cat.