required maintaining a precarious balance. Delilah wasn’t sure she could do it for long. She only hoped she could convince Samantha to come somewhere safe with her.
“There’s not much use in trying to get inside,” Delilah said, speaking softly. “The le Coire family is strictly devoted to helping humans. If Ryan invites you in, it will be because he thinks he can control you and use you.”
Samantha’s response was indignant. “I am human,” she protested. Her voice was haunting and powerful, like the bone-deep quiver left behind by a roll of thunder. Surely this wasn’t how Cooper perceived the creature, or he would have run away long ago. “Or, I was.”
“I heard Brent say you’re a ghost?” Delilah may have left when Ryan told her to, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to stay in the front yard and eavesdrop.
“Aren’t you a cheerleader?” Samantha asked. “Don’t tell me you’re from some kind of ancient line of sorcerers, too?”
Delilah noted Samantha’s use of the word sorcerer, instead of the more common term witch. Witches were born or created with their magic tied into their blood; they needed to do nothing more than survive in order to maintain it. Sorcerers, on the other hand, spent their lives devoted to studying the workings of power and building their own. Brent tended to misuse the word witch to refer to anyone with power, so he would not have taught her the difference. And Cooper certainly wouldn’t know it.
It could be mere coincidence that Samantha used the right word, or it could mean she knew more than she seemed to.
Instead of challenging the supposed ghost, Delilah laughed, preferring to seem harmless. “Yes, I’m a cheerleader, and no, I’m the child of two parents with no magical background whatsoever. But I have studied intensively on my own almost since grade school. I met Ryan a few years ago, after I had what he would refer to as an ‘amateur’s accident.’ One that nearly killed me.”
She added the last bit on a gamble. This creature could be very, very dangerous … or she could be exactly what she said she was, in which case Delilah might be able to win some of her trust by communicating honestly.
“Oh?”
Delilah thought she detected genuine curiosity. “I ran afoul of those … things,” she said, reluctant to describe the shadows in more detail until she found out more about Samantha. “The ones I see all around you and Cooper. I had been able to see them for a long time, but I didn’t know how to protect myself from them until Ryan taught me how.”
That caught Samantha’s attention, and she being began to move closer. Delilah had to shift her gaze away, unable to watch her walk without experiencing vertigo. “Can you destroy them?”
“There’s no point in trying to destroy them,” Delilah said. It was the truth, but it also meant she didn’t need to admit the limits of her own power. “There are always more.”
“If there are so many of them, why don’t they bother everyone?”
“The average person just isn’t worth hunting,” Delilah explained, an answer straight out of the le Coire family textbook—if they believed in putting such information down on paper. “The human body blocks power both ways, keeping magic in, but outside powers out, like a shell protecting a nut. To use magic, you have to reach past your own skin. That means gathering more power than most people have, which makes you tastier, and then giving up your primary defense. The first time I successfully raised enough magic to do something impressive, when I was twelve, a bunch of those shadow-things swarmed at me. I ended up having to tell people at school I had mono, it took that long for me to get any strength back.”
“I bet Cooper was worried,” Samantha said.
Delilah chuckled. This time it was genuine and not just an attempt to be disarming. “You’re sweet on him, aren’t you?”
“Am not,” Samantha retorted.
“Look, it’s okay,” Delilah assured her. “Cooper Blake is absolutely not my type. I care about him. He’s a friend and, of course, he’s on my team, too. But I like a guy with a little more spine and a little more … pizzazz.”
“He’s been good to me,” Samantha said softly. “He’s trying to help me.”
“Yeah, he’s in the wrong place for that,” Delilah scoffed. “Look, Ryan works well with humans, and—” She broke off when Samantha started to object again. “Maybe you used to be human. But you’re not anymore. I can respect you as a person—which is more than I can say for Ryan—but don’t expect me to treat you like you’re a regular human being with no unusual features. If nothing else you’re a little mortality-challenged.”
“I think I got the mortality thing down pretty well,” Samantha replied hotly. “It’s kind of requisite to dying, right?”
Delilah wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. She didn’t have the patience for it. Mortal and immortal meant different things in this context than they did in a biology class. “When you’re dealing with power, it’s a technical term. Mortality is what gives you the ability to touch things. It’s flesh and blood.”
“And you lose it when you die?”
Delilah was pretty certain that you lose everything when you die except the would-be dust the body was made of, but didn’t think Samantha was the type to accept that as a response. “Yeah,” she replied. “And normally when humans lose that, the scavengers eat what’s left.”
Samantha moved again. She seemed to be sitting on the car hood next to Delilah, which Delilah preferred; it took less effort to see her out of the corner of the eye than it did to look at her straight on. The power she put out from this close, though, caused gooseflesh to raise on Delilah’s arms.
“How long?” Samantha asked, her voice not exactly deeper, but darker. Was she frightened?
Delilah blinked, distracted by the cold power washing past her. “How long what?”
“Until they finish me off,” Samantha said.
“Oh.” Delilah hadn’t expected Samantha to seem so sincere. “Well … I mean, if you were really just human, they would have done it pretty much instantly.”
“Then what am I? And why don’t I remember? I don’t have any memories from before Cooper opened his eyes in that hospital.”
Delilah shifted uncomfortably. The last thing she had expected was to feel sorry for this creature. She had thought that maybe she could disconnect Samantha from Cooper, and use Samantha for her own means, the same way Ryan probably planned to. Delilah didn’t think of herself as overly burdened with protective instincts, but she couldn’t help but feel some pity at Samantha’s plight.
“I don’t know what you are,” she answered truthfully. “If you don’t have mortal power, and you haven’t been devoured by the shadows, then you have immortal power. It’s kind of an either/or thing. As for why you don’t remember your life before this, I don’t have an answer. Most immortals are these awesome, scary-as-hell, godlike creatures. People risk everything to summon them with sacrifices of blood and flesh and vows in order to gain incredible power. My best guess is that you were someone who did something like that—like the sorcerers in Ryan’s line, nominally human but with a lot of power. Maybe you had enough immortal power so that when you died, you could hold on to this world even without your body.”
Samantha seemed to consider that for a while, but then she sighed. “I remember how to play hopscotch,” she said. “I remember the theme song of The Twilight Zone. I remember all the words to the national anthem. If I were a sorcerer, shouldn’t I remember something about magic?”
Delilah sat back with a humph. “Good point.” So far, the only indication Delilah had that Samantha might know anything about magic was her probably random use of the correct word. “Look …” Delilah paused, but not for long. Certainly not long enough to avoid a blistering lecture from Ryan later if something went wrong. “No matter what you are, we know what you need, right?”
“A pony?”
Delilah should have seen that one coming.
“You need mortal power.”
“Can I find that at Target?” Samantha asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Or is it more of a special- order item?”
The idea that Samantha had once been a sorcerer seemed less likely with every passing moment, but that didn’t matter to Delilah anymore.
