“Kieran,” Elisabeth hissed. Kieran pressed a hand to her arm, hoping it was enough. If he said a word aloud, the spell would be broken.
You have served your time, Kieran returned. But I am not your replacement. It isn’t nineteen fifty-two anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. Almost sixty years have passed since you were afflicted, David. Your wife will be very old. Your child will have children of their own. I can find them for you. But there isn’t a place for you with them. Not anymore.
David’s rage trembled across the murky surface of the water. He threw his head back, sounding out a new howl. Grief tore through the center of it. It nearly knocked Kieran off his feet.
I’m so sorry. I could find them for you.
David showed his long teeth. I could find them myself.
You wouldn’t get far. This woman behind me? She’s a vampire. She’s trained to kill you and has been waiting over a century to do it.
David snarled. She seems more afraid of me than I am of her.
Tonight I watched her kill a woman without breaking a sweat. She had me in her trunk without a fight. Don’t underestimate her.
David regarded them. Elisabeth took a step, but Kieran held her back.
You could pass this curse, David, or you could end it. Your family has moved on. Mine still waits for me.
There is no ending this curse.
Tell me your last name.
Why would I do that?
Please.
Long pause. Aucoin.
David Aucoin. And your wife? Her first name?
Lucy. But she was a Landry, before me.
You know what? I’m a Landry.
You lie.
Through my father, Mason. His father was...
Kieran stopped. He’d never known his grandfather, just as Mason had never known his father. Grandma Lucy had always said Grandpa had run off with some young hussy and left her to raise the twins, Mason and Mary. She’d given them both the Landry name, so they wouldn’t be tainted by the curse of their father.
No, David said. I would know my own blood. I would know.
Maybe it’s why you hesitate. Why I can speak to you.
David sniffed the air. You can speak to me because you have magic. I know the scent. Who are you really?
I am the son of Mason Landry and Chelsea Sullivan. And I think... I think I’m your grandson.
The Rougarou took a step back. Then another.
“He’s retreating,” Elisabeth said. “I don’t understand. What aren’t you saying? What’s happening between you two?”
Grandma Lucy is still alive. I’ll go to her. I’ll tell her what happened. I’ll tell her you didn’t leave her—
No! I would rather she believe I ran off than know this was my fate. She will be old now. She deserves peace. David further retreated.
But you didn’t leave them! It’s not your fault!
I said no, Kieran. Leave it. And I will leave you. A funny thing, becoming what I am. All the things you believed were from the darkness of fairy tales are real. She isn’t the first vampire I’ve seen. Or even the twentieth. I could kill her. Free you of the bondage she’s placed you in.
Kieran would regret this later. Undoubtedly, he would remember this moment, as his own life came to a close, as him throwing away his final chance to escape this.
But he found he couldn’t hurt Elisabeth. He couldn’t just order her death, no matter what she’d done.
No. I can handle this. I’ll be fine.
David didn’t respond. He slipped back into the shadows.
He was gone.
Kieran stumbled backward into Elisabeth’s arms and passed out.
12
Kelley
“Kelley. Here’s what I need you to understand. I can call upon every Deschanel between here and Baton Rouge, and they’ll come at my command. They’ll come without hesitation. But this does us no good if we cannot locate where Kieran has been taken.”
Sweat poured from Kelley’s brow as he watched Colleen Deschanel with a mix of respect and fear. She’d said that Kieran’s life hung upon his ability to draw deep into a skill he’d only just discovered and never been trained to use. But all she’d done was tell him to dig deeper. She’d never said how.
“There’s not one way to do it,” Colleen replied, evidently reading his mind. Had she been doing it all along? “All seers have their own techniques. Their own methods. You must find yours.”
“But how?”
“It may help to think of what you were doing when your visions came to you. We can return to those moments and see where they lead us,” Colleen said.
He wished he’d taken her up on a drink after all. His mouth was a bed of cotton as he swallowed, waffling between her request and wondering if Kieran was already dead. If he was too late.
“Can’t we call in other seers? Ask them if they’ve seen him?”
“The seers in this family know to contact me if they had any visions at all about one of us. If anyone else had seen Kieran, I would’ve known before you showed up on my doorstep.”
“We can’t ask them to try and see if they can see what I saw?”
“Visions don’t work that way. Seers have no command over what they’re shown. They cannot summon a vision. But a trained seer can learn to harness the details. Now, go back to where you were when this vision came to you.”
“I was just driving.”
“Where? What time of day?”
“To school. No, I was going home from school. Afternoon.”
“And when you saw Dillon? And your mother?”
Kelley tapped his frustration out through his toes, eager to get on with it. To get to Kieran before the vampire ate him. “I don’t know!”
“Of course you know,” Colleen said, calm as a still lake. “These were big moments for you, Kelley. You’ll never forget where you were when you had your first visions.”
“Driving, I guess, too. We’re wasting time!”
“And where were you driving when you saw Dillon?”
“She’s going to kill him!”
“Certainly, so focus. Where were you going?”
“Home!”
“Very good. And when you saw your mother being robbed?”
“I was going home, okay? But that
