Runaway Girl - The Secrets of Avelina Chronicles 1

Chapter 19

That night, Damian had no idea that he was being discussed, or in what manner. But as he was on his way back to the Charcot clan house, he remembered that Emily would be going to her night classes. He hoped to catch up with her, even if only to find out what had been happening in his absence. It took him barely ten minutes to jump over the campus wall and stroll into the English Literature class just a few minutes later than he should have been, just as the Professor, Carl Brown was closing the door.

Damian glanced around the room and quickly found Emily sitting right in the middle of the row of seats, tapping her pen on the notepad on her desk, looking around her as if she was waiting for someone or hoping that she couldn't be seen. Either way, he wasn't going to make it easy for her.

His best friend—his only friend—Trey was sitting in the row behind her, yawning and looking at his watch as if he had a better place to be, but Damian wasn't stupid. He knew that he had a soft spot for Emily and had only shown up in hope of "bagging and tagging" her, as he always said, trying to make light of how strongly he felt for her. Nevertheless, he hadn't been near a girl since he had been turned, centuries ago when they were both human.

Technically, Trey was his brother-in-law, who had tracked him down not long after Damian's disappearance. Trey put the pieces together, admitting that Angela wasn't the same girl after she had recovered. Losing Damian had broken her heart and her spirit.

He had been the only person, not including Maria, whom Damian had ever turned. With every day that went by, he only became more thankful that he had done it. Even when he had attempted to turn Chase, it had required Kyle's forceful nature in the back of the car to make her take his blood, not his own. Now that he'd added Maria to his list, however reluctantly, he knew they would have a lifelong connection because of it and felt it was only fair to warn his best friend of the new predicament he was in.

"Have you found her yet?" Trey asked speaking of Amelia as Damian took his seat. He still couldn't understand why his best friend was looking for a girl who had not only caused him to lose his wife and had locked him in a mirror for a century, but who had also made him fall so madly in love with her ... so much so that there was no saving him.

Damian had felt it even before Angela died. It tore him apart to think that he was betraying his wife by being in love with the very person who had kept them apart. But Damian was only human, so to speak. In fact, more so than the others. The way Trey saw it, Damian was allowed to love more than one person in his lifetime.

"No," Damian replied, "But there's a girl ... Maria. I think she's the key. She's certainly the closest thing I've seen to Amelia." Damian sighed, tired and hungry.

But at least the strange need he had always had to feed from Emily until she was dry was no longer present. Not even a dull ache. And when he thought about it, she didn't need to be going to night classes, either. Something was wrong with the whole picture, but he couldn't piece it together. "There's a problem, though. We thought she was turned, but she wasn't. Tonight

would have been her twelfth night. You know what that means?" Damian asked, avoiding the Emily subject. He feared that it would only tire him out even more to hear an explanation, no matter what it turned out to be.

"Yeah. Only Amelia could pull such a dirty trick, making you go through all that again. Did you do the right thing?" Trey asked, nodding and admitting that he knew what he meant.

"I finished the job, if that's what you mean. I had no choice. She was on death's door either way. I either had to push her through to our side or let her slip away. And she's too important to our safety to lose like that," Damian reasoned.

Trey smiled, nodding in agreement, fearing that Damian had, once again, fallen for Amelia's charm. She kept doing that to him. Just when he thought he was free of her and hated her for good, then something would happen and he'd fall right back under her spell again.