Free Blood of an Ancient by Rinda Elliott Page A

woodruff.”
    “Rings?”
    She turned her hand over to show me the identical matching ring on her index finger. “They are for a soldier’s protection.”
    “Blythe, we’re going to find a group of witches who sing pretty music. We’re not going to war.”
    “You never know. The runes said something different and Sophie’s complete world upheaval has my stomach doing flip-flops.”
    I slid the ring onto my finger. “It’s lovely. Thank you.”
    This dotty, fire-happy witch had somehow crawled into my world and made a permanent place. She’d become my friend. I didn’t have any of those, so I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I hated wearing rings. It really was pretty though.
     
     
    It didn’t take us long to get on the road. I called Elsa’s phone and left a message, telling her I’d printed out our route and left it on the dresser in the room she was using. She had been working long hours to make up for the time the dweller demon had put her into a coma. Dooby promised to keep working on the book and fast, and Castor promised to keep an eye on him. I could tell my brother wasn’t happy about being left behind.
    I didn’t know what to do with the vamp, so I packed him into my overnight bag.
    Six hours into the trip, I was ready to strangle Blythe. She put some sort of pine-scented crap in the vehicle and whatever it was messed with my nose so much I had to pull over once because I couldn’t stop sneezing. She tossed the little baggie of pine in a trash can at a gas station. Then she spent the first three hours telling me the meaning of every color, every candle, and I now knew more than I ever wanted to know about her past boyfriends and their prowess in bed. She’d completely embraced the girl’s road trip and when she finally nodded off, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
    Then she woke up and turned green.
    “Oh no, not cool,” I said. “Please tell me you aren’t turning colors for the reason I think you are.” The midday sun speared my eyeballs as we topped a hill. I rummaged around on my seat, feeling for my cheap sunglasses. I always bought them cheap because I had a habit of sitting on them. Putting them anywhere else didn’t help either because they always ended up under my butt.
    A long, pitiful moan poured out of Blythe. “The spell isn’t working,” she mumbled, wrapping her arms around her middle and curling up in the front seat.
    “Spell? Goddess, Blythe, have we covered this subject enough by now or what? We’re only about an hour from the concert spot.”
    She only made a whimpering noise, grabbed her stomach.
    “Seriously, what spell? Because if you set any fires in Nikolos’s home that I don’t know about, so help me…”
    Her answer was to jerk up off the seat and puke all over the floor.
    “Shit, Blythe! What have you been eating?”
    “Not shit,” she mumbled, gagging again.
    Cursing, I pulled Nikolos’s T-shirt up over my nose and looked for an exit off the highway. I had to let go of the material to roll the window down, but thankfully, cold air rushed in to freshen the Jeep. Blythe proceeded to shiver.
    I had no idea where we were, but I pulled off the highway and hunted down a car wash. There were no town markers, nothing to tell me where we were, and the road off the highway was unlike any exit I’d ever taken. Narrow and heavily wooded on the sides, it held sharp curves, had no side roads and went on for a good twenty minutes.
    Twenty minutes of Blythe groaning and dry heaving.
    All I knew is we were somewhere near the Talladega National Forest. Or maybe in it. There were certainly a lot of chestnut oaks and loblolly pines. When the trees abruptly stopped, I caught sight of a familiar figure. I hit the brakes, my eyes narrowing to try and see him better. Shock and a sudden deep, cutting pain in my chest nearly sent me off the road.
    “Fred?” I whispered, before jamming my foot down on the gas to get to that shimmering, blurry form in front of a tiny