Free Vampires & Vinca (Hawthorn Witches Book 4) by A.L. Tyler Page A

again.
    She slowly turned back to him. “Get Lyssa. Now. I’m not telling this story more than once.”

Chapter 9
     
    Lyssa wasn’t happy to be dragged back to the greenhouse so soon. She sat on one of the stools at the workbench, holding her head in her hands as Kendra went to get Gates out of the side yard, where she had been trying to pull a natural spring up from the ground.
    “Has she been spying on me?”
    The question caught me off guard, and I looked over at Lyssa in surprise. She looked thin and exhausted, and having been brought back early seemed to have frayed her every nerve.
    “No,” I said cautiously. “Why?”
    “No reason.” Lyssa took a deep breath and tried to sit a little straighter. It made her appear more alert, but there was no hiding the bags under her eyes.
    Kendra was walking back toward us with Gates and a miffed Charlie in tow.
    “What’s up?” Lyssa asked in an upbeat tone.
    Kendra gave her a wary look, and then gestured for Gates to grab one of the empty buckets nearby to use as a chair.
    “A little more than thirty years ago, Draven Luthor approached me about the Hawthorn Grimoire. Necromancers are witches at their core, though we’re on different sides of the spectrum. He kept it very private, which I appreciated, but his father was very a well-known vampire—necromancer royalty, in a fashion—and I knew he wanted something. He wanted the book, to bring glory to his family and destroy rival families, or some nonsense like that. But he was willing to play by our rules, so I let him. He wanted to make an arranged marriage between my brother and his sister.”
    I groaned, burying my face in my hands. Lyssa continued to stare.
    “And?” she asked sharply.
    “And, they went on several dates, and the dates went very well. House Luthor was powerful and a valuable asset back then, and I thought having them as allies would be good for the Hawthorns of future generations. I explained to Draven that I would pass the book on to my brother’s children one day because I did not have a desire to have children of my own. We had an understanding,” she said, suddenly looking sad. “And when he demanded I give him the book on the day of the wedding, things went bad.”
    Lyssa looked baffled. “Are you saying my dad— our dad—was married before?”
    “Oh, my god,” I hissed under my breath. “She’s saying mom was one of them , Lyssa! Try to keep up!”
    Lyssa looked back at Kendra, dismayed. “But that can’t be right. Mom didn’t know any magic. She was a normal human. She didn’t practice anything, not what you do, and certainly not what they do. Dad doesn’t even know about any of this. That can’t be right—”
    “He used to.” Kendra said shortly. “They both used to. When I wouldn’t turn over the book, he demanded an annulment and declared war on us. But your mom and dad didn’t want an annulment, and when your mom refused to go along with Draven, he threatened to kill her, too. Vampires have a sort of vaguely interconnected memory as part of a spell. An oath of loyalty that they make to their family. They can find each other very easily for that reason, and that meant that I had to take extraordinary measures to get your parents to safety. The only way I could hide them was to erase their memories, so that Alice wouldn’t inadvertently call out to her family, and your dad wouldn’t do or say anything that might risk jogging her memory, and put bring here. It was close enough to Stonefall that I knew I would be able to hide in the crowd and keep a watch over them.” She cast a mournful glance down at the floor, and Martha. “But the spell was complicated, because one can only do it on a blood relative, and the closer the relationship the better. I could do it for my brother, and I had to ask Martha to do it for your mom.” She took another deep breath, and looked angry even as her eyes started to well up. “And it worked, all of these years, until Martha