Free Night Seeker by Yasmine Galenorn

covers, and wiggled my toes against the cherry stone warmer. It was toasty, and I tried to relax into the warmth and coax it up my body.
    “This is just too bizarre. It feels like a million miles and a thousand years since I left La La land to return home, but in less than two weeks…everything I ever thought was true has been turned upside down. To say I feel lost is an understatement.”
    Rhiannon nodded. “I’ve been getting used to the weirdness over the years, I guess. My mother…she kept track of the odd events going on. But now…” She pushed back a long strand of the coppery red hair that hung down her back.
    My cousin and I were fire and ice. I had hair as black as the night, sleek and hanging straight just past my shoulders. My eyes were emerald, and I now realized their color came from my father. At five feet, four inches, and 140 stocky, athletic, curvy pounds, I was a fireball of muscle. Rhiannon was taller and willowy, lithe like a dancer, with long curling red hair and hazel eyes. She was the spitting image of Heather.
    Aunt Heather used to call us amber and jet when we were little. But we called ourselves twins. We were born on the same day, on the summer solstice—Rhiannon under the sun, during the waxing half of the year, and me under the moonlight, after the year switched over to waning. We were twenty-six now, and I wondered if we’d make it to our next birthday.
    “I promise you, we will put her to rest.” It felt horrible to say, but I knew the fact that Heather was now a vampire weighed heavily on her mind.
    She nodded to me, her face a frozen mask. I wondered what she was thinking, but she chose to remain silent, scooting over to me. I lifted up my covers and let her slide beneath them. We pulled her blanket over the top of mine and the added warmth felt good. I wrapped my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder.
    Luna returned then. “Zoey will be here as soon as she can. She’s breaking a lot of rules to help us, but she thinks there are some more texts hidden away and she’ll sneak out what she can. She said she can get away in a couple of days. I didn’t ask how. I got the feeling it’s another one of those things I’m not supposed to know about.”
    As she crawled back under her covers, shivering in the chill night air, I glanced at the clock on the wall. “We’re well past the witching hour. We should get some sleep. And pray that tomorrow we start sorting out this mess. At least Lannan will be all beddy-bye then and I won’t have to deal with him. Honestly, if he were human, I’d slap him with a lawsuit for stalking.”
    Peyton barked out a sharp laugh as Rhiannon and I snuggled down under our blankets, holding hands like we had when we were children. I hoped there were no spiders or rats around, but the long weariness of the day, the fear of returning to the Veil House—it all compounded to summon me into sleep.
    As the soft sounds of Luna’s and Peyton’s breath came whistling by on the slipstream, Ulean swept around my cousin and me, a gentle shroud of protective energy.
    Thank you. I’m afraid.
    Ulean whispered gently next to my ear.
There is much to fear in the dark. There are monsters under the bed and in the closet, and now they walk abroad at will. But there is life here, and hope. I sense change on the wind. Others will offer help. As with Lannan, do not write them off simply because you dislike them.
    Her voice—I say
her
loosely because Elementals truly have no gender—trilled lightly in my ears, blowing around me like a soft billowing cloud. I sank into her cadence, letting her words lull my mind.
    “Cicely, sleep deep. Dream of the paths that are ruled by the Summer. Follow the sparkling lights, for they have much to teach you.”
    Unable to tell whether it was my father’s voice or Ulean’s, or perhaps both in harmony, I finally let go of consciousness and slid into a slumber so hard and deep that it felt like I was melting into the