I swallowed around the tightness in my thought. “Well?” I asked, the confidence in my tone wilting. “Explain that.”
Abram’s nostrils flared. “Greed. Not only do these … creatures … lack self-control, but the bigger the spell, the more blood they need to perform it. Fresh blood, Charisse. And yes, they will bleed you dry and take your life for one spell. They’ll take a dozen lives for one spell if they need to. Then they’ll move on to the next Supplicant—which is why your father left you. They had found him, and though they hadn’t tracked him back to his home yet, it was only a matter of time. He had hoped to take them out and return to you when everything was said and done.”
I shook my head, not understanding.
“He left you to keep you safe, Charisse. To stop them. To attempt to accomplish what I could not.” He paused, his jaw tensing and his hands balling into large fists at his side. “Had I done my job—had I been able to keep both of you safe …” His hands splayed out widely at his sides. “If you’re looking to blame someone for the way your life turned out, for all that you’re lacking, look no farther than the man who stands before you.”
I wanted to scream, to rear back and slap him. How dare he rob me of this? My father left me, and now I was just supposed to forgive him? Now I was just supposed to place the blame on this man—this man who I couldn’t have hated no matter how hard I tried?
My whole body was trembling now in my effort to resist the emotional hurt ravaging my body, but I steeled myself against the tears. “So what? They got him before he could get them? They used my dad’s blood, and that’s all he was good for? They ran out, and now they want me?”
Abram shook his head. “Yes, and no. Yes, Conduits do use people for their blood. That’s all they care about, that is all the value a Supplicant has to them. But no, they are not after you because your father’s blood ran out. They have always wanted you. They just don’t know it yet.”
“What does that even mean?”
Abram sighed. “A while ago, rumors began in our world about a Supplicant girl—one who was an extremely potent being of magical origin. They didn’t know it was you, though if they knew you were a Supplicant at all they would have gone after you anyway. But now they are hunting you specifically.”
“Something must have changed, then,” I mused under my breath.
Abram nodded. “It was not long before you returned here that the rumors took shape. A location—this town. A woman—fitting your description.”
“And that’s why those women were killed,” I answered. “Monsters want to bleed me out to make a voodoo cocktail. But couldn’t they tell those girls weren’t Supplicants?”
Abram titled his head back slowly. “That is the ever-concerning mystery. Whoever is after them … they aren’t a true Conduit. If they were, they would have known those women were not Supplicants.”
I shuddered hard. “Those poor girls.”
“More people I couldn’t save,” Abram said. His voice had dropped to a bitter growl. “But I won’t make that mistake with you. I’m here because of you, to keep you safe. I made a promise to your father, and I intend to keep it.”
“What are you going to do then?” I asked breathlessly.
“I’m going to find that creature who’s after you, the one who chased you into this house that night, and I’m going to relieve him of his head.”
***
Abram had gone to clean up, leaving me standing in the foyer, reliving the craziness that had just unfolded around me. My mind was spinning, which might as well be its new default for all the times it had happened lately.
That was when I heard her voice.
Chaaariiiissssseeee.
It was the girl. I shook my head, remembering what Abram had said. She wasn’t a girl. That was Satina, the woman who had cursed him. The Conduit was calling to me, just like she had the other day.
I didn’t want to, but I found myself moving closer to her room. She sang my name again.
Chaaariiissseeeeeee.
It was a siren song, a call that pulled me toward it without need of my cooperation. And somehow both the room here and the room at the club called me in the same way. But how could that be? She was here.
I crossed the threshold to the room before I realized where I was. She sat on the floor, still chained to the wall.
“Are you here to help me?” she asked in the same ‘poor me’ voice she had used the first time I saw her.
Suddenly, I snapped out of my fog. “Stop,” I growled. “I know what you are.”
“Do you?” Her face dropped all pretense of innocence, and she snarled at me so viciously she barely looked human anymore. “And do you know what you are, Supplicant?” When she said the word, her voice dripped venomously, so much so that I stumbled a step back. “Do you really know?”
Her mouth twisted into a haunting grin, and her tongue flickered between her lips.