Pretty When She Kills (Pretty When She Dies #2)(72)

Cassandra shrugged slightly. “But I’m here.”

“Yes, you are,” Cian said, still trying to comprehend that reality.

“You can call me Cass. You’re the necropire, right?”

“Necro-vamp,” Benchley corrected while awkwardly climbing out of the van.

Amaliya slightly nodded. “Yeah. How do you know about us?”

“They’re hunters like we are,” Alexia explained, joining the gathering.

“How did you find us?” Benchley asked.

“Tracking spell,” Aimee answered. “I went off the aura remains on the back door of the bookstore. I thought it would be Jeff when he locked up.”

“It was me,” Benchley admitted.

“Which is why we found you,” Cass said, then smirked. “And got to hear you scream like a little girl.”

“Hey! You scared the shit out of us! We were waiting for vampires and the side door goes sliding open and—” Benchley trailed off. “Yeah…I screamed like a girl.”

“Next time, lock the damn door,” Cass said.

Alexia elbowed her brother. “What she said.”

“Why do you need Jeff?” Cian asked, his Irish accent more pronounced than usual. It irked him that he couldn’t stop staring at his daughter’s face. Her subtle expressions ghosted his own.

“Shit is going down in an epic way and we need Jeff. He’s not at the shop and he’s not answering his phone. We’re tracking someone and we need information from Jeff.”

“Who are you tracking?”

“His name is Ethan Logan. He’s a bounty hunter,” Cass answered. “He’s been hired by some vampires to recover an item of great occult power.”

Aimee yanked a photo out of her pocket and handed it to Cian. It was the shot of a ring resting on a velvet pad. Amaliya leaned forward to see it as the others gathered around, too.

“The Summoner wore a ring just like that,” Amaliya said in a strangled voice. Her eyes had returned to normal and Cian saw the fear blooming in them.

“Recognize it, Dad?” Cassandra was obviously needling Cian.

“No, I don’t. He didn’t wear a ring like this when I was with him,” Cian said somberly.

“We’re not sure how many there are, but these rings are bad news,” Aimee explained. “We were hired to lift one off a vampire in Dallas a month ago. It got messy.”

“He bled a lot,” Cassandra admitted.

“You’re thieves?” Cian flicked his gaze back and forth between the two women. The night was full of surprises.

“I only rob the bad guys,” Cassandra said defensively.

“They’re thieves and vampire hunters,” Benchley explained.

Aimee leaned against Cassandra, who wrapped a protective arm around her waist. “We do what we have to.”

“So it got messy…” Amaliya prompted.

“Yeah, it got really bloody. And the ring...” Cass took a deep breath. “The ring touched the blood of a mortal who was in the room when I kind of took the head off the vampire master of Dallas.”

“So you killed him. Not Courtney who took his place.” Eduardo looked impressed.

“Yep. And his stupid blood minion got in the way. When the human’s blood touched the ring...weird shit started to happen.” Cass shifted on her feet uncomfortably. “It started tearing the veil between our world and the other one. I snagged the ring and threw it into an ice bucket to get the blood off. Once it was clean, the rip healed. But something big and nasty came through.”

“It took a whole lot of firepower and magic to take it down,” Aimee added.

“We escaped in the chaos. We didn’t turn the ring over to the person who hired us. A ring like this in the hands of the wrong person is bad news. So we bailed and went into hiding,” Cassandra admitted. “A few days later the guy who hired us was dead.”

“So we investigated it and figured out that the guy who hired us had been a front for another vampire.” Aimee’s eyes swept over the faces of those gathered around them. “It took some time, but we found out that guy was hired by a Professor Sumner. Which is weird, because he died four months ago after the satanic killings in East Texas.”

“Jeff had told us about you, Amaliya. We knew that The Summoner made you and used that poor sap as a cover. Just like him to play off the similarity in the names.” Cass tilted her head and regarded Amaliya thoughtfully. “We found one of The Summoner’s peeps and after a few hours of me beating on him, he admitted that The Summoner had one ring already and was looking for more.”

“So there are more than the two rings?” Cian arched his eyebrows at the same time his daughter did.

Cassandra took back the picture of the ring from Cian and handed it back to Aimee. “Yep. We were shocked to find out about ring number two, though Amaliya here just confirmed its existence. We were coming here to talk to Jeff about the ring when one of our people got a lead about the ring and Ethan Logan. They said he was tracking down Amaliya and that there had been the mention of a ring.”

“How do you know we don’t have the ring?” Cian asked.

“Neither one of you is wearing it,” Cass answered. “And if you possessed this ring, you’d be wearing it. Its power is addicting. When I held it in my hand…” She shivered. “Aimee felt it, too. That ring has some major mojo infused into it.”