Blood Born by Linda Howard

listen in and observe what was happening a couple of floors below, why should there be a limit? She didn’t
know
that she could reach this Chloe Fallon and warn her, but she had to try.
    Quickly she scrambled to her feet and once more stood at the table, absently rubbing her aching butt as she leafed through the book before her. The spells weren’t in any order, weren’t broken down by section so she could just flip to, say, Warning from a Distanceand find what she needed. Looking through the book took more time than she liked, because the wording was so obscure that sometimes she had to read a spell three or four times before she understood the purpose of it. Eventually, though, she found a spell that she thought might work. What did she have to lose? What did Chloe have to lose?
    Her life, that’s what, if this didn’t work.
    Nevada whispered the words on the page, words that would give her access to Chloe’s mind … if she was doing it correctly. She closed her eyes and pictured Chloe’s face as best she could, casting out an invisible net that she prayed would reach far enough. The net soared high and wide, sparkling and glittering like huge crystal butterfly wings. She had a connection with Chloe that made the spell possible, and that connection was Sorin. He was the one who had seized Nevada from her home years ago, and now he had set his sights on Chloe. They shared a common enemy.
    “
Beware
,” Nevada whispered. She was acutely aware of the passing time. The hour was late; Chloe might already be asleep, might think this contact was part of a dream, a dream to be dismissed or forgotten. She mustn’t forget. “Listen,” Nevada urged in a low chant. “Hear, and remember. Dear God, please remember. You must.
Remember
.”
    She was so intent on getting through to Chloe that she didn’t hear Sorin coming until the door opened. Nevada was severed from the spell so sharply and completely that she jumped and stumbled backward. “Dammit!” she yelped, her hand pressing over her heart in an instinctive motion, as if she could physically still the furious leap of fright. “You scared the crap out of me!” Dammit, for real. She hadn’t been able to send Chloe all the information she’d intended to.
    Sorin stopped just inside the door, his head tilted alittle to one side as he gave her a bemused look. “You humans say the funniest things when you’re startled. What were you doing?”
    You humans
. His phrasing told her just how far Sorin was from those long ago days when he, too, had been human. She wanted to ask him if he remembered what it was like to be human, but instead she took a deep breath and thanked her lucky stars that, outwardly at least, she’d been doing nothing more than standing over the old book of spells. “I was concentrating on my work, just like you want. I was trying out a spell.”
    He studied her sharply, as he always did, and she felt that gaze to the pit of her stomach. “Did it work?”
    “No,” she said sourly. “You interrupted.”
    “What kind of spell was it?”
    “As far as I can tell, it’s for locating a lost object.”
    His gaze got sharper. “That isn’t the spell we want you to do. Stop playing; we’re running out of time.”
    “It isn’t playing, it’s using the spells I can do to expand my power base—” She stopped, made an abrupt dismissive gesture. “I’m doing the best I can.”
And he’d just let slip that she didn’t have much time left. If she couldn’t break the spell by whenever this deadline was, they’d have no further use for her
.
    He gave her an inscrutable look, tilted his head toward her in a formal, old-fashioned dismissal, and left as abruptly as he had arrived.
    Usually he stayed longer, chatted with her, sometimes even teased her a little in a way that reminded her that he was hundreds of years old and she must seem like not much more than a toddler to him. After he was gone, Nevada felt oddly bereft. She pushed the feeling away