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She has a bit of a temper. Andor finds her very appealing when she gets fired up and passionate. I like to give her an outlet to vent.

Someone is coming up the stairs. I can hear them. It is definitely the younger girl.

Amelia. Gary and I are in the house with you. Do you feel me close, sívamet? You will have to talk to her.

Elisabeta felt his hand sweep down the back of her head in a long caress.

She is fifteen now, but has had vampires assault her and use her as a spy. Her life has been turned upside down. She needs and wants to be converted but not without her brother, Danny. She does not want him to be alone. Her little sister and Lourdes can both be converted, but she refuses to allow at least Bella to be converted until Danny is safe.

Elisabeta knew Ferro wanted her to feel compassion for the teenager to make it easier to speak with her. A young girl stalked right into the room without hesitation. She was very slim and had thick, dark hair and vivid green eyes.

“Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

Elisabeta studied the teenager. Her fists were clenched. There was belligerence stamped on her face. There was no doubt, even without checking further, that Amelia had been infected. Elisabeta sent a sweet breeze to surround the girl, a soothing peace. “I am Elisabeta. I was visiting with Emeline, Lorraine and Julija, but their lifemates came for them and mine is late.”

The peaceful calm settling over Amelia seemed to drain some of her anger, or at least minimize it. Ferro stepped up behind Amelia, materializing and waving his hand toward her as he did so. The teen froze just as Josef had done.

Josef knew what was happening to him. Does she? Elisabeta didn’t want the child to suffer any more than she already had.

“Josef is Carpathian, and Gary wanted him to know what was happening, so he shared with him all information. Once you removed the burns, he could understand and was not angry. There is no need for her to know anything is wrong.” Ferro spoke aloud, indicating to Elisabeta that they could do so.

As pure light, Gary entered the child first, allowing Ferro to follow through their bond. Merged as she was with her lifemate, Elisabeta moved straight to the damaged areas. She was prepared to see burns, but not to the extent that they were in Amelia’s brain. The scoring was far worse in the teenager than it had been in anyone else she’d encountered so far.

This is horrible. This has been done over a period of time, longer than a couple of days. Perhaps a week? Two? She didn’t want to think longer, the same amount of time she had been at the compound in the healing grounds. Did you find burns in anyone else?

No other hunter. Gary and I checked Lorraine, Emeline and Julija. They show no signs of burns.

Why the children and Tariq? Sandu? Dragomir? What of Traian and Joie? Elisabeta felt a little anxious over her birth brother and his lifemate.

No trace of burns. Neither were infected. I wish I had an answer for you, piŋe sarnanak, but I do not, and neither does Gary. We can only try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Can you rid her of these burns?

Elisabeta studied the terrible, angry dark red slashes. They were deep, and so many it looked as if they were one continuous mass coloring over the areas of the brain affecting Amelia’s abilities of judgment and rational thinking. She was shocked that the teenager hadn’t had far more outbursts.

She has more damage even than Josef, yet Emeline was not certain if Amelia was infected.