Bear Reign (Alpha Guardians Book 7) Read Free Page B

such dark magic sent icy fingers of fear creeping down her spine. She and Lily were raised Wiccan, so Sophie had no excuse. She knew better than to come near something like this with a ten foot pole.
    Sophie, you really have done it this time, Lily would have said.
    “Yes,” came out of Sophie’s mouth, a second before the thought even formed in her mind. She was all instinct and angry hurt right now, no room for second thoughts and self-recrimination.
    The priestess arched a brow and shrugged, then dropped a little bundle of hair wrapped around a tiny glass vial into the fire. It hissed and cracked for a minute, the smell of burning hair made Sophie cough. The priestess merely stared into the fire, which abruptly flared and changed color.
    “Ah,” the priestess sighed. “Your sister is gone, as you believed.”
    “I knew that already. I felt her pass from the world,” Sophie said, though she’d already explained that much.
    “Patience,” the woman cautioned, raising a finger in warning. “There is more. Your sister was taken by a very, very dangerous creature. He is a Loa, a greater spirit of the Voodoo and Vodun, taken to flesh to walk in this world.”
    “What’s his name? What did he do to Lily?” Suddenly Sophie’s throat was tight, her whole body coiled and ready to fight.
    “I cannot say his name, lest I might summon him,” the priestess said, shaking her head. “He took your sister, used her body as a vessel to allow him into the human world. Your sister was a virgin, was she not?”
    “Y-yes,” Sophie whispered, her mouth going dry. That was Lily’s big secret, something no one else knew about her. Sophie’s sister had been saving herself for marriage, though she was too shy to talk about it.
    The priestess knowing that fact about Lily… it made all of this seem real, very suddenly. It was a shock to her system, knowing that Lily was… on the other side?
    “She’s in heaven now?” Sophie asked, her cheeks flushing. She wasn’t Christian, exactly, having come up as a pagan, but that was the only way she could think to phrase her question.
    The answer was not what she’d hoped. The priestess gave a slow shake of her head, looking sympathetic.
    “No, I’m afraid not, my dear. She is… in between.”
    Sophie narrowed her gaze.
    “You are talking about my dead sister. Please tell me you aren’t going to try to sell me some charm or spell to help her move on,” she accused.
    The woman’s expression went stony.
    “You already paid me for this,” she said, waving her hand around the fire. “I am no thief. Your sister is in between worlds because a piece of her still rides with the Loa, though he has long since shed her body. One as powerful as him, he must take a new Vessel every few days, I imagine. Maybe more.”
    Sophie felt like her heart had been ripped from her chest.
    “Did she suffer?” she found herself asking.
    The priestess didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
    “I believe… I believe a little part of her may still exist, along with the Loa. Like, how can you say, he is riding horseback and she sits behind him?” The woman gestured with her fingers, to indicate two people sitting close together. “She rides with him, all the Vessels ride along with him, forever.”
    Sophie turned that over in her mind for a minute.
    “If there is a piece of her that is still alive, we could bring her back.”
    “We?” The priestess’s eyebrows shot up. “Not I.”
    “I meant to say, someone. Someone could do that.”
    “You do not want that, white witch. You would not get back the same person you knew and loved, I assure you.”
    “But it is possible?”
    The priestess thought it over for a moment, and then shook her head.
    “Not in the way you mean, no. And the body is gone… There is nothing left to bring back, I am sure.” She hesitated.
    “Tell me,” Sophie urged. “Anything, anything at all.”
    “If it were me, and I cared very much about this person, I would