Power (Soul Savers) Read Online Free

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Lilith’s death hadn’t already swallowed my ability to breathe, news about Rina
did. I mentally passed the message to everyone else. Mom’s head snapped toward
me, her eyes wide. Then she disappeared.
    I looked up at Tristan. He gave my hand a squeeze, leaned
over and pressed his lips to my temple.
    “Go,” he said. “Solomon, too. Bree and I’d like to be alone,
anyway.”
    A popping sound behind me meant Solomon didn’t wait to be
told twice. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave Tristan’s side. Not with that
look darkening his beautiful hazel eyes. He’d kept telling me he’d never known
Lilith as a sister, that he didn’t feel the same kind of grief, but I knew he’d
hoped to develop a relationship with her, and that hope was now incinerating in
the flames below.
    I lifted my hand to his cheek, and he leaned into my palm.
“I don’t want to leave you, though.”
    “My love,” he whispered, “Rina might need you. You must go.”
    And although he didn’t say the words, I thought them: Don’t fail Rina, too.
    I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. With another
look at the blaze floating on the sea below, I said a silent goodbye to Lilith
before flashing to the mansion on the other side of the island.
    Bedroom suites had a special shield that only allowed their
owners to flash inside them, so I appeared in the hallway of Rina’s wing. Her
suite door stood wide open, and I rushed through the ornately decorated front
room, into her bedroom of browns and beiges, dimly lit by a few candles and
lanterns set upon the antique furniture.
    Ophelia, the ancient witch, stood at the end of the bed,
wringing her wrinkly hands, her severely creased face pulled tight with worry.
Julia, the dark-haired vampire who rarely left Rina’s suite, paced along the
near side of my grandmother’s bed. Solomon’s cornrows hung around his face as he
watched Rina from his stance on the far side. Mom sat on the bed in front of
him, holding Rina’s hand and whispering to her.
    And Rina’s eyes shifted to me.
    Rina’s eyes shifted to
me!
    They were open! For the first time in eight months, almost
to the day, Rina’s beautiful, mahogany eyes, so much like mine and Mom’s, were
open on her own volition.
    “Rina!” I gasped, a new sob filling my throat. Tears of joy
replaced those of grief as I hurried to her bedside, nearly knocking Julia out
of my way.
    As I knelt beside her bed, stretched my arm across the dark-chocolate
brown duvet and took Rina’s hand into mine, Mom looked over at me with pursed
lips. Surprised by her dim expression, I glanced at everyone else. Julia still
paced. Ophelia continued to wring her hands. Solomon’s eyes were tight, the
corners of his mouth pulled down. Why weren’t they overjoyed?
    I studied Rina’s face, which normally looked maybe six or
seven years older than mine but now appeared as though she’d aged decades. She
stared at me, her face expressionless and her eyes vacant. Her dry lips parted
but formed no words. She blinked, then her brows pushed close together, as though
she concentrated hard on trying to speak.
    “Lil … ith … good,” she grunted. Then her eyes fluttered
closed again. We all froze and watched my grandmother’s body with bated breath,
waiting for her to open her eyes again, but she didn’t.
    “She’s just sleeping,” Mom said after a few minutes of
monitoring Rina’s vital signs. “She didn’t slip back under.”
    A collective sigh of relief whooshed around the room.
    Julia sunk down onto the end of the bed and stared at the
clasped fingers in her lap, and Ophelia dropped her hands to her side, only to
anxiously twist them into the hem of her apron.
    “Is she … okay?” I asked.
    Mom shook her head, and her chestnut hair, pulled into the
ponytail swung across the nape of her neck. “I don’t know. She didn’t respond
normally. She couldn’t even speak. Julia, what happened?”
    The vampire slowly lifted her head and looked at Rina.