A Hidden Fire: Elemental Mysteries Book 1 by Elizabeth Hunter Page A

She put her head between her knees as a thought nudged the back of her mind. 
    “Why were you asking about my father, Gio?” Beatrice asked quietly. 
    “What do you mean?”
    She looked up at him, no longer afraid and wanting answers from the pale man whose face haunted her dreams. 
    Just like another face she’d tried so hard to forget. 
    “Why were you asking about my father?  Did you...know him?  Before he died?”  A sudden thought struck her.  “Do you know who killed him?  Was he killed by a—a vampire?”
    He didn’t say anything, but continued to stare at her as her heart rate rose. 
    “Why aren’t you saying anything?”  She gulped and tears came to her eyes.  “Did you ...you didn’t…I mean—”
    “I didn’t kill your father, Beatrice.  I wouldn’t do that.”
    “Then why were you…”
    As she trailed off, she closed her eyes and it was as if puzzle pieces began to fall in the darkness.  A quiet gasp left her throat.
    Giovanni’s pale face in her dreams. 
    A familiar tingle along her spine.  
    A throbbing began to take root at the base of her skull, but she pushed through it and a quiet and familiar voice whispered in her mind. 
    “ Just forget, Mariposa.  I’m so sorry.  I love you.  I’m sorry...”
    She swallowed the lump in her throat as the tears trailed down her cheeks.  “Oh… oh, ” she whispered.  “My father’s like you, isn’t he?  My father’s a vampire.”
    Giovanni remained still and silent as the rest of the puzzle took shape. 
    Her confusing dreams the summer she turned fifteen.  Followed by an inexplicable depression that seemed to drag her under despite the loving support of her grandparents.  Her withdrawal.  The strange and inexplicable moods.
    She heard Giovanni murmur from across the compartment, “You are an extraordinarily perceptive girl, Beatrice De Novo.”
    A memory from a night in her grandfather’s garage pushed its way to the front of her mind. 
     
    “Sometimes, I wish I could just forget him, Grandpa.”
     
    Tears fell hot on her cheeks.  “Oh, he is…and he tried to make me forget him,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. 
    She saw him lean forward, suddenly alert.  “What do you—”
    “The summer I was fifteen, I saw my father.  He was sitting on a bench in a park across from the library where I had a summer job.  It was just a flash,” she whispered and snapped her fingers.  “Like that.  I thought I was going crazy.  He didn’t look how I remembered him.  He was too thin, and his face…that pale face, just like yours.”
    He leaned back and reached into his bag to hand her a linen handkerchief.  “If you were fifteen, it would have been about three years after he was sired.  He would have been in control of his senses and his bloodlust by then.  So it’s entirely possible, yes.  Many newly sired vampires make the mistake of trying to contact their family.”
    “I kept seeing him for months.”  She looked as she took the handkerchief and held it in twisted fingers.  “I really thought I was going crazy.  I stopped going out with my friends.  I stopped…everything.  My grandparents didn’t know what was going on.  I thought I was losing it.  And there were these crazy dreams.”
    She frowned, dabbing her eyes and trying to access memories she now suspected had been tampered with.  She kept feeling the strange itch at the nape of her neck every time she tried to recall more, and the headache began to pound. 
    “He might have tried to talk to you, and you didn’t react well.  If he did, it’s possible he tried to wipe the memories from your mind.”  He didn’t try to comfort her, but his presence was soothing nonetheless. 
    “But he was my father.”
    He nodded.  “Exactly.  Your memories of him would be very firmly entrenched.  You would have noticed if he manipulated them.  Not consciously…not at the time, anyway.  You may have been depressed,