Chapter Five: Zara Ali

Present day

Atlanta, GA

"So what part am I playing?"

Stefanie almost missed Zara's question as she lingered in reminiscence outside the window of the coffee shop. There they were: Raid and Adam. Older, broader and more stylish now. It was strange seeing them this way. They had both turned from thin, smoothed-skin boys to muscular men with facial hair. Stubble really, though Adam's was slightly heavier than Raid's. Raid's skin, once the same tone as his light-skinned mother, was now darker than Adam's. Stef suppressed a smile, imagining him on a tanning bed, as was most likely the case. Raid also now had black ink tattoos covering his neck and both his forearms, while, Adam, who was always far more observant of their religion than Raid, appeared to have none. She could still imagine Raid deliberately shocking and taunting Adam with his 'haram' behaviour. But Raid never cared; he'd always said he hoped to one day show his father the mess of a son he'd left behind. He was rebellious for that reason. Perhaps they never would have all ended up in the cellar that dreadful night if he wasn't.

Her mind taking a dark turn, Stef pulled herself back into the present. She took a deep breath. "They think you're going to write an article on them. Just ask them as many questions as you can. Try to find out why they're back. Then gauge their reaction when I walk in. I need to see how much of their compulsion has worn off and whether they still remember me."

Zara took to the role confidently, that was clear from the moment she strode in like she meant business, and sat down at their table without saying a word. It was the first time she had seen them up close after having monitored them both from a distance, but she had a way of making men feel intimidated, like she owned all their secrets. She looked first at Raid, directly into his eyes, scrutinising, unblinking, and then at Adam. She blinked. It was the most peculiar of tells, but Zara blinking so soon meant she found him attractive. Otherwise she was capable of staring men down until they felt like cowering at her feet. Adam smiled and drew his bottom lip into his mouth as though he was about to fall at her feet for a completely different reason. Zara attempted to resume her stony stare, but unfortunately her mask had already slipped. Luckily, male magnetism never stopped her from being the boss of them verbally.

"I have a few questions and you're going to answer them."

"You're from the press?" Raid asked sceptically.

Zara turned to him. Her response time was deliberately delayed with a hard stare. "Yes."

"You got some ID?"

"You got me a coffee?" She looked down at their own cups.

Adam pressed his lips together to supress a laugh, drawing Zara's eyes back to him. He composed himself and asked, "Would you like a coffee?"

"I'd like you to answer my damn questions, so I can get to my next celebrity interview," Zara snapped. Her expression then turned wicked. "He's someone far more famous than you. Better looking too," she teased him. "I'm just using you both to fill my time."

Raid stood up, insulted. "Consider your time wasted," he told her.

"Raid, sit down," Adam commanded. At Raid's reluctance, Adam signalled him with his eyes-a bro code hidden within there somewhere-until he returned to his seat defeated. Focus resumed on Zara, Adam relaxed back and grinned. "Feel free to use me."

Zara's lips quirked at the idea. Though she had never interacted with Adam or Raid until now, she had been expected to keep tabs on their whereabouts in Canada. One of the things she noticed was that Adam enjoyed challenging and domineering women. There had been no lack of fawning fans offering him their number, only for him to bin the slips of paper the moment they were out of sight. Once, a fan took Raid's autograph, but, for whatever reason, refused Adam's. Adam retaliated by scribbling his unwanted signature spitefully over Raid's autograph. This resulted in a slap from her, and they were dating within the week. So Zara knew that nothing short of an aggressive approach would get answers out of Adam.

"Start by telling me why you came back here from Canada." she told him.

Adam explicitly ran his eyes over her. "Apart from the view?"

"You think you're cute, but you're not," Zara snipped. "Answer the question."

Adam was enjoying teasing her. "More a demand than a question, don't you think?"

"You're asking enough questions for the both of us. How's that working out for you?" Zara snarked.

Raid rolled his eyes. He had no patience for Adam's games. "It was my girlfriend, okay?" he snapped. "Ex-girlfriend, actually. I needed some time away."

This caught Zara's interest. "In another country?"

"She was..." Raid started, unsure whether he should continue. Finally he blurted out, "She was convinced one of us was a witch." He knew it sounded crazy the moment he said it, but he needed to get it out. Maybe an exposé would finally stop his ex from pursuing him. "Our show is about witches, I think she became obsessed with it. If something unusual happened, it had to be because one of us was a witch-she accepted no other explanation. And she had us consuming this herb called vervain that she insisted was for our protection. We went along with it initially because we thought it was just a phase, but then she started adding it to everything. It made me feel..." Raid struggled to find a word, "...odd."

"It what way?"

Raid sighed. "Like nothing I knew about myself was real." He now felt at risk of making himself sound crazy. "I thought I remembered being involved in a ritual-a spell of some kind-with Adam." Raid studied Zara's expression for any changes, any surprise or amusement, but there was none. He didn't know whether this was comforting or not. "I thought it must have been a dream triggered by the show, but then I spoke to Adam." He looked at Adam who nodded reassuringly. "He had the same memory." As soon as Raid said it, he wanted to erase it from his mind. It was ridiculous. "I figured the herb she was having us take was hallucinogenic-"

"Vervain doesn't distort your perception of reality," Zara clarified before casting her eyes down and muttering under her breath, "Quite the opposite, actually."

Raid was no longer looking at her when she raised her eyes again. Curiously, Zara turned towards his field of vision. Stef had entered, no doubt drawn in by the mention of the ritual she'd detected with her heightened hearing. The coffee shop was busy so there was no reason Stef should have stood out to him, but he was tracing her across the room, his expression flickering with confusion like she was familiar to him. While she initially shot fleeting glances in his direction, the longer he stared, the longer Stef returned his gaze.

Zara looked between the both of them and made her decision. Without a word to Raid or Adam, she stood up and walked towards Stef.

"So, Raid clearly remembers you, even if he can't place you," Zara confirmed. "It's possible the vervain is weakening their compulsion."

"So I need to do it again?" Stef asked.

"Pointless since you haven't had blood in a long time," Zara reminded her, her cell phone starting to ring. "I know you can go a long time without drinking blood, Stef, but you need human blood for this. You're not strong enough otherwise. Plus, they've potentially still got vervain in their system. My recommendation? You go, you feed, you find them in a day or two and you try again." Zara answered the call.

Stef made an unconscious step back as she saw Raid coming towards her.

The call over, Zara said to Stef, "Gabe's spotted Dimitri and Winifred. I'm going to go help him track them. There's no reason they should be here." Sensing Raid come to a standstill behind her, she added, "I'll let you deal with this," then left the coffee shop.

"I think I know you," Raid said to Stef, almost as a question, his eyebrows pinched together. "And you seem to know-" He indicated towards the door, realising he'd never caught her name.

"Zara," Stef finished. She was nervous. She wasn't sure if further memories were about to be triggered. She wasn't sure how to answer any questions he was about to ask.

Raid slowly nodded. Something about the girl in front of him spread a feeling of both comfort and discomfort within him. He had so many questions, but at the same time, he had everything he needed to know. This was clearly a set up. "Well, I guess whatever there was between us, it's in the past for a reason." With that, he turned and strode back to Adam.

Stef remained there, both relieved and deflated. There was a yearning in her to know him again. She wanted to talk to him-to both of them-to remind them of everything they'd shared together. Every memory. Every smile. The good times and the devastatingly bad one. It was hard enough letting them go the first time she had to compel them to leave. But nobody could know who they really were. Nobody could know about the ritual she had performed with them. As far as Dimitri knew, it was Cristian that had taken part in the ritual, not them. She was grateful to Cristian for telling him that. It had kept her safe. But she missed Raid and Adam terribly.

As Raid was ordering Adam to finish his drink so they could leave, Stef suddenly noticed a man approach them. She had never seen the man before. His eyes looked distant but full of determination and purpose. She had a terrible feeling something was about to go wrong.

Then the man held a gun at them.