"So how do we find Victoria?" Thomas asked. "Where will this Tera have taken her?"

Damiano wanted to know the same thing. All the explanations in the world were not helping them get back their missing member.

"You haven't even asked us yet if we might have seen anything that could help," he pointed out.

"Did you see anything?" Leo asked.

Damiano shook his head. He hadn't seen anything except visions that were likely to haunt his nightmares for a very long time.

"I don't remember anything from when they stepped into the room," Ethan said with a shrug. "When I try to remember all I get is shock and fear, but no details."

"Me either," Thomas agreed, "well nothing that makes any sense."

Not that he begrudged his friends being blissfully ignorant of the details of the violence of their attackers, Damiano kind of wished he had been granted the same vagueness. The recollection of teeth tearing at his throat flashed through his head and he reflexively reached up to touch the gauze taped to his skin. For a moment he felt a ghost of the pain, even though it didn't hurt at all anymore.

"Hey," Ethan said quietly, bumping their shoulders.

He gave his friend a tight smile of thanks and turned his attention back to Sofia and Leo.

"To answer your original question," Sofia said, looking at Thomas, "we are using several avenues to try and find Victoria, but we are hoping you can help us speed up the process. You are all very close and because you were attacked at the same time, by the same vampire, you may be able to help us locate Victoria outside of usual detection methods."

"How?" Damiano asked.

"That's where I come in," Sofia explained. "I have told you I am a specialist."

All three of them nodded.

"My speciality is preternormal awareness," she said. "Put simply, I am a psychic."

"And because of that you can find Vic through us?" Damiano asked.

"Well, maybe nothing quite so black and white," Sofia replied, "but there may be clues, impressions that I can pick up using you all as the link. Unfortunately, Tera is far too old and experienced for my abilities to be used directly against her, even though she left considerable psychic debris when she attacked you all. However, there is a low level connection between children of the same maker and a low level connection between maker and child. Usually it manifests as a simple predilection for company, like family, but I should be able to use it to enhance my gifts towards finding Victoria."

Damiano shared a quick look with Thomas and Ethan.

"What do you need from us?" he asked, speaking for all of them.

Just a day ago, Damiano probably would have assumed someone claiming to be a psychic was a charlatan out to make money, but he simply believed Sofia. After everything that had happened, how could he not, so ten minutes later he found himself sitting in a chair on one side of a small table that had a burning candle on top of it. Thomas and Ethan were sitting in identical chairs so they were all facing inwards.

"Join hands," Sofia said from where she was standing just to the side.

Damiano took Thomas' hand in one of his own and Ethan's in the other, and waited as they joined hands as well.

"Focus on the flame," Sofia told them. "Empty your minds of everything."

It was hard to stop his mind churning, but for Victoria, Damiano could do it. He pushed all his worries and fears from his head, filling it with emptiness and calm.

"Now bring up your clearest memory of Victoria," Sofia's voice was low and smooth, all but sliding into his thoughts, that Damiano obeyed without having to force it this time. "See her in the flame."

His memory of Victoria was a simple one, from a day or so previously. She had been having trouble with a rhythm, swearing up a storm as she refused to give up, practicing the sequence over and over again. He had always admired her drive and that ordinary day had been no different. It was so clear in his mind's eye and he stared into the flame, watching the memory inside its movements.

As he stared he felt the world around him falling away. It was as if he was chasing the memory into the flame, sliding down into its depth, along a tunnel lit by its glow. Sofia said something, but he couldn't understand it as he followed the flame. Then, between one moment and the next, he blinked and he was looking at a different room.

It was strange, echoey, like everything was slightly delayed. Only when he turned his head did he realise it wasn't his head at all. He was looking out of someone else's eyes. Distantly he could feel anger and fear, but nothing clearer. The room was opulent, full of luxurious things, including the bed that the person whose body he seemed to be squatting in was sitting on. They, no she, looked down at her legs and Damiano knew those legs. He was looking out of Victoria's eyes.

Distantly he wondered why Sofia hadn't told them it would be like this. Were Ethan and Thomas looking out of Victoria's eyes as well?

It was a bit like a dream, fuzzy on the edges, not quite real.

"Damiano."

Sofia's voice slid into his thoughts and suddenly he could feel a strange dual existence. There were hands on his shoulders and he took a deep shuddering breath, even as he still looked out of Victoria's eyes.

"Tell me what is happening," Sofia instructed.

"I'm," he tried to say, but his voice was slurred, his tongue heavy. "I'm seeing through her eyes."

It was slightly easier the second time.

"Do you see anything that will tell us where she is?" Sofia asked.

Damiano did not have control of Victoria's body, he was a passenger, but it dawned on him he might be having some kind of effect. As he tried to answer Sofia's question, Victoria looked around the room from one side to the other. It was then he realised there was a chain going from one of her wrists to the bedstead. He felt anger bubble in his chest.

"Calm," Sofia said softly, "anger will cloud the connection."

Taking another deep breath he tried to let the emotion go.

"Just a bedroom," he said. "Old house."

Not that that narrowed it down. It was frustrating to be able to see so much, but nothing useful.

"Ask Victoria if she knows," Sofia said.

"How?" Damiano asked, because none of this made any sense.

"You know," Sofia told him, "just as you knew how to find her."

Damiano was pretty sure that had been all Sofia, she was the psychic after all, but it was too hard to say so. He only hoped she could work through him again if he did what she asked.

Following the faintest of instincts he reached for the anger he had felt from Victoria before and this time, tried to make it resolve. Victoria was incredibly strong, she never gave up, and he knew he would find that in her anger. In the end he realised Sofia had been wrong, as his own anger responded to Victoria's, sliding towards it as if they were part of the same thing. But it required control. He fed tendrils of what he was feeling into what he sensed from Victoria and they crackled together.

It made no sense to his higher thoughts, but he followed the vague feelings as he had followed the flame. He did not try and ask Victoria anything with words, he called to her with more fundamental things. He sent his love, his hope and the most basic of images of what they were doing.

At first confusion came back, so he did it again.

He asked her his question with his soul, not words, and in a moment a blinding flash came back. Large gates, a driveway and a huge opulent house, and the most important part, an old sign.

"San Michele's Winery," he said as it flashed through his head.

"Well done," Sofia told him, even as he felt Victoria sagging with the effort it had taken for her to give him what she had.

"You need to return to us now, Damiano," Sofia said.

"But she's alone," he replied.

"Not for long," Sofia told him, "but you must let go, or you may become lost."

He did not want to give up the connection with their lost member, but he could feel the truth of Sofia's instruction. Victoria did not want to let him go either, that was all too clear. He sent her all the love he could, all the reassurance that help was coming, but letting her go was the hardest thing he had ever done.

"Good," Sofia told him, even as the presence of Victoria began to dim and the sight of the room started to grey. "Follow the path back, Damiano, return to the flame."

His ever musical brain likened it to pulling back the crescendo, reeling in the climax to leave only the purest of notes.

When he blinked this time, he was looking at the flame once more . There was a distinct stabbing pain behind his right eye. He shook his head and discovered everyone was staring at him. Ethan and Thomas were still holding his hands, but they didn't look anywhere near as dazed as he was pretty sure he did, if it was anything like the way he felt.

"Was it enough?" he asked, looking at Sofia.

Leo was doing something on his phone.

"Is this it?" the man asked, showing him an image on the screen as Thomas and Ethan released his hands.

Damiano had to shake his head again and he rubbed the bridge of his nose, because his thoughts felt kind of wooly, but he did his best to focus on the phone. The first image didn't look familiar, but what Victoria had shown him had been in the dark.

"I don't know," he admitted, so Leo scrolled to another image. "Yes," he said immediately, because it was the place all lit up for some event or other.

"It's not far," Leo said, "I'll get people out there right away."

Leo turned to leave before Damiano could react to that, phone already going to his ear.

"Damiano," Sofia said, crouching down in front of him, "how are you feeling?"

He shook his head again.

"Like I can't quite wake up," he said. "Will they get Vic?"

"They will," Sofia assured him. "I will be joining them when they leave, which will be in a few minutes, but I need to get you back first."

"Vic is more important," he insisted.

"Leo has to make sure his team has all the details first and they need to plan, I have a little while," she assured him. "You went in very deep. You must all be very close."

"We're family," Thomas said. "Is Damià going to be alright?"

"He'll be fine," Sofia said. "Damiano, I want you to look into my eyes again, alright?"

He nodded and did as he was asked. This time he was not shocked to find Sofia's eyes glowing gently.

"Let the connection to Victoria sink to the back of your mind," Sofia instructed in her calm, soothing voice. "Just let it go from your conscious mind and focus on yourself."

Unfortunately the stabbing pain behind his right eye increased significantly as he did so.

"Ow," he said, rubbing his temple.

"Headache?" Sofia asked.

He nodded and only belatedly realised he had stopped looking at her without her permission, but her eyes weren't glowing anymore when he quickly switched his gaze back.

"We don't react quite the same way to human painkillers," she told him with a smile, "but I'll get one of the attendants to bring you something. Apart from that, how are you feeling now?"

"Better," he said, "thank you."

"No need to thank me," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "You far exceeded my expectations."

She looked around at Ethan and Thomas as well as she spoke.

"I know telling you to relax will be pointless, but try and stay calm," she said as she stood up straight. "Tera had been eluding our forces for a long time, but I believe she has made a fatal mistake in targeting you. Victoria will be safe and back here before dawn."

Sofia spoke with such confidence, Damiano chose to believe her. Doubting now felt too much like giving up.