Holly’s look turned sharp. “I’m trying to explain. You don’t have to like it.”
Ashe had heard enough. “Give your head a shake. Get real. Get rid of him.”
“No.”
“I’m speaking for Mom and Dad.”
Holly stared at her for a long, hard moment. “They’re dead. They don’t get a vote.”
The words were meant to be brutal. “I know,” Ashe said quietly. “I killed them. I owe it to them to make sure you’re all right.”
Holly looked away, backing down. “They died in an accident.”
“I cast an egotistical, idiotic spell to give Mom and Dad car trouble so that they didn’t come home to find out I’d left you alone that night.”
“You were sixteen. You wanted to go to a concert. That’s normal teenage crap.”
Surprise rung through Ashe, clear as the strike of a bell.
Holly had forgiven her.
Ashe hammered home her point. “I used powerful magic I had no business touching. I made their car crash. The aftermath nearly destroyed your powers.”
“And it destroyed yours. You took off. I know the story. That’s history. We both have to move on.”
Ashe had been over and over this moment in her head. The one where she tried to make things right. She leaned forward, her mouth dry with the soot of burned-out emotion. “I screwed up back then. I’m sure as hell not going to screw up now. You’re in trouble. I can do something about it.”
The clock ticked. Ashe could hear the small house noises—pings in the radiator, a creak of the floorboards as the cat chased shadows. Those should have been comforting sounds, but they somehow wound the tension in the room even tighter.
“I’m not in trouble,” said Holly. “And I’m not your redemption.”
Ashe took a deep breath. She wanted to snatch Holly from her chair and shake sense into her, but this wasn’t a problem she could solve with force. For starters, Holly was a powerful witch, whereas she was a husk with no active magic.
Ashe changed tactics. “What about a family? Surely you’ll want kids?”
“Who knows?” Holly shrugged.
“Down the road, maybe.”
“Crap, you’re serious. A vampire baby daddy?”
Holly shrugged again. “Why not?”
Ashe felt a surge of panic, but stomped on it. Vampires couldn’t father children, and no vampire male would tolerate someone else’s young. Holly was tragically deluded. Delusions like that could destroy a woman. He might kill the kid.
“Damn it, Holly! “That was what Ashe hated most about the monsters. They always looked like something familiar, until the mask slipped and showed the evil beneath.
As in the case of a sixteen-year-old girl who murdered her parents with a spell. She saw one of those masks in the mirror every day.
Brooding was an occupational hazard for a creature of the night. Alessandro disliked indulging the vampire stereotype, but there he was. He leaned against the T-Bird, smoked, and scowled into the darkness. At least he was wearing battle leathers and weapons. That gave the moment some cachet.
Ashe was still inside the house, talking to Holly. Sharp though his hearing was, Alessandro could only hear the rise and fall of voices—sometimes angry, sometimes not. A glance at his watch told him that almost an hour had passed.
He took a drag on the cigarette, watching the glow brighten as he inhaled. He’d started smoking to mask the scent of human blood when he walked in crowded places. Now it gave him an excuse to stand outside, staring at the front door Ashe had all but literally slammed in his face.
He was a hunter. He knew how to wait. Alessandro crushed out his cigarette, the sound of his boot on the driveway pavement a loud, gritty scrape. It was a quiet neighborhood this late at night, only the occasional rustle of a raccoon or cat breaking the silence.
At last the front door opened. Ashe clumped down the front steps, red and white helmet under her arm. Alessandro straightened, instinctively shifting his weight so that he could move quickly if needed. The urge to defend his territory burned fever-strong. It didn’t matter that this was Ashe’s house. He had put down emotional roots for the first time in hundreds of years. He would win this battle.
Their gazes locked with an almost audible clash.
Ashe gave a low laugh. “You look like the schoolyard bully, loitering in the dark.” It was eerie how her voice had the same timbre as Holly’s.
“If you leave now, I won’t put that comparison to the test.”
“Oh, I’m leaving—for tonight,” she said coolly. Alessandro remained dead still.
“Don’t rejoice yet. I’m staying in town. My sister and I have a lot of catching up to do.” She yanked the zipper of her jacket closed another inch.
“Leave Holly in peace.”
“I’m not the bloodsucker here.” Ashe flicked her hair back over her shoulder. “Holly fed me a pile of crap about how you never bite her. I’ve heard that line before.”
It was true. Holly’s magic had released him from that burden, but Alessandro said nothing. Ashe would never believe him, so why waste his breath?
She went on, anger thick in her voice. “Last week I took out a nest of fifteen vamps that had kidnapped half the city council’s children. That was Calgary. The week before that it was a horror show in Duluth. A dozen kills: six vamps, six werewolves terrorizing half the city.”
Alessandro narrowed his eyes. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“I could take you out between breakfast and coffee.”
“And I could kill you where you stand, but I’ll take up sunbathing before I ask Holly to choose between her lover and her sister.”
“Who says she gets to choose?”
“Don’t push me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ashe let the helmet dangle from her hand, appearing to relax a degree. Above her, the stars were faint pinpricks, dimmed by the ambient city light. “Clear something up for me. Grandma wrote to me once that she knew you years ago. Is that true?”
“I’ve been in Fairview a long time.”
“Then how come I never saw you around when I was growing up?”
“Vampires make parents and grandparents nervous.”
“Now there’s a shocker.”
“I would never hurt a child. I do what I can to respect families, which is why you’re still breathing.”
Ashe laughed, and it hung in the air like a chemical accident. “Sure. Did you know there’s a family reunion in Hawaii? That’s where Grandma is right now, but Holly’s not there.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because of you. I couldn’t exactly play on the beach knowing my sister was sleeping with the dead.”
“That’s your decision.”
“Yeah, before you blow this off, think a minute. If Holly went, she’d have to explain to the relatives that her main squeeze is an animated corpse. Like that’s going to go down well with a bunch of witches hoping and praying for the next generation of magical babies. We’re a dying people. Children mean a lot to us.”
Alessandro stood silent and expressionless, letting the implication of her words turn him to stone. Holly hadn’t said a thing about the reunion. “She’s in school. She couldn’t go anyway.”
“We’re her
“I would never stop her from going if she wanted to.”
