overlaid with sorrow.
“I thought for a while that we could continue as before, but Kaleo doesn’t take no for an answer. Eventually he became so insistent that we argued every time we were together, and finally I told him to leave me alone.” A moment of silence passed before she continued. “My brothers were twelve and I was barely nineteen when Kaleo killed our father. I could have stopped him, had I been home a minute earlier, but instead I ran in moments after he died. Christopher’s twin was there, and he saw everything. Kaleo made it very clear that he would not hesitate to snap my brother’s neck if I refused again.
“So I agreed.” The words seemed to catch, as Nissa choked back the memory. “I stayed with my brothers for a few years, but my kind does not exist easily in the human world. There was . . . an incident. I changed my brother, and he changed Christopher the next night. And now we’re here.”
“What happened to your other brother?” Sarah asked. The instant the words were out of her mouth, Christopher’s expression made her regret the question.
“He doesn’t run with us,” Nissa answered quietly. It was clear she didn’t want to go into the topic, and Sarah decided not to press.
The silence hung heavy, both vampires obviously contemplating their painful history. Sarah’s mind drifted back to her purpose here, but she couldn’t tell them now. Not when they had just opened their hearts to her. She couldn’t betray a trust like that, even if she hadn’t asked for it.
No one seemed to know exactly how to get over the conversation, so Sarah got up and walked around the room a bit. Once again she noticed the school textbooks.
“Why do you go to school?” she asked. “If you’re . . . that old, then why bother?” She did not want to do the math to figure out exactly how old.
“If you spend too much time away from humans, you forget your own humanity,” Nissa said, her voice distant. “It gets harder to remember that you used to be one of them, and easier to think of them like . . . cattle,” she finished apologetically. “Most of our kind is like that. They don’t see anything wrong with killing humans. Christopher and I decided we needed a reminder.” Sarah remembered with unease Adianna’s comment about the vampire blood slowly destroying the last shreds of humanity, and was glad she was not immediately called on to speak. Nissa continued with what sounded like forced brightness, “It’s nice to actually be part of the human world for a bit, though I suppose I could imagine places more glamorous than high school.” With a brief glance to some flyer on her desk, she added, “Speaking of, are you sure you won’t come to the Halloween dance? It will be a lot of fun.”
Sarah started to argue, but instead just shrugged.
She heard herself answer, “Sure. I’ll find a way to come.”
CHAPTER 9
SATURDAY NIGHT, Sarah wrote a note to Dominique:
She dressed carefully, added a hint of makeup, and pinned the sleeves of her dress to hide the spring- loaded knife sheath on her left wrist. She could trigger the mechanism with a small burst of power if necessary. Another knife was on her back. She trusted Christopher and Nissa, but no vampire hunter went out unarmed, especially at this time of year. The moon was full, it was the witches’ New Year, and her aura flickered around her, strong and bright. She had too many enemies in the vampire world that would be able to recognize it.
Sarah met up with Christopher and Nissa just outside the door to the school.
“Sarah, you look great!” Nissa exclaimed.
Nissa’s full skirts billowed around her as she crossed the floor. She was dressed in an emerald-colored Renaissance-style gown that laced up in back and showed off her perfect figure. Christopher had dressed as a Gypsy, with a colorful vest and a multicolored scarf pulled around his waist.
Sarah was wearing the same dress she would wear for the ceremony later, a light, silvery cotton gown that flowed around her legs when she moved. Around her waist, in place of the silver belt she would wear at midnight, was a sapphire sash that matched her eyes. It was embroidered with silver stars, and had been hidden somewhere in the back of her closet. She had not worn it in a very long time; it had been a gift from her sister, before Adianna had given up such frivolous things like sisterly teasing and birthday presents in order to follow in Dominique’s emotionless footsteps.
The constellations on the barely worn sash reminded Sarah of the picture Christopher had drawn. Since she could hardly go around holding planets, she wore sun and moon earrings.
When the three met up outside the gym, Christopher’s eyes said that he recognized the outfit.
As they entered the dance together, the brush of another witch’s aura caused Sarah to stretch out a tendril of power and try to locate its source, but the crowd of students was so thick she could not.
A slow song started, and Christopher looked to her. “Want to dance?” he asked as he reached for her hand.
She saw an edge of nervousness in Christopher’s expression when she hesitated, and before she could think it through she answered, “Sure.”
She tensed when Christopher touched her. Stretching out her senses to locate the other witch had made her hypersensitive to his vampiric aura. He looked so human, so fragile, and yet his presence made her every sense shriek in warning.
She distracted herself by focusing on the other witch. The power she sensed was familiar enough that it made her uneasy. She wasn’t supposed to be here, but Dominique wouldn’t have come to fetch her, would she? If she was at the dance, or if Adianna was here . . .
Everything about the moment was wrong. At this distance, at this time, Christopher’s aura ran over her skin like thousands of spider legs scampering across bare flesh.
She stopped dancing at the same time she saw Adianna in the crowd. How distracted she must have been not to have recognized her sister’s presence.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, stepping back from Christopher, shaking her head violently. If Adianna saw him, after having given her warning . . .
“What? What did I do?” Christopher asked. The hurt in his eyes was so raw she wanted to comfort him.
But “I’m sorry” was all she could say before she turned away. She who had been taught to fight to the end, win or lose, now ran from one of the very creatures she hunted.
Leaning against the wall outside, completely alone, Sarah felt better. A moment later the doors opened again and Adianna came out, her eyes moving sharply around the area as she checked for any possible threats.
“Sarah, Mother is throwing a fit. She asked me to find you. What are you doing here?” Adianna winced at the obvious answer when the door opened again and Christopher followed them out.
Christopher froze, no doubt sensing danger but not fully understanding it.
“Please, Adia, let me handle this,” Sarah asked softly, catching Adianna’s wrist before the other hunter could move.
Responding the same way, Sarah interrupted,
Adianna could read Christopher’s aura almost as well as Sarah could, and knew the vampire was not a threat physically. She nodded. If Sarah was going to tell him who she was, and end the friendship, then Adianna would let her do it.
