All Just Glass

“Don’t. Bet. On. It.” The growled words came from the girl on the chair as she shifted for the first time, testing her restraints. She rolled her head, making the joints in her neck and shoulders pop like cracking knuckles, and then looked up with blue-gray eyes.

Jay stood and slunk across the room to kneel, probably unwisely, in front of the bloodbond. Her feet were not tied to the chair, so Jay was risking a foot in the face, but if he wasn’t bright enough to figure that out on his own, he didn’t deserve a warning.

“A bloodbond’s loyalty to her master tends to be fairly unwavering,” Jay said, his words probably for Robert despite his holding Heather’s gaze. “I will hunt as necessary, but I do not have the stomach for harsh interrogation. So unless Vida-kin have torture in their blood, I, too, wonder what we intend to do with this girl.”

“We’re not torturing anyone,” Robert said, clearly horrified.

Zachary hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but every Vida present knew they had less room to be idealistic than the Marinitch or the human.

“Found it,” Adia said, still staring at the laptop screen. “It looks like that missed call was from an independent bookstore called Makeshift.”

“If it’s a store, anyone could have asked to use the phone,” Zachary observed.

Dominique nodded. “We’ll keep it in mind, but it’s probably not worth—”

“I think you should check it out,” Jay interrupted, still looking at Heather.

“While you’re at it, could you pick up the book I ordered?” Heather asked sardonically.

Adia asked, almost too casually, “Do you know anything about this place, Jay?”

Zachary saw Dominique give Jay a wary look a moment before his mind caught up to what the other two Vidas had obviously already realized. Each line descended from Macht had its own skill set. The Vida line worked with raw power and could manipulate it in a variety of ways. The Arun line were faster and stronger than most witches and focused their training on offensive magic for fighting. The Smoke witches studied healing. Each Marinitch chose how to focus his abilities; some became hunters, some were healers, and some were closer to oracles or adjudicators. The Marinitch line was talented in empathy, bordering in some cases on telepathy.

Most hunters did not develop that skill; it was not beneficial to feel too much of what their prey experienced. Jay was apparently an exception.

He shrugged in response to Adia’s question. “Nothing specific,” he said.

Heather suddenly looked at Jay sharply, perhaps deducing the reason for his intent stare. At last she attempted the savage kick Zachary had predicted. Jay dodged handily.

“I’m going to check it out,” Adia said. “The rest of you should stay here with our ‘guest.’ ”

Dominique broke in: “I spoke to one of my informants shortly before you returned. He says he might know something, and asked me to meet him in the city.”

Adia nodded, obviously not comfortable questioning her mother for more details. “If you think he’s worth meeting, then we’ll manage without you until you’re back.” To Zachary, she said, “You’re in charge while we’re both gone. Michael should be back soon to join you. You can catch him up. I imagine Kaleo will come for his property sooner rather than later.”

Zachary nodded, acknowledging and assenting to her commands. Adia had a natural air of authority and confidence. He was happy to follow her lead.

Unfortunately, once she and Dominique were gone, he was alone with the Marinitch telepath, the human and the tied-up bloodbond.

“Anyone up for a round of go fish?” Jay asked after looking around the room. It was the kind of idiocy Zachary expected from him. Did it really even deserve an answer?

There was silence for the space of a few heartbeats, and then Heather pointed out, “I don’t have a hand for the cards.”

Robert said, “I guess I appreciate your calling me in if you’re hunting Kaleo, but is this your entire plan? We’re just going to hang out until an angry, thousands-of-years-old vampire shows up to try to kill us all?”

“Do you think we should rent a video?” Jay suggested, in his usual cavalier fashion.

“I’m going to take a nap on the couch,” Zachary said. He had to get away from these three for a few minutes, and to lie down before he threw up.

Taunting and jokes aside, Jay paused to ask, “Are you all right?”

He didn’t want to answer. Worse, he was worried he didn’t need to answer. How much could Jay see, just looking at him? Zachary worked too hard to keep his external Vida poise to let some birdbrained Marinitch see what was inside.

“Don’t worry,” he said, putting up the same mental walls he would use to try to keep a vampire out of his thoughts, and speaking as if he assumed that Jay was asking about the plan and not his physical or mental condition. “The house is warded, so any vampire who plans to come for Heather will have to enter like a human, instead of appearing wherever he wants. If Kaleo shows, I’ll be able to join the fight in plenty of time.”

Jay nodded and waved him off.

He lay down. Strict training of his body allowed him to fall asleep almost instantly, but that sleep was far from restful. Dominique’s earlier words had stirred up horrors that he normally tried to forget. It didn’t take vampirism for sleep to recall a five-year-old child’s nightmares come true.

He was just old enough to understand: Mama had gone mad. Someone had told her something bad, and she had gone wild. She had screamed and shrieked and cried in a way he hadn’t thought Vidas even could. Then she had stormed out. Hours later, he had realized he was alone in the house. His older sister had already been missing for a week. His little brother had gone out the door after Mama.

No one came home.

As the day turned into night, he went through the cabinets to try to find something to eat. He went to bed when it got dark. He couldn’t sleep.

He turned on every light in the house in an attempt to banish the shadows, and then he turned them off, because a Vida shouldn’t be afraid of the dark.

He turned just one back on.

He fell asleep only when the dawn came, and woke because he was hungry. He scavenged for breakfast, the way he had done before. Someone had to come home soon.

When someone finally did, it wasn’t Mama, but Jacqueline’s friend Dominique. She brought him to her house and gave him dinner and then told him she was going back out to look for the rest of his family.

“Take care of the baby while I’m gone,” she added.

He nodded solemnly. After Dominique left, he went into the nursery. She had taught him how to hold and feed and change a baby when he had visited before with his mother, but right then Adianna was sleeping, so he just sat next to the crib and listened to her breathe. He would protect her until everyone came home.

CHAPTER 6

SATURDAY, 6:38 A.M.

“SARAH—”

Sarah knew what Nikolas was going to say, and interrupted with “I won’t kill my own family.”

“And if it comes down to a choice between them and us?” he asked.

Kristopher tensed, his arms protective around Sarah. “We don’t have to discuss this now. Much as I hate to say it, Kaleo is right. We need to talk to our people.”

“Can I call Robert?” Christine’s soft voice cut through the vampires’ anxiety.

“I sent Robert to my mother for training, when I first learned he had been hunting,” Sarah said with a wince. “She’ll be watching him.”

“We have some disposable cell phones,” Kristopher said. “You can help Christine figure out what she can