All Just Glass

exchange that would ensure Heather’s safety once this was all over might be possible.

Unless the witches inside held to the law of never making deals with vampires.

Once she was certain she was reasonably well under control, she crossed the street. She was not surprised to see the front door open. Zachary stepped onto the front porch, and Sarah stopped on the sidewalk. They should have been somewhere in the old west, with tumbleweeds and a saloon to mosey into, not in peaceful suburbia, surrounded by rotting pumpkins and straw turkeys.

Zachary’s expression was as impossible to read as ever. He wore a slight smile that she had seen often enough when they had hunted together to know it was meaningless, and had his hands tucked into his back pockets. The position looked casual, but Sarah knew that it meant he had a knife sheathed at the small of his back. The only reason he hadn’t drawn it yet, she was sure, was the possibility of nosy neighbors peering out their windows. He would try to take the fight inside if he could.

His heartbeat was perfectly even. It wasn’t like the flawless Zachary to lose control in such a silly situation as preparing to murder his cousin.

“I’m not here to fight,” she said, lifting her voice enough that he would hear it, but hoping the words wouldn’t travel to the neighbors. “I’m here to …” Her voice trailed off. Would it kill him to look human once in a while? She shook her head and reached for her knife, which she had strapped to her wrist. It was warm to the touch these days, even uncomfortably hot.

Zachary tensed slightly, one arm shifting as he went for his own blade, but when he realized she was undoing the straps that held the sheath in place, he returned to his prepared but relaxed posture.

She set the knife, still securely sheathed, on the grass.

“I came to return this, and to turn myself in,” she said. The words were a little more tight, and a little louder, than she had intended, but she had never had Zachary’s perfect control.

At least she didn’t have to face Adia this way.

“All I want,” she said, taking a step away from where she had left the knife, “is for Heather to go free before I turn myself in. She’s human, just a bloodbond. Once you have me, you don’t need her.”

She could see somewhere in Zachary’s glacier blue eyes the exact moment that he decided she was trying to play him.

“Turn yourself in, and I’ll give you my word that she will be let free.”

Sarah’s laugh sounded a little like a snarl. “I grew up with you, Zachary! Trust me, damn you.”

“You did not grow up with me. Sarah grew up with me,” he replied. “Do we have a deal?”

“If I’m not Sarah to you, then I know for a fact that your word means nothing,” she said. “If I’m just a vampire, then you can swear on your mother’s grave and it’s all meaningless.”

Stalemate. There had to be a way to get past this.

Zachary had long been an enigma to her. She had hazy memories of his being around when she was young, but the one that stood out most in her mind was the resigned expression on his face as he watched Dominique bind her powers and set her broken fingers after her father’s death. He had apologized to her later, though she had never been sure why.

Had they been closer before then? She remembered that he had moved out the next day, and that his visits after then had always been purely business, either to work on a hunt or to help her and Adia train. He had never played “nice” when training. She had liked that as a kid. It meant that by the time she was strong enough to beat him, she never doubted that she had done it fairly.

She moved closer. He couldn’t hold her here as long as she stayed out of his reach. Zachary had the finest control over his raw magic and was able to do things with it that Sarah had never quite grasped, but for the past few years she had almost always been able to take him down in a plain old-fashioned physical fight. If he grabbed for her, she trusted herself to get out of his grip.

“Bring Heather to the door,” she said. “Then we can decide our next step.”

He nodded slowly and then glanced behind him. He didn’t need to speak.

Robert and Michael escorted Heather onto the porch. Christine’s brother looked pale and shaken. He stared at Sarah with first relief, then confusion and finally blatant horror. Michael’s face was flushed, and his anxiety was clear in all his features. He refused to look in Sarah’s direction, which was at least less of a stab in the gut than Zachary’s calm and even gaze. Heather’s expression was hard to read past the duct-tape gag. Her feet were free, but her hands were bound in some way behind her back.

Sarah took a few more steps forward. She trusted Robert and Michael more than she trusted Zachary, but Zachary was the one in charge.

“Robert, if you will walk Heather out to the street and untie her, I will go inside with Zachary and Michael.”

Robert looked from Zachary to Sarah as if begging someone to stop this madness.

I’m trying to, Sarah thought in response.

Michael shadowed Robert and Heather until they were even with Sarah on the front walk.

“I didn’t know,” Robert said to Sarah. His gaze held confusion, guilt, fear and indecision. She recognized it because it was the same tangle of emotions she had felt not long before. Whose side do I fight on?

“It’s okay,” she replied. The human couldn’t help her now, but he could be hurt if he tried. “Get Heather to safety. Don’t worry about me.”

She stepped back, giving them a clear path and keeping herself well away from any of the hunters. Once Robert was a fair distance away, she looked back at Zachary.

“Let’s do this inside, shall we?” she asked.

He nodded.

She heard Michael swallow thickly as he leaned down to retrieve her knife from the ground. As Zachary turned back toward the house, Michael whispered, “Sarah—”

She interrupted. “I can’t go on like this, Michael. I can’t stand to have innocent people in danger because of me.” She left him at her back as she ascended the front steps. “Dominique and Adianna aren’t here?”

“Why do you ask?” was Zachary’s response.

Maybe I just wanted to see if Dominique could look me in the eye and tell me I’m a monster, the way you can, Sarah thought.

Okay. She had done her duty. She had made sure Heather was safe. Robert was a good guy, in addition to his sister’s being one of Kaleo’s bloodbonds. He would make sure Heather was properly untied and knew which direction to go to get to safety.

The wards protecting the house from vampires seemed to scrape across her skin as she crossed the threshold.

“Hi, Sarah.”

She looked up at the unexpected greeting, which came from a hunter she only vaguely knew, as they all reached the living room. She had seen Jay at major events, when all the lines gathered, but she wasn’t certain they had been officially introduced.

“Hi,” she replied.

“This is awkward,” he said.

Michael giggled, the sound almost hysterical.

They were still all standing just out of striking distance from each other. She was pretty sure Michael and Jay had absolutely no intention of attacking her. Neither even looked inclined to draw a weapon. Zachary was probably waiting for a clear shot or a solid indication from her of whether she planned to fight.

She decided she was grateful that Zachary was the one there. She put her hands behind her back, clasping them together, sure that he wouldn’t hesitate. He would make it quick, and she would never see in his eyes the betrayal she imagined she would have seen in Adia’s.

The sound of shattering glass from the next room interrupted them an instant before she sensed Kristopher. Sarah instinctively fell back, unsure how to respond immediately. Michael’s eyes widened, and a look of betrayal crossed his face as he set Sarah’s knife down and drew his own. A hunter’s magic was twined to his primary blade; Michael would risk the low likelihood of Sarah’s retrieving the Vida knife, rather than try to fight with a