All Just Glass

“He’ll be fine,” Nikolas said swiftly, in a flat tone absent all judgment. “You didn’t kill anyone; we didn’t kill anyone.”

“Sarah?”

Kristopher’s groggy voice shocked her from her thoughts.

She reached for him and helped him sit up. She could tell the exact moment when disorientation broke in favor of memory, because his fear spiked.

“We couldn’t let you do it,” he said.

“I know,” she answered, her voice breathy through her tight throat.

She tried to help Kristopher stand, and then stumbled as a wave of dizziness nearly took her legs out from under her. Nikolas tried to catch them both, and all three of them ended up back on the floor.

“You two both need sleep,” Nikolas suggested. “Sarah, I know you slept a couple of hours earlier, but it’s well after dawn now, and healing took a lot of energy.”

Nikolas insisted on helping them up the stairs; Sarah was so tired she couldn’t even focus her thoughts enough to transport herself, and Kristopher couldn’t seem to take a step without stumbling over air. Christine looped an arm around Sarah’s waist and helped her stay standing long enough to wash her cousin’s blood from her skin before she fell into bed. Sarah vaguely recalled her having been in the room earlier, before Nikolas sent her away so she would not be a distraction.

“You should rest, too,” Sarah said to Nikolas when it became obvious that he was walking them to their rooms but was not planning on sleeping himself.

“I’ll hunt first,” he answered, reminding Sarah that while she and Kristopher had been injured, he was the one who had been drained of power. Remembering how much of Nikolas’s energy she had siphoned off to heal Kristopher, Sarah was surprised he was still rational. Was his self-control really so much better than hers?

She would have killed Zachary.

He had looked at her, and seen her as Sarah, and called her cousin. Zachary Vida, who never hesitated, had paused, unable to drive his blade into her heart. And in return, she had nearly torn his throat out. If she had had any hope that he might trust her before, how could he possibly forgive her now? She could live, but after what had happened, how could she ever convince any of her once kin that she was anything but the monster they assumed her to be?

Their problems were insurmountable. The Rights of Kin would have them hunted as long as witches lived. Their normal lives could not resume as long as the Vida line drew breath, but Sarah would not let her new allies destroy her mother, sister, cousins and other kin.

She didn’t know what to do.

The first step of living this life, though, was learning how to survive. She had tried to ignore her new blood instead of facing it. If she had listened to Nikolas and Kristopher and—much as she hated to admit it—Kaleo in the first place, maybe she could have ended the earlier fight by running, instead of creating the disaster she had.

She needed to learn how to hunt without killing. There were vampires at SingleEarth who never killed, and Kristopher had gone fifty years without taking a life … though Nikolas had once strongly implied that the self- control she had seen in him came only at the cost of human life, and that he did not know how to live without death.

She shuddered and tried to shove that thought from her mind. Such doubts would help nothing.

For now, the power she had taken from her cousin and then from Nikolas was sustaining her, but there would be other nights. She needed to know how to be. She had never before had choices about who she was and how she wanted to live. All of her life had been dedicated to her duty as a Vida.

As she closed her eyes to sleep, she wondered: was there anything more to her now?

CHAPTER 13

SATURDAY, 9:32 A.M.

ADIA HADN’T HAD a lot of trouble packing to move to the safe house. After all, she didn’t have a piece of sentimental memorabilia that didn’t in some way involve Sarah.

She tried to sleep after they settled in, but managed less than an hour before she succumbed to the compulsive need to look up her latest contact. Sleeping would mean letting herself be still, which would mean thinking. While she was working and focused on the next steps, she could avoid thinking about the big picture and the overall goal. The oversized binder took up most of the kitchen counter as Adia leaned over it, balanced on a stool.

She had already decided that once she was in charge, all the information was going to be entered into a database, searchable by known characteristics.

Such a system would have made it much easier to find Jerome. Searching by name wasn’t effective, since even if he had given his real name at the coffee shop, the book wasn’t arranged in alphabetical order. Many vampires weren’t known by name, or else were known by several names, so they were arranged by lineage instead. That was why they needed a searchable database.

Dominique had objected on the premise that technology was unreliable and easier to interfere with, but Adia suspected that it was more because Dominique hadn’t grown up with computers and didn’t trust new things. She was more technophobic than the eighty-year-old woman Adia occasionally handed change to in the subway station.

At last, Adia found Jerome. She smirked at the well-lit color photograph that went with the entry. Though the book held many sketches, there were few photos, because most vampires were smart enough not to get themselves caught on film. This one, however, had smiled for the camera. Stretched out in casual jeans and a T- shirt, with one arm draped over the back of a leather couch the color of good coffee beans, he looked as friendly and welcoming as he had at the Makeshift.

She read the typed entry.

Jerome. Kendra’s line, changed by Daryl. Rarely outright aggressive, and not known as a frequent killer, but information is difficult to confirm, because he is known for using guile in place of physical assault. No known circuit for hosting, but a frequent guest at circuits owned by a variety of vampires of Kendra’s and Katama’s lines. Jerome does not seem to possess a strong drive toward leadership or power among his own kind but is better described as a game player or information gatherer. He has a wide net of contacts. He seems to court human companions but has no known bloodbonds.

Further down the page, another line had been added in tight, nervous handwriting, as if an afterthought.

Suspected in the death of Frederick Kallison.

There were no more details about that, as if the one line should have been self-explanatory. From the description of Jerome, it sounded like previous hunters had had a chance to observe him pretty closely but had decided he was not dangerous enough to be a worthwhile primary target. If he frequented Kendra’s circuit, then hunters had probably encountered him while he was surrounded by much more worthwhile prey.

Then there was that last line.

The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Frederick Kallison had probably been a hunter, or he would not have been mentioned by name. Perhaps he had disappeared while hunting this vampire, or perhaps it had been known that Jerome had targeted him for some reason. It would be useful to know if Jerome was the type to focus on and stalk particular prey, or if he tended to be dangerous only when cornered. She wondered why the information had been left out.

There wasn’t a note about who had recorded this page, though it was old enough to have been included in the mass of entries Dominique had typed when she had reorganized the book. The handwritten note must have been added after that, so someone in Adia’s generation probably knew more.

Her nerves were strung so tight she jumped when Jay appeared in the doorway to the tiny kitchen.

“Sorry,” the Marinitch said, pausing in the doorway, probably because there was little space to come further forward. “Do you have a minute?”