ZACHARY TRIED TO help put away groceries, until Adia flat out ordered him to leave and get some sleep. As he retreated to bed, he could hear Adia and Michael arguing behind him about how Michael didn’t need Jay to “babysit” him when he went to New York. For someone who admitted to working with moral-less mercenaries, the Arun put up a lot of fuss when he thought someone didn’t trust him, but it sounded like he might win the argument this time.
Zachary wasn’t feeling dizzy anymore, but it was still a relief to stretch out in bed, alone and, for the moment, unguarded. Technically, he shared the room with Jay, but the Marinitch had commented that he had trouble sleeping inside, so Zachary hoped he could get a few hours of sleep without being bothered.
He lay on top of the sheets and closed his eyes in meditation, trying to relax his body and mind. Hearing Adia say Jerome’s name, he had wanted to throw up.
He looked up, glaring before he could help it, as Jay stepped into the room in his usual birdlike manner. Jay ducked around the door and closed it behind him before sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing Zachary. So much for not having a roommate.
“Yes?” Zachary finally prompted him, when it seemed Jay was perfectly happy to stare at him with those hazel-green eyes, never speaking. Like a freaking raven,
Jay would probably be flattered by the description. His line were the only ones who used familiars in their work, raising animals as more than pets. Zachary didn’t know what Jay’s particular companion was.
“Something’s wrong,” Jay observed, tilting his head and studying Zachary in a way that made him nervous enough to sit up and erase any lines of anger or concern or frustration from his face from the force of habit.
“What isn’t wrong?” Zachary replied. “Sarah is gone, and we’re stumbling around—”
“That is not what I mean, and I think you know it,” Jay interrupted. “What is it you’re ashamed of, that you think I will find out?”
The list was too long to begin, even if he had had any intention of sharing with the birdbrained witch.
“If I thought it was any of your business, I’d say something aloud,” he said flatly.
“I’m pretty sure it
“How about you get out of my head and focus on the problem at hand?” Zachary snapped, grateful that no one who really mattered was around to hear the sharp response. He was exhausted, physically and mentally and emotionally. He desperately needed to sleep. More importantly, he needed a chance to
He knew it wasn’t acceptable to need that. The self-control that took up much of his energy should have been real, not feigned, not something so heavy to carry around.
“The problem at hand …” Jay shrugged. “I have replayed the event in my mind a thousand times since everything went bad, and I can come to no other conclusion. Sarah was going to turn herself in. She was as surprised as we were when the others appeared. She didn’t come there with the intent to betray you.”
“Maybe your abilities are not as sharp as you think they are,” Zachary said, much more at ease now that the conversation had turned back to their current mission. Focusing on a hunt had often been what had gotten him through the worst times.
Jay smiled, an expression that was strangely sharp and warm and biting all at once. “My abilities are every bit as advanced as yours are, Zachary Vida. They would have to be before I could even begin to read one of your line. And Sarah had every intention of dying the day she approached us. She is desperate, she is scared, and I will say it if no one else will: I do not think she is, or ever will be, a monster. I think we are hunting innocent prey, and I do not like doing that.”
Zachary tensed. “Does that mean you would defy the Rights of Kin?”
“Of course not.” From most people, the instant words would have sounded insincere, but every word Jay said seemed to be measured and considered. “My first loyalty is to my kin. If Sarah was willing to sacrifice herself, then that shows she, too, is still loyal to that same idea. If we cannot survive without destroying that which shows us what we could be … well …” He shrugged. “It is an idea I find distasteful, but survival sometimes requires doing that which you would prefer not to.”
Finally, Zachary let himself say the words that had been on the tip of his tongue almost since Jay first walked into Dominique’s home and introduced himself.
“You creep me out, Jay.”
The Marinitch witch laughed. “I think I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. “Who’s the woman?”
The question was so unexpected that Zachary exclaimed, “
There was only one woman Jay could be asking about.
Jay tilted his head inquisitively. “I am not aware of any ancient Vida law that forbids her line from having relationships. So why do you hide it?”
“I don’t—” He broke off, because denials were effectively useless. He didn’t recall thinking about her, though he knew she came to mind intermittently, especially when he was this tired. “I don’t
There was no law against a Vida having a relationship. It had in fact been hinted to him, strongly and frequently, that he was twenty-six years old and should get around to choosing a partner so he could pass on the Vida genes, like some kind of prize bull. But the only girl Zachary could possibly bring home—so to speak—was one who was capable of taking down a vampire using her bare hands. Anyone he might describe as comforting was no one Dominique would approve of or even want to know about.
He left before Jay had a chance to make any more comments. Adia had ordered him to sleep, and he would obey, but she hadn’t said
He grabbed his jacket, but paused when he realized that Adia wasn’t around anymore.
“She went out to follow up on a lead,” Jay said when Zachary hesitated.
“She didn’t say anything to me.”
Jay shrugged, not needing to respond out loud:
She was going after Jerome. Had he really expected her to do anything else? The realization filled him with a kind of fatalistic resignation. It was out of his hands now.
“I’m going out,” he said. He took his keys from their hook beside the doorway. He let his mind be blank, empty, with nothing for the Marinitch to hear. “I have my cell phone if Adia needs to reach me.”
He didn’t think he had a destination, until he found himself in front of a familiar apartment. He climbed the gray brick stairs and put out a hand like a man who had been hypnotized. He felt like he didn’t knock but rather watched as his knuckles struck the turquoise door of their own volition.
The woman who opened the door greeted him with a soft smile.
“Zimmy,” she said as she reached forward and ushered him inside. She pulled her hand back at the last moment with a rueful chuckle and held it up apologetically. “Let me just wash my hands and toss a towel over my project.”
Her hands were coated in red-brown clay. Her shirt, arms and face had been spattered with it, as well, from the work she had been throwing on a potter’s wheel in the corner of the fairly small kitchen.
She put a damp towel over the work in progress, washed her hands and arms, pulled the clip out of her strawberry blond hair to allow it to fall loose to her shoulders in a riot of waves, and put on a kettle full of water before she asked, “Tea?”
“Please,” he replied, feeling his whole body relax in her presence. He no longer needed to focus and struggle to keep his breath from speeding and his heart from pounding.
“Hard day?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You look terrible,” she said, “like you’ve been trying to run a marathon in the rain with the flu.”
The words made him laugh, the kind of sound that could find its way from his throat only around her, because she was the only one with whom he could accept how utterly empty and absurd his life was.
