All Just Glass

When she had been in high school, she had complained about spending time doing “stupid human things” that had nothing to do with her real work. Dominique had given long lectures on discipline and perseverance, while Adia had limped, exhausted, through the school day. There had been no excuses, not for failed fights and not for failed tests.

Never excuses.

She had graduated high school with a grade point average of 3.8.

She had also graduated with a long scar down her back, from her shoulder blade to her hip, gained in a fight in a rundown lot. A vampire had thrown her on top of a mess of junk, then grabbed her arm to pull her up; he had dragged her across a jagged piece of scrap metal.

She had won the fight, eventually. She had bandaged herself, grateful that her kind couldn’t get tetanus or hepatitis. And she had never told her mother.

“Hello?”

“What?” For a moment, she forgot who she had been calling. She shook herself, trying to focus. The last twenty-four hours had been too hard, too much. “I mean, hi,” she said. “It’s Anna.”

“Hi, Anna. Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to cover for her moment of inexcusable distraction. “It’s been a long day, but I was thinking a nice dinner out would be a good way to improve it. Want to join me?”

“I would love to,” he replied. “How far are you from Boston?”

“Maybe twenty minutes,” she answered. “Are you thinking of somewhere particular?”

He would choose somewhere there would be few witnesses, of course. That would work for her plans, too.

“I’m thinking I’m a pretty good cook, and if you want to go somewhere peaceful and relaxing, I can set a table where we won’t have to worry about nosy waiters and other people’s screaming children.”

You move fast, pretty boy, she thought, while she said, “Sounds lovely.”

Jerome gave her directions to what turned out to be a moderate-sized apartment just outside Boston. She doubted it was his only residence; it was probably just the closest address he had to the Makeshift, which he figured would be an acceptable distance for her.

It didn’t matter.

A lot of things didn’t matter lately. She felt like she was going through the motions, unable to think past the moment to focus on any kind of goal.

She approached the door and knocked, still lost in her own morbid thoughts. She heard Jerome call out, “It’s unlocked.”

She pushed open the door, and only at that moment did she realize that she had made a grave miscalculation.

Jerome was not alone. Actually, he was more than not alone; he was perched on a stool at a quaint breakfast bar, apparently deep in conversation with an irate-looking vampire Adia recognized as either Nikolas or Kristopher.

Adia had exactly enough time to recognize the twin and note the presence of two other vampires—a man and a woman, curled together on the sofa with an apparently willing victim—before one of the doors in the far wall opened and another familiar figure emerged.

Heather took one look at Adia and began to shriek. The shrill wail was like a siren and was more than enough to startle the feeding vampires so they turned from their prey to Adia.

Four to one, Adia calculated as she took a step backward. There was no space to maneuver in the apartment, she didn’t have the element of surprise and—

Five to one, she thought, correcting herself, as someone caught her at the scruff of her neck, propelling her forward into the room. She managed to wrench herself from the newcomer’s grip, though she fell awkwardly, hurting her wrist.

Heather’s screams had brought her master. It was Kaleo who had blindsided Adia.

“You,” Kaleo snarled as the twin started to chuckle in a humorless way.

“Well, Jerome, it’s been a ball,” Nikolas—Adia was almost certain it was Nikolas—said without taking his eyes from her. “But you look like you’re busy here. Have fun.”

When Nikolas met her gaze, Adia expected to see triumph, or amusement, or at least relief. He had to know she was hunting him, and now he had a chance to get rid of her without ever dirtying his hands. So why did he just look thoughtful?

No point in puzzling it out now. She had to survive first.

One down, Adia thought as Nikolas disappeared. Death estimated in … maybe two minutes?

She started to push herself up, only to get kicked in the shoulder by Kaleo. Though not hard enough to break anything, it was hardly a love tap. Pain radiated down her arm.

“Kaleo, back off,” Jerome said. “She’s my guest.”

“Guest. Sure,” Kaleo replied. Heather had ducked behind him, and he had one protective hand on her shoulder.

“She is my guest,” Jerome repeated, “and she is in my home. That makes her mine to do with as I will, and that doesn’t involve you. Now, perhaps you and Heather should go … get a coffee, or something.”

And then there were three.

Again Adia started to push herself to her feet, but before she could get far, Jerome knelt beside her. His gaze held an even mixture of solicitous courtesy and warning. She stopped moving.

“Anyone else leaving, or should we just do this now?” she asked, stalling. Her right arm was still tingling; she didn’t trust it not to seize up if she went for a knife. She eased to the side, trying to make it look like a painful movement—and it did hurt as she put more weight on her right arm to free up her left.

Jerome shook his head, his gaze never leaving hers. The vampires on the couch exchanged glances, and then carried their victim into one of the bedrooms and shut the door.

“I didn’t invite you here for a fight,” Jerome said.

“Of course not,” she grumbled. “You invited me for a romantic dinner, right?”

“Temper, temper, Vida,” he said, chastising her. “I think we need to have a conversation, that’s all. Now, I’m going to step back and let you stand up. I do not want to fight, but neither will I let you out that door before I have said my piece.”

He walked toward the kitchenette, putting a peninsula counter between them. Adia stood quickly, drawing a knife and taking in details of the apartment around her as a matter of course without ever turning her attention from Jerome.

It was easy to tell that he was from Kendra’s line. His medium of choice was obviously photography; his work was on the apartment walls, and several photographs had been scattered on the coffee table Adia was standing next to, as if he had been looking for a particular image.

Many of the photographs were of natural features, like glaciers, waterfalls, gigantic waves, slithering rivers of lava and enormous crevices in the earth. Others were candid pictures of people, sometimes sleeping, sometimes with others in friendly or intimate embraces, rarely looking at the camera.

In one, Jerome was dancing with an attractive blond woman. She was in a slinky indigo dress, and her head was tucked down against his chest. The picture wouldn’t have been unsettling, except that the one beside it showed the same indigo dress, visible only in brief glimpses around the three vampires feeding on her—Jerome at her throat, and the male and female who had just left the room, one at each wrist. All Adia had to say in favor of the shot was that the vampires had been discreet. They did not hide their own faces, but the photograph seemed specifically angled to conceal the identity of their victim.

Was she dead? Did they hide her face because her lifeless form had showed up a day later, and they knew that this way they could flaunt the crime with immunity? Then again, the main thing she knew about this vampire was that he had no shame or desire to hide his sins. He preferred to flaunt them. She wondered what he told the innocent humans he lured here when they asked about the photographs. Did he feed them some lie, or did he wait to take them here until they were already enough under his control that they wouldn’t care?