All Just Glass

She sat next to him and curled against his side.

“Poor dear. What can I do for you?”

The answer was utterly beyond him. Suddenly, he was shaking, a bone-deep trembling he struggled to control until she cooed, “It’s all right. You don’t have to be strong here.”

It was the type of permission he didn’t know how to react to. Wrapped in her arms, he could for the moment step outside the perfect Vida cage, and as soon as he did so, he was weeping.

It was all crumbling. His earliest memories were those of Jacqueline and Dominique screaming at each other, and then Jacqueline storming out. His mother wailing when they told her Jacqueline was dead, demanding to see the body for herself, leaving and never coming back. His brother, only five years old, wandering out in a quest for Mother, never to return. A parade of people leaving and getting killed, until at last Sarah was taken from them, or more likely ran from them.

Now Adia. He had seen the look of disgust on her face. If he lost her, too …

Olivia held him silently until the sobbing ceased; then she stood and quietly poured the now-boiling water for the tea she had promised.

He leaned over the cup, inhaling the steam, unable to meet Olivia’s gaze.

“Better?” she asked.

“Probably never.”

She sighed again. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

“I owe it to my family,” he replied. Had always replied. They were all he had, after all. “After Dominique took me in—”

“Dominique.” Olivia snickered, a sound that contrasted with her normally soft, gentle image. “Even the indomitable Vida matriarch isn’t perfect, you know.”

“I know.” He remembered all too well the terrible days after Fredrick had died. “But I have to try, the way she does.”

Olivia kissed his throat, and he let her, even though he knew that if she took his blood, it would probably kill him. He had lost too much to Sarah, too recently. But of course Olivia knew that and knew she had to control herself.

Heather’s words came back to him. He remembered the way her eyes had flashed as she had tried to unsettle them all by describing her life.

Would you like to know what it’s like when one of them takes you? When you’re in their arms and they bare your throat and drink?

I have seen hundreds of humans pass through, willing to die, willing to give up everything, just to experience that bliss. And not just humans. The Vida line isn’t immune, is it?

If only she had known. If she hadn’t scrambled Jay’s mind so much with whatever she had shown him, Zachary’s secret surely would have been revealed right then, because he knew exactly why the bloodbond had stayed with Kaleo all this time. As it was, Jay had picked up on Zachary’s relationship with Olivia, even if he hadn’t gotten the more sordid details.

I have seen hundreds of humans pass through, willing to die, willing to give up everything, just to experience that bliss.

When his cell phone rang, he pulled it out of his pocket and then just stared at it as Adia’s number flashed on the front. He wanted to put it away. Couldn’t they just leave him alone for a night?

He wasn’t ready to talk to her again, to face her. He didn’t think he ever would be ready.

Still, he hit the “talk” button and said, “Hello.”

“Is now a bad time?” she asked.

Now was a bad time, but that wasn’t really what she was asking. She wanted to know if she could talk frankly.

“Now’s fine,” he said. “Adia, I—”

“You are not going to apologize, or say a single freaking word about it right now,” Adia interrupted. “If you need to talk, we’ll talk when the job is done. In the meantime, I need you to pull it together and be at my back. Can you do that?”

He looked up at Olivia and met her steady gaze for several seconds before saying, “I can do that.”

“Good. Then meet me at Michael’s place, as soon as you can get there. We’re ending this thing tonight.”

Michael’s apartment was in New York City. Had he located Sarah or the twins there? Adia obviously believed she knew where their targets would soon be.

“It’ll take me three or four hours to get there.”

“Then we’ll make it by intermission.”

Could it really be over so soon? And when it was done, what then? Adia knew the truth about him. So did Jay. He wouldn’t be able to stay around, but he didn’t know what else to be, or how else to live.

Adia hung up without saying goodbye.

“Where are you headed?” Olivia asked as Zachary put his phone back into his pocket and stood.

He shook his head. She knew he never told her outright where his hunts took him.

“Judging by the time, the people involved, and the mention of intermission, I’m guessing you’re headed to Broadway,” she said.

“Guess whatever you like,” he said. “I have to go.”

“Zimmy, you know I have no power to interfere with Kendra in Manhattan, right?”

He hesitated in the doorway and then shrugged. “I do now.”

He felt calmer when he sat behind the wheel of his car. Adia had said it would be over that night. Maybe then he could rest for a while.

CHAPTER 22

SATURDAY, 6:29 P.M.

SARAH FELT ABOUT as stupid as she ever had in her life, sitting in front of the full-length mirror while Christine did her hair. Christine had insisted on helping, and short of shoving her down the stairs, Sarah couldn’t figure out how to convince her otherwise.

The evening had taken a surreal turn somewhere. Maybe it had been when she had tasted a symphony, or when she had spoken to Michael, but she was pretty sure it had happened somewhere on Madison Avenue, on a rack between Chanel and Vera Wang.

Going shopping for formal wear in New York with a vampire who had once founded a mystery cult in the days of the Roman republic, and who tended to chatter about the fall of empires in the tone most people used when discussing the weather, was a unique experience. Kendra referred to Nikolas as “Nikki,” a nickname she claimed he hated. She also referred to Tizoc Theron, one of the most powerful mercenaries in all of vampiric existence, as her “Tizzy.” The Inquisition was “a dreadful inconvenience,” World War II was “a little spat” and the fall of Midnight, the vampiric empire that had reigned for centuries, was “an unfortunate event.”

If Sarah lived two thousand years, maybe she would look back and agree. For now, the sentiments were almost as unsettling as the expression on Kendra’s face when one of the shop managers—who had instantly appeared to wait on Kendra when she had crossed the threshold—presented a dress she found unattractive.

Now Sarah was in a turquoise dress with a neckline slightly lower than she was used to but, fortunately, no eighteenth-century-style hoops—something she had been a little worried about, given the individuals she was going with. Even better, she was almost certain no one had died in her acquisition of the dress, or in the search for shoes to match it.

“You look far away,” Christine remarked.

Sarah tried to pull herself back to the moment. “Did you know Nero played the lyre, not the fiddle?” she asked. “There was no such thing as a fiddle yet.” The misconception about which musical instrument Nero had played while Rome burned was apparently one of Kendra’s pet peeves.