“Um, okay,” Christine answered, pulling Sarah more truly into the correct time and place.
“I feel like an idiot,” Sarah said aloud for the first time.
“You look beautiful,” Christine insisted.
“Not because of that.” Sarah shook her head. “Despite people trying to kill me, I just spent two hours
“That’s most of the line, or so I’ve heard,” Christine murmured, her tone so dry Sarah actually laughed.
“Where do I fit in, then?” she asked.
Christine shrugged. “Wherever you want to. What show are you seeing?”
“I don’t remember.” The name had been meaningless to her. She was hoping Kendra was right that she would like it, but wasn’t convinced that her tastes and those of a millennia-old vampire were likely to be the same.
When someone knocked on the door, Sarah called out, “Come in,” without realizing that it was still an hour before the time Kristopher had agreed to pick her up. Christine tensed, and this time Sarah was the one to put herself between the human and the vampire, making no attempt to hide her anger.
“What do you want?” she snapped at Kaleo.
Kaleo quirked one brow. “I’m not here to hurt the girl. I just need to speak to you, Sarah.”
“Out! In the hall.”
The Roman looked amused by the order but obeyed, which Sarah found a little unsettling. She took a minute to reassure Christine and then followed Kaleo.
“Nikolas and Kristopher aren’t here,” she said flatly. “So what do you want?”
“Are you under the impression you are such a nonentity that I could not possibly be here to speak with you?” Kaleo asked.
“If you have something to say to
“Kendra mentioned you are going to a show tonight,” Kaleo said.
“Yeah, she does like to chat,” Sarah quipped.
Kaleo glared. “Do not confuse Kendra with some of our line. She may appear outwardly indifferent to reality, but she has been one of the driving forces behind the rise and fall of empires for two thousand years. She has a fondness for Nikolas, a passing fondness for Kristopher, and thus far a limited tolerance of you that extends just far enough for her to suggest I might want to pass on a message.”
The sharp words were enough to make Sarah step back and attempt to control her temper long enough to listen rationally. “You don’t strike me as the errand-boy type,” she said, not as an attempt to insult, but in a search for Kaleo’s agenda. He did not seem likely to blithely agree to deliver messages.
“I may not like you, and I am certain you do not like me, but like it or not, we share blood. Beyond that, you risked yourself to save Heather, and I trust that you would do the same for any of our people. Your blood and your actions make you kin to me, and so I chose to come here to warn you.”
Sarah nodded, taken aback by his tone and the absolute sincerity behind it. It was hard to reconcile this Kaleo with the one who had tortured Christine and killed the Ravenas’ father. Of course, it was hard to reconcile the Nikolas she now knew with who she had once thought him to be.
For now, she accepted the tentative truce implied in the words.
She hadn’t entirely resigned herself to the idea that living in this world meant not killing him, but if he insisted on talking like he gave a damn about his human bonds and the others Sarah cared about, she feared she might start hating him a little less.
Kaleo continued. “Michael has spoken to other hunters,” he said. “They do not know what theater you will be in, but they know you plan to rendezvous with the Arun afterward. Kendra has elected not to stop the hunters forcefully, because she believes it is a confrontation that will happen sooner or later. She has asked that you try not to disrupt the play”—he quirked his mouth in a half smile—“but understands if it cannot be helped. She assures me that there would be no way to smuggle a large weapon into the theater, but would like me to remind you that not all hunters insist on engaging their prey up close, and the streets can be exposed.”
Though the Vida line preferred close contact in a hunt, she knew crossbows were favored by some hunters—the kind who would shoot the silent weapon from a rooftop or a higher window, or even across a crowded theater if they could get the weapon inside.
“Do you need to sit?” Kaleo suddenly asked.
The solicitousness seemed out of place until Sarah realized she had not responded to his warning, and several seconds had gone by.
Long before their short fling, Michael had been her best friend. But this new life of hers was full of betrayals by those from the former one, so why was this surprising?
As Kendra, through Kaleo, had said, this confrontation had to happen sometime.
Inanely, Sarah said, “I had actually started to look forward to seeing the show.”
“Then go,” Kaleo replied. “Watch the play. I would simply advise not idling long on the streets.”
He made it sound so simple. But maybe something good could come of this. She had promised Nikolas and Kristopher, and more importantly herself, that she would not give up her life, but in a public area owned by such a powerful figure, surely she would have some room to negotiate. Perhaps she could find an opportunity to plead her case. There had to be a way to convince those who had been her friends and family that she was still who she had been only days before.
“What’s wrong?” were Kristopher’s first words as he walked into the room where Sarah had not too long before been primping, and where she was now sitting on the bed, no longer worried about wrinkling the beautiful dress before Kristopher came to pick her up. She just looked at him. She knew he had been angry when he had left.
Since then, she had fed for the first time. She had experienced something wonderful. Then she had seen an old friend, briefly experienced the hope for forgiveness and acceptance, only to have that crushed. After Kaleo had left, she had spent nearly half an hour helping Christine calm down while trying to fight the yawning void in her own gut.
He hadn’t been there for any of that, and she couldn’t blame him. Nikolas had said Kristopher wasn’t hard enough to force her to feed, and he was probably right. He thought that if he could only convince her this life was
He and Nikolas had left their world behind when they had become vampires. They had even changed their names to mark the transition. It wasn’t as easy for her to stop being Sarah Vida, even if the Rights of Kin hadn’t been in play.
“Nikolas and Kendra are going to join us for the show. I’ll explain everything once your brother gets back.” She didn’t want to have to describe Michael’s betrayal twice. Nikolas was going to meet them at home, but Kendra had said she would catch up with them at the theater, so there would be time for them to talk.
“Okay.” She could still sense Kristopher’s concern, but he was willing to let it drop if she wanted it to. “Where is Nikolas?”
“Talking to some contact,” Sarah said, vague because he had been vague with her. “He has a plan, but hasn’t explained it to me. He promised he would be back in time for the show, though.”
Kristopher didn’t object to Nikolas’s joining them, or even ask when that had been decided, and there wasn’t as much as a tendril of annoyance in response to his brother’s having invited himself along on their date. Sarah realized, quite suddenly, that she was irritated by that—not that Kendra and Nikolas had invited themselves, but that Kristopher just accepted it as a matter of course, even without knowing that Kendra had been involved in the decision.
“You look good,” she said, the compliment lame, but she couldn’t get more eloquent words past her throat.
Of course he looked good. Kristopher Ravena in a tux was a sight to see. She was glad Nikolas and Kendra had insisted that Sarah find something “appropriate,” or she would have been devastatingly underdressed. The beautiful man in front of her was like something out of a black-and-white magazine. He was standing before her, but impossible to touch.
He took the words as further invitation to change the subject and pretend everything was fine again. Holding
