All Just Glass

way. At least she had found a long-sleeved shirt that hid the scars on her arms, but the vampiric black eyes where she was used to seeing Vida-blue ones chilled her. She barely resisted an urge to slam a palm into the mirror’s surface and shatter it to send the image away.

She remembered doing something similar when she was seven. Hysterical, still screaming after the discovery of her father, she had thrown anything that had come to hand. When she had run out of things to throw, she had turned toward the window. The bright rainbows around the room, dancing over her father’s dead flesh, had offended her. She had slammed a fist with all her strength through the decorative cut-glass panels.

She had torn her hand to ribbons and broken three fingers. Her mother had allowed the hand to be set and bandaged but had bound Sarah’s power so she would heal at a nearly human rate, to teach her the consequences of emotional reactions. Of losing control.

She was supposed to have learned her lesson. Now all those years of struggling for flawless discipline, training to be perfect, had left her in a refuge provided to her by the vampire who had been her enemy so recently she wore his marks in her flesh—and would for the rest of eternity.

CHAPTER 3

SATURDAY, 6:12 A.M.

ADIA FELT A little giddy as she and Zachary crossed the threshold of the local SingleEarth Haven.

The compound was less than fifteen minutes away from their house, but Adia had never been there. Dominique had chosen to live close to SingleEarth’s healers, but they normally came to the house so hunters did not need to profane SingleEarth’s cherished lands.

It wasn’t that hunters weren’t allowed at SingleEarth, exactly, but they certainly were not welcome.

As the name implied, this was supposed to be a safe place. Those inside were protected from persecution, whether by hunters or others of their own kind. The Vida, Arun and Marinitch lines had sworn to honor that agreement, even though SingleEarth’s dominion caused a great deal of frustration. There was nothing quite so frustrating as knowing that someone in this place had information, or a history of slaughter, and not being able to do anything about it.

Everything had changed when Dominique had invoked the Rights, though.

Adia pitied Michael a little. It had seemed like a bad idea to bring someone as volatile as an Arun to SingleEarth, so Michael was assigned to check the house where Kristopher and his sister, Nissa, had previously stayed.

It wasn’t entirely busywork. The witches were bound to tell the others of their lines about the Rights of Kin, but no one would have told Nissa. If she had any brains at all, she would have disappeared when she’d learned that her brothers had tangled with a Vida, but maybe she wasn’t that bright. Maybe Michael would get lucky.

Adia doubted it. Their prey was much more likely to have gone somewhere like SingleEarth, where they would assume that the witches’ own laws would protect them. Therefore, Adia much preferred to be here, with Zachary. Zachary had moved out when he was sixteen and Adia was nine, so they had never been as close as siblings. But when they exchanged a glance at that moment, Adia could see that he was as thrilled by their new freedom as she was. She knew that her expression did not show her excitement—she had trained too long and hard to let such an emotion betray her—but her cousin would see it in her eyes just as she could see it in his.

Sarah would have.

And just like that, the excitement came crashing down.

“You take the resident halls,” she said softly. “I’ll check the common rooms.”

Vampires had the irritating ability to disappear and travel any distance in the blink of an eye. A well-trained witch of their line could disrupt that power, but to do so required touch, which meant it was normally hard to catch someone who wasn’t arrogant enough to come out and fight. They would have only one chance at this, before their target learned that the Rights of Kin were in play, so it would be best to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. This early in the morning, most of SingleEarth’s vampires were still awake and social. Adia would have been happy to wait until they were curled up asleep in bed, which most would be within the next couple of hours, but she did not want to risk waiting and having word reach their targets.

After they split up, Adia was the one who got lucky. She found Nissa in one of the art rooms, receiving instruction on stone carving from a girl who reeked of a vampiric taint. She was not a vampire, but a bloodbond to someone old, and powerful.

“Nissa?”

The vampire lifted black eyes as Adia said her name. A sad smile crossed her face, but she walked fearlessly toward Adia.

“Adianna, right?” she asked. “You’re Sarah’s sister.”

Adia nodded tightly. Unfortunately, Nissa wasn’t dumb. Adia doubted she would say anything helpful without coercion.

“And you’re … Kristopher’s sister,” Adia said. At least for a little while recently, Kristopher had pretended to be human. To be something other than evil. His little game had started this whole disaster.

“Are younger sisters as much trouble as brothers?” Nissa asked, shaking her head. “If you were hoping to get in touch with Sarah, I can pass a message on for you.”

Adia winced. She couldn’t help it.

Nissa stepped forward and put a comforting hand on Adia’s shoulder. Adia resisted the instinct to pull back, instead letting her power seep subtly over Nissa’s, tangling it enough to hold her in place when she decided the wise course of action was to flee.

“I know what you’re going through,” Nissa said. “I’m sure your whole world has been turned upside down. But it gets better. I don’t approve of a lot of the choices Nikolas and Kristopher make, but they’re still my brothers, you know?”

Adia couldn’t handle too much more of this. “Do you know where I would find Sarah?”

“She and Christine are—” Nissa stopped and frowned, her body going tense. Her eyes searched Adia’s face. “Are you looking for her because she’s your sister, or because she’s your prey?”

Adia let herself look offended and innocent, eyes wide. “I just want to see her,” she said. It didn’t hurt to try, right?

Nissa looked ambivalent. “I can pass on a message, and see if she would be willing to meet you here,” she suggested.

Adia considered it. If Sarah didn’t know that the Rights were in play, she might show up, believing herself safe. On the other hand, she was smart and knew Vida law as well as Adia did. If she received such an invitation, she would wonder why Adia was extending it, and might deduce what was going on, at which point Adia would have lost her best lead.

Adia didn’t need Nissa to tell her anything, really. The twins protected their kin.

“I need you to come with me,” Adia said.

Nissa looked shocked. “You’re hunting her,” she said. “You’re really … You would really kill your own sister?”

Adia was sure she could take Nissa down in a fight, but with Zachary’s help, she could take Nissa alive. The twins would undoubtedly come to avenge her, but the hunters had more leverage if she was alive. Adia sent out a thread of power to Zachary, prompting him to come back to her, and answered Nissa’s question as a stall tactic.

“In a heartbeat,” she said, “before I let her kill anyone else.”

She was glad her voice was steady. She did believe her words but was still pleased that her voice didn’t betray that her heartbeat was rapid with fear of the moment when she would have to follow through with the promise.

“Not all of us are killers,” Nissa snapped. She wasn’t running yet only because she didn’t know she needed to. She probably thought she could convince Adia to change her mind.