All Just Glass (24 page)

Leaving him had been hard. Not going back to him, on hands and knees if necessary, after Jacqueline’s death had been nearly impossible. Every moment of every day, she had fought to keep his face out of her mind and his voice out of her head, had fought not to hear him say, “
Just relax, luv. It’s all right.
”

Now she had no choice but to feel it all.

She wasn’t even sure she knew how.

Z
ACHARY BREWED COFFEE
as dawn light began to seep through the windows at Olivia’s apartment. Normally, he was a tea drinker, but this was a bitter morning.

Olivia wrapped her arms around his waist from behind.

“No word yet?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Dommy will do what she needs to do,” Jerome said from the couch, where he was flipping through one of Olivia’s books on human psychology. “She’s a practical girl that way.”

“I still can’t believe the two of you had a relationship,” Jay remarked as he accepted a cup of coffee from Zachary. “Is this handmade?” he asked Olivia as he paused to admire the mug. She smiled and nodded. “It’s beautiful.” Returning to the
subject, he added, “I mean, she’s Dominique the indomitable. Even I can’t read her most of the time. It’s like the emotions just aren’t there. I have a hard time picturing her as a wild, rebellious partygoer.”

Across the room, Robert laughed, a bitter, barking sound. The human had been cautiously excited when Christine had called him and asked him to join them all for breakfast and news at Olivia’s. “It’s like the straight-A Catholic school kid who goes out and gets drunk every weekend,” he said. “You can’t be that tightly wound without going a little nuts.”

“More like a recovering alcoholic violently preaching sobriety,” Olivia suggested. “Dommy used us to hide, and to relax. The only way to give that up was to remove any possible temptation.”

“She
could
have just stayed with us, if she was that unhappy with her real life,” Heather suggested sleepily from her perch on the back of the couch, behind Jerome.

Jerome shook his head. “She blamed herself for too much. Frederick followed her one night, and one of our kind grabbed him while she was with me,” Jerome explained. “Olivia and I didn’t even know about it until he showed up the next night with fangs, telling Dommy he couldn’t live this way. He begged her to kill him. She tried to say no, but he kept telling her she
owed
it to him, that he wouldn’t be this creature if not for her. It was like she shut down. I don’t know what part of her she had to kill to put a knife in his heart, but she did it. Then she turned around, told me never to speak to her again and went home.”

“Poor Dommy.” Heather sighed. “She was such a sweet, addled little creature.”

The front door opened, admitting a bruised Adia and an exhausted Michael. All voices in the apartment hushed as everyone waited to hear what she would say. She looked around, not speaking until the rest of Olivia’s guests emerged from the bedrooms.

“Is it over?” Kristopher asked.

“It’s over,” Adia answered. “Dominique has declared the Rights of Kin satisfied. She won’t hunt you anymore.”

“She won’t hunt much of
anyone
anymore,” Michael said. “She announced that Adia’s performance on this last mission was exemplary, and named Adia the new matriarch of the Vida line. Dominique has stepped aside. Evan Marinitch is convinced she is having a mental breakdown. She refuses to talk to him, so the Smoke witches are trying to convince her that a tropical vacation would be good for her health.”

“How do you feel?” Kristopher asked Adia.

She rubbed her bruised throat and then shrugged. “I’ve been worse. How ’bout you, Sis?”

Most of them turned to look at Sarah, who was standing with Nikolas a little behind Kristopher. She stepped into the room shyly and answered, “Grateful you’re as good as you are, but still like I took a knife to the heart. And I think Kendra is cross at me for bleeding on an eight-hundred-dollar dress.”

Kristopher added, “It would have been nice to know the plan a little earlier.”

“That
wasn’t
part of the plan,” Jerome insisted.

If Adia had used a Vida blade, or a weapon with any ounce of magic to it, Sarah would have been dead. Instead, Adia had fulfilled the exact vow she had made: she had tracked Sarah
down and put a knife in her heart. The cold steel had sliced its way in, but a Vida witch knew how to kill, which meant she knew how
not
to. Adia had placed the knife exactly as she meant to, careful not to jar or twist it in any way that would destroy the heart sufficiently to result in death.

It was the kind of plan Adia would make. Zachary would never have been bold enough to do it. He would have been sure his hand would tremble at just the wrong moment.

“I thought you had really done it,” Zachary admitted. “When I first walked in, I thought you really had killed her.”

“I wish someone had explained some of this plan to me,” Sarah said with a glare at Nikolas.

“I didn’t even realize there was a plan until I saw that photo Heather left behind,” Nikolas said. “I had seen Dommy when she was with Jerome, but I just remembered her as—” He broke off as he realized that several of the hunters in the room were glaring at him. “I never would have recognized her.”

“There’s no reason for a hunter to pay too much attention to prey,” Heather remarked, “but we remember each other. I thought you had killed her, you know, when she stopped coming back.” There was no accusation as she said this to Jerome. In her mind, Zachary knew, whether to grant life or death was a vampire’s prerogative.

“We have to move on,” Adia said, voice and body tight, as if she was fighting not to show her discomfort in her surroundings. “I just came to bring the update. I can’t linger. You understand, right, Sarah?”

“I understand.”

She was their leader now. Zachary doubted she would rule
with the same iron fist as her mother had, but she couldn’t afford to second-guess herself. He might have a little freedom, granted by Adia’s forgiveness, but she needed to keep her distance from those who had to be her prey.

For this last time, though, the two sisters approached each other, obviously both a little wary. Given how the last hug had gone, Zachary could understand why they both hesitated.

Nikolas reached out and squeezed Sarah’s hand in silent encouragement. She smiled at him before she stepped forward, reaching out enough that Adia had to step back or respond.

Adia met the hug, and the two sisters embraced each other tightly.

“I’m proud of you,” Adia whispered.

Sarah blinked, eyes shining with tears, before saying, “That’s pretty much all I’ve ever wanted.”

Adia half laughed, past what obviously wanted to be a sob. “I’ve
always
been proud of you, you idiot.”

As Adia and Sarah reluctantly drew apart, Michael asked the hard question: “So, what next?” The hunters gathered to leave together. Zachary hadn’t needed to be at the meeting—it had been for the leaders of the lines—but he did need to eventually show his face to other witches again. “I mean, we have a truce right now, but next time I walk into a party before the Devil’s Hour, I’m not going to walk out and let people die because some of my vampiric in-laws are there. Do we come up with some kind of rules of engagement?”

“Olivia and I plan to join SingleEarth,” Sarah said. “That way there will be no reason for anyone to feel conflicted about visiting this apartment, or knowing its location, or maintaining
contact with either of us. My magic is all messed up from the vampire blood, but Caryn has offered to help me learn how to use it again, in a way that’s more focused on healing than fighting. SingleEarth always needs healers.”

Olivia had already discussed that part of the plan with Zachary.
I already mostly obey their rules
, she had said.
It’s no sacrifice for me to make it official
.

“The rest of us have managed this long without ending up on a hunter’s blade,” Nikolas said. “You do what you feel you need to do. You can ask Zachary how the game works when your prey is your kin and is watching your back.”

“It’s complicated,” Zachary admitted.

But Jay shook his head. “No … I don’t think it really is. You’re used to living by all of the Vida rules. Some of us are used to more natural laws, where the hunt is about the hunt, not anger or vengeance.”

“That’s a very predatory outlook, for someone named after a songbird,” Michael observed.

“Maybe.” Jay grinned. “I’ve always been close to birds. I understand them. They speak to me. But my bonded companion is a lynx. We all have to find a balance somewhere.”

Zachary stared at the Marinitch witch with surprise, trying to picture him prowling through the woods with one of the big cats by his side. It was hard to imagine in a way that didn’t involve his animal companion hunting him.

“Balance,” he said out loud. “That would be nice.”

“Much better than perfection,” Sarah agreed.

A
MELIA
A
TWATER
-R
HODES
wrote her first novel,
In the Forests of the Night
, when she was thirteen. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are
Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, Midnight Predator, Persistence of Memory, Token of Darkness
, and
All Just Glass
. She has also published the five-volume series The Kiesha’ra:
Hawksong
, a
School Library Journal
Best Book of the Year and a
Voice of Youth Advocates
Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection;
Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry
, an IRA-CBC Young Adults’ Choice; and
Wyvernhail
. Visit her online at
ameliaatwaterrhodes.com
.