All Just Glass (2 page)

How had everything happened so fast? Two weeks before, Sarah had been complaining—softly, when Dominique couldn’t hear—about having to move from New York City to the small
suburb of Acton, Massachusetts. Ten days ago, Adia had discovered that Sarah was being socially polite with two of the vampires who attended her school. The relationship had grown dangerously close before Adia even realized it was happening.

Two days ago, Dominique had bound Sarah’s powers in anticipation of a trial for crimes against the line. Alone and without her magic, Sarah had gone up against one of the infamous vampires of the modern age in an attempt to clear her name.

And then … Adia looked at the clock on the mantel. Just twenty-four hours ago, Adia had walked away and let that creature change her little sister into a monster. He had claimed that it was the only way to save her life, and in that moment, Adia had let herself believe the lie that her sister could still be saved.

But twelve hours ago, that monster had awoken and fed, and now—

Oh, god
.

Adia had memorized pages and pages of Vida law, and now at last the one that mattered came to mind. The other lines weren’t here to witness a trial.

“Adia, what have you learned?” Dominique asked.

Hasana looked over her shoulder at Adia and her eyes widened. She shot to her feet. “You’re injured—”

Adia shook off the healer’s concern and answered Dominique’s question.

“According to numerous sources, Sarah has chosen to … live.” She hesitated before the last word, knowing that it wasn’t exactly what she meant. “She has fed, and is now staying with Nikolas and Kristopher, wherever they are.”

Hasana sagged with relief. Evan closed his eyes with a
wince, undoubtedly knowing what was coming. Zachary nodded, his expression remote, and Michael paled. Michael Arun had always been a mystery to Adia, but he and Sarah had been close. They had even dated for a while, before deciding they were good partners when hunting but weren’t compatible romantically.

Dominique didn’t even blink. Impeccably controlled as always, she simply said, “Well.”

She stood, and her gaze swept the assembled witches.

“My daughter is dead,” she announced. “I know her killers.”

She placed on the table a pencil drawing of the twin vampires Nikolas and Kristopher, provided by the fiends themselves. The one called Kristopher had courted Sarah with drawings. He had befriended her, and Sarah had let him, despite Adia’s begging her to be careful. She had always been headstrong.

“As a child of Macht, I am invoking the Rights of Kin,” Dominique said. Adia had known that it was coming, but she still consciously had to keep her expression controlled so she wouldn’t flinch. “Please witness.”

Now Hasana paled visibly. Apparently, she had finally caught up to the rest of them. A Smoke witch’s training was not as intensive as a Vida’s. They were taught to heal and tended to be less aware of the laws that governed all their lines, but Hasana’s reaction made it clear that she recognized the name.

“Dominique, don’t do this,” Hasana said. “Or at least give yourself some time to reconsider. Sarah isn’t—”

“Sarah
is
dead,” Dominique said flatly. “There is a vampire out there wearing her shape, her skin, but that creature is no witch, no Vida.”

Zachary spoke first, as the eldest of the Vida line after Dominique. He said simply, “Witnessed.”

“Is this truly necessary?” Evan asked.

“Yes,” Zachary replied.

Evan Marinitch drew a breath and said, “Witnessed.” He swallowed thickly. “We have only one hunter in our line this generation. My son. I will see that he joins you.”

“Dominique,
please,
” Hasana begged. All eyes turned toward her, the witches waiting. “Think about—”

“No,” Dominique interrupted, her blue gaze cold as ice. “My line has been savaged this generation.” She swept the room with her eyes, catching each gaze in turn. “Rose was bled dry as part of a sick game after she walked into a trap, after her husband was stabbed with his own knife by a bloodbond who
claimed
she was allied with SingleEarth, and their daughter Jacqueline was slaughtered despite having tried to give up our ways. Her son Richard, who was only a
child
, was taken—and god only knows what happened to him—and never seen again.” Zachary was one of the few who held Dominique’s gaze as she referred to the events that had brought him, an orphan, into their household when Adia had been a baby. “And then the father of my children was tortured to death and dropped on our front steps.”

Hasana looked away. Caryn seemed about to argue, but her mother put a hand on her shoulder; the young witch shook off the touch and stormed out of the room.

Still, Dominique was not done.

“Through the generations we have played it safe, and not sought personal vengeance—and now we who stand in this room are the last of the Vida line. The least we can do for our fallen kin is destroy the creature inhabiting Sarah’s skin before it can use her shell to commit crimes no Vida could ever condone. So I call on the ancient laws now to help me, so I can bury my daughter and let her rest in peace.”

No one said another word; there was no point in arguing. This was a formality, not a choice to be debated.

At last, Hasana choked out the word: “Witnessed.”

They turned to Michael next. Like the Vidas, the Arun line had faced hardships recently. They had never been prolific, and in the past century many had been born completely human, with no power to speak of. Michael was the last witch of his line. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

“Witnessed.”

The Rights of Kin were one of the oldest of the Macht witches’ laws, spoken by the very first Vida after her mother was brutally slain before her eyes, and passed down orally for centuries before written language was developed. They applied to every living line descended from that ancient tribe but had not been called upon in more than a thousand years.

When witch-kin is slain, there shall be no safe haven, no higher law to protect the guilty. Every hunter shall turn her blade to the task, and there shall be no rest until those responsible have been slain. These are the Rights of Kin
.

“Adianna.” She wasn’t being asked to witness; Zachary had already spoken for their line. A tremor of nervousness
passed through her as Dominique gave her orders. “I am putting you in charge of this hunt. Nikolas and Kristopher are necessary targets, but your highest goal is the creature wearing Sarah’s form. I want you to find her, and put a knife in her heart. Is that clear?”

Adia glanced toward Zachary, but he had dropped his gaze back to the blades before him, accepting Dominique’s delegation of power without question.

Zachary was older, twenty-six years to Adia’s nineteen, but he had been a child when his mother and his two siblings had been lost. Dominique had become matriarch of their line, and Adia would inherit that title from her, so it was natural that she would want to put Adia in charge of this mission.

What Dominique could never know was that Adia had already failed once, when she had turned around and let one of
them
give Sarah his blood. Adia had been there. She could have ended this travesty before it began. But she hadn’t been strong enough.

Now the command had been given and there was only one possible response.

“Yes, and I will obey,” she replied, her words formal despite her silent dread. She had to make herself strong enough. Anything else would be a betrayal of her line.

Michael turned his face away as if he couldn’t stand to look at her anymore. Evan stood and said flatly, “I will send my son to you,” before walking out the door.

Dominique stepped back and glanced at the clock before saying to her daughter, “If there is a next generation, you will be its matriarch, but I’ve held you in my shadow longer than
I should have. The hunters you will be working with are your peers, so it is right that you lead them now. I will get out of the way unless you call me in.” Then, in as close to an admission of weakness as Adia had ever heard her mother utter, she added, “For now, I need to rest.”

Adia did not think Dominique had truly
slept
since she had bound Sarah’s powers two days before. She had given good reasons for Adia’s leading this hunt, but Adia suspected there was one more: Dominique was tired, in body and heart.

Adia nodded, though it felt odd to have her mother looking to her for permission. “You rest. We need you strong. Once you’re up, you can start calling your contacts.” Dominique’s network of hunters and informants was impressive. Adia knew only some of them.

Only once Dominique left did Hasana approach Adia to say, “I should set those fingers before they start to heal that way. It looks like you need stitches in your arm, too.”

“Where’s Caryn?” Adia asked, wondering why Hasana hadn’t gone to check on her daughter.

“She brought her own car,” Hasana said, moving to examine the wounds while she spoke. “She thought we were being called for Sarah’s trial, and insisted on coming to speak on her behalf.”

Caryn herself had nearly been brought to trial not long before for far more severe crimes than Sarah had ever committed; if she had been a hunter, and not a healer, she never could have justified her actions. But maybe she had thought she could justify Sarah’s.

Adia sat while Hasana set and splinted her broken fingers,
then put six stitches in her upper arm. The healer’s power numbed the pain from the injury and the needle going into and out of damaged flesh, leaving Adia with a disconnected sensation. In some ways she would rather have the pain than this sense that the skin the healer was stitching wasn’t really hers, but instead belonged to a stranger.

After a few minutes, Michael came to the table. Zachary looked up. The three hunters exchanged wary glances.

“Where do we begin?” Zachary asked.

Adia shook her head, just barely. She had some ideas, but they couldn’t be spoken in front of Hasana. Once the healer was gone, the hunters would begin to make their plans.

S
ARAH SAT ON
her feet so she could look across the scarred old oak table at her sister. The year between them might as well have been a century, if one judged by the awe with which Sarah regarded Adia—or the childlike haughtiness the eight-year-old demonstrated in response
.

“
It’s ‘make no deals, barter no honor,’ ” Adia corrected her gently
.

Sarah ran the words through her head, whispering them under her breath before repeating them out loud, and then asking, “What does ‘barter’ mean?
”

Adia glanced up through the doorway, to where their mother was demonstrating a new fighting form to Zachary, before she answered, “Like if I agree to do the dishes if you’ll do my homework.
”

“
Then … I should stop doing that.
”

“
It’s only with them. Not us,” Adia explained. “We can be trusted, so it’s okay.
”

Sarah frowned, trying to make sense of the passage Dominique had assigned her to memorize. Why did it all have to be written with big words and fancy sentences?

Her gaze drifted from the book to a streak of color on the table. The kitchen window had a panel of decorative cut glass, and at that moment, the rising sun was hitting it just right to make tiny rainbows all around the room. The spring day was windy, and the new leaves on the trees outside rustled, making the light move and the rainbows dance on the table
.

“
Sarah, Adia,” Dominique admonished them, appearing like magic in Sarah’s instant of inattention
.

“
Sorry, Mother,” Adia said while Sarah tried to decide if she really had seen movement through the window
.

It had probably been a squirrel or a stray cat, but she said, “I think I saw someone outside.
”

Seizing the excuse to get out of her chair before her mother could forbid her, she sprang to her feet and bounced across the room, stretching her seven-year-old body. She had pins and needles in her left foot, and that caused her to stumble as she flung open the door
.

She saw the object on the front step, but she couldn’t stop her forward momentum before she tripped over it. She fell. Her eyes focused, and understanding came in flashes. Red blood, sticky. Clammy texture under her hands—dead skin. Glazed eyes staring toward her, seeing nothing. There was blood … everywhere … from what seemed like millions of cuts on his arms and throat and chest
.

And it was her father
.

And he was dead
.

The scream bubbled up through a throat tight with horror and came out strangled
.

“
Sarah Vida!
”

Her mother’s voice sounded very far away
.

Adia grabbed her and dragged her from the doorway. Mother and Zachary worked together to get the body off the front porch before anyone else could see it
.

Rainbows danced on his chalk gray and blood-slicked skin
.

Sarah Vida woke with a silent shudder. When she had been seven, she had screamed until her throat was raw. Now she did not utter a sound.

She had known that vampires did not create dreams but instead relived their memories when they slept. Knowing was not the same as experiencing, however. Humans and witches alike were capable of having nightmares about the bad times. She had dreamed about her father’s death before. She had thought that was what people meant when they said vampires dreamed the past.

But dreams weren’t like
this
, with every detail as vivid as it had been then.

Why couldn’t she have dreamed about going to the butterfly garden with her father? Or about the way he had smiled whenever she had correctly reproduced a complicated fighting form? Her best memories of him involved hot cocoa on cold nights when her mother was away hunting, and his singing her to sleep—again, on nights when her mother was not there to stop him. He hadn’t been a Vida; he hadn’t needed to follow their obsessive code of perfection and self-control. He hadn’t
even been a witch—just a damn fine hunter, one who had earned even Dominique’s respect.