All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [50]
Sarah’s instinctive reaction was unease, and she almost spoke to distract him, before he said, “I have an idea. It’s Saturday. In a couple hours, dozens of curtains will be going up in the city.” He said “the city” as if Sarah should know which one he meant. “Our people are safe. We’ve done all we can do for now. So let’s go out.”
Sarah blinked at him in confusion. What did anything he was saying have to do with anything that had occurred so far that morning? “Out … where?”
“To a show,” Kristopher said. “Maybe a musical—something light, anyway. What would you like to see?”
She almost said, I have never been to a musical in my life. I have no idea what I would like to see. Then the absurdity of the suggestion caught her, and without her will she said, “Are you insane?”
CHAPTER 16
SATURDAY, 4:40 P.M.
ADIA RETURNED TO the Makeshift near dusk. The sun set early that time of year, and heavy clouds had rolled in during the day, leaving the world far darker than it should have been at not even five in the evening. The bookstore was still open, bustling with humans who probably didn’t have a clue what kinds of creatures inhabited the place after dark. Unfortunately, Jerome was not present.
He might not have been awake yet, but she was impatient. Sitting on the hood of her car, she dialed the number he had given her. If he didn’t pick up, she could leave a message asking him if he wanted to get dinner. She was sure he would oblige once he woke.
As the phone rang, she watched a family with three young children spill out of the closing bookstore. The youngest was waving a book with a blue monster on the cover above his head triumphantly. To Adia, it seemed like a strange sight. She was used to visiting diners and cafés late at night, when her prey was about and there were no children with pom-poms on their knit hats.
When she had been in high school, she had complained about spending time doing “stupid human things” that had nothing to do with her real work. Dominique had given long lectures on discipline and perseverance, while Adia had limped, exhausted, through the school day. There had been no excuses, not for failed fights and not for failed tests.
Never excuses.
She had graduated high school with a grade point average of 3.8.
She had also graduated with a long scar down her back, from her shoulder blade to her hip, gained in a fight in a rundown lot. A vampire had thrown her on top of a mess of junk, then grabbed her arm to pull her up; he had dragged her across a jagged piece of scrap metal.
She had won the fight, eventually. She had bandaged herself, grateful that her kind couldn’t get tetanus or hepatitis. And she had never told her mother.
“Hello?”
“What?” For a moment, she forgot who she had been calling. She shook herself, trying to focus. The last twenty-four hours had been too hard, too much. “I mean, hi,” she said. “It’s Anna.”
“Hi, Anna. Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, trying to cover for her moment of inexcusable distraction. “It’s been a long day, but I was thinking a nice dinner out would be a good way to improve it. Want to join me?”
“I would love to,” he replied. “How far are you from Boston?”
“Maybe twenty minutes,” she answered. “Are you thinking of somewhere particular?”
He would choose somewhere there would be few witnesses, of course. That would work for her plans, too.
“I’m thinking I’m a pretty good cook, and if you want to go somewhere peaceful and relaxing, I can set a table where we won’t have to worry about nosy waiters and other people’s screaming children.”
You move fast, pretty boy, she thought, while she said, “Sounds lovely.”
Jerome gave her directions to what turned out to be a moderate-sized apartment just outside Boston. She doubted it was his only residence; it was probably just the closest address he had to the Makeshift, which he figured would be an acceptable distance for her.
It didn’t matter.
A lot of things didn’t matter lately. She felt like she was going through the motions, unable to think past the moment to focus