All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [59]
Nikolas shrugged, in no way defensive. “Knowing wouldn’t have changed your decision, and you would have trusted me less tonight if you suspected I might have had any motive to encourage you to kill. I will answer questions you have, but I have no reason to volunteer information that will do nothing but make you uncomfortable.”
“What about Kristopher?” Why hadn’t he told her this, when he knew how afraid she was of turning into a killer?
“In my brother’s defense, these are only thoughts I started having after he left, when I began to wonder why it was so easy for Nissa to survive without killing, and why Kristopher was able to survive with her, but it seemed impossible for me to do the same. Kristopher probably never had reason to give it any thought.”
Sarah nodded slowly. Trying to rally her courage, she said, “I think … there may be a few things your brother hasn’t had a chance to give much thought.”
She remembered his reaction to her sharing his memories of Christine. It hadn’t been feelings of love that had washed over him right then, but obligation.
She had seen the way these brothers lived, the bonds they surrounded themselves with and the way women reacted to them in general. She had accepted that Kristopher had probably flirted with hundreds or thousands of pretty girls in his lifetime, without any thought of “forever.” The only thing that made her different was that she had ended up dead when he hadn’t intended it.
Nikolas looked like he was about to remark on the subject when another voice interrupted them, saying, “Hey there, stranger.”
The problem with hunting in Manhattan, Sarah realized suddenly, was that she used to hunt in Manhattan … or if not on the island, at least near it. Even if it had occured to her earlier, with almost twenty million people in the New York metropolitan area, Sarah would have been comfortable with the likelihood of not running into anyone she knew. Unfortunately, luck had not been working in her favor lately.
Now the familiar voice, with its cautiously friendly tone, caught her off guard. Habit told her to smile and return the greeting warmly. After all, she and the hunter who hailed her at that moment had always been close.
She turned to face the witch, with no idea what she would do next.
CHAPTER 19
SATURDAY, 5:03 P.M.
JEROME TURNED AWAY, but even though the vampire’s back was to her, Adia felt unable to move. She watched as he retrieved one of many small boxes from a closet on the other side of the room and set it down on the counter.
“Some of my favorite photos can’t go on the walls,” he said, as if making casual conversation. Given the photos that were on the walls, Adia wasn’t sure she wanted to contemplate what this vampire would find too objectionable for public display.
He opened the box and flipped through the stack of photographs therein before selecting three, which he presented to her, fanned out so she could see the images even without taking them from his hand.
She stared at his face for a moment, strangely unwilling to look down at what he was showing her. She had seen enough of the “art” he put on his walls to know he liked to immortalize his victims. Did she really want to look?
He stood there patiently for a moment and then put the photographs down on the table. “I hope you’ll leave them here when you go. I don’t have copies.” Then he disappeared, in one irritating blink of an eye.
At last, alone, Adia looked down at the three pictures he had decided to share.
The first one showed the same beautiful blond woman, in her bright indigo club dress, looking up at Jerome as he reached out a hand as if to pull her into a dance. The expression on her face was ambivalent, equal parts uncertainty and daring joy. The lights had caught a sparkle in her bright blue eyes.
Adia had never seen the girl in the photograph, but she recognized her. She knew exactly who she was.
The next image was of the same woman, now in casual clothes, stretched out on a couch, snuggling with Jerome but looking directly at the camera with a distressed, startled