All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [68]
The sharp words were enough to make Sarah step back and attempt to control her temper long enough to listen rationally. “You don’t strike me as the errand-boy type,” she said, not as an attempt to insult, but in a search for Kaleo’s agenda. He did not seem likely to blithely agree to deliver messages.
“I may not like you, and I am certain you do not like me, but like it or not, we share blood. Beyond that, you risked yourself to save Heather, and I trust that you would do the same for any of our people. Your blood and your actions make you kin to me, and so I chose to come here to warn you.”
Sarah nodded, taken aback by his tone and the absolute sincerity behind it. It was hard to reconcile this Kaleo with the one who had tortured Christine and killed the Ravenas’ father. Of course, it was hard to reconcile the Nikolas she now knew with who she had once thought him to be.
For now, she accepted the tentative truce implied in the words.
She hadn’t entirely resigned herself to the idea that living in this world meant not killing him, but if he insisted on talking like he gave a damn about his human bonds and the others Sarah cared about, she feared she might start hating him a little less.
Kaleo continued. “Michael has spoken to other hunters,” he said. “They do not know what theater you will be in, but they know you plan to rendezvous with the Arun afterward. Kendra has elected not to stop the hunters forcefully, because she believes it is a confrontation that will happen sooner or later. She has asked that you try not to disrupt the play”—he quirked his mouth in a half smile—“but understands if it cannot be helped. She assures me that there would be no way to smuggle a large weapon into the theater, but would like me to remind you that not all hunters insist on engaging their prey up close, and the streets can be exposed.”
Though the Vida line preferred close contact in a hunt, she knew crossbows were favored by some hunters—the kind who would shoot the silent weapon from a rooftop or a higher window, or even across a crowded theater if they could get the weapon inside.
“Do you need to sit?” Kaleo suddenly asked.
The solicitousness seemed out of place until Sarah realized she had not responded to his warning, and several seconds had gone by.
Long before their short fling, Michael had been her best friend. But this new life of hers was full of betrayals by those from the former one, so why was this surprising?
As Kendra, through Kaleo, had said, this confrontation had to happen sometime.
Inanely, Sarah said, “I had actually started to look forward to seeing the show.”
“Then go,” Kaleo replied. “Watch the play. I would simply advise not idling long on the streets.”
He made it sound so simple. But maybe something good could come of this. She had promised Nikolas and Kristopher, and more importantly herself, that she would not give up her life, but in a public area owned by such a powerful figure, surely she would have some room to negotiate. Perhaps she could find an opportunity to plead her case. There had to be a way to convince those who had been her friends and family that she was still who she had been only days before.
“What’s wrong?” were Kristopher’s first words as he walked into the room where Sarah had not too long before been primping, and where she was now sitting on the bed, no longer worried about wrinkling the beautiful dress before Kristopher came to pick her up. She just looked at him. She knew he had been angry when he had left.
Since then, she had fed for the first time. She had experienced something wonderful. Then she had seen an old friend, briefly experienced the hope for forgiveness and acceptance,