All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [8]
She was supposed to have learned her lesson. Now all those years of struggling for flawless discipline, training to be perfect, had left her in a refuge provided to her by the vampire who had been her enemy so recently she wore his marks in her flesh—and would for the rest of eternity.
CHAPTER 3
SATURDAY, 6:12 A.M.
ADIA FELT A little giddy as she and Zachary crossed the threshold of the local SingleEarth Haven.
The compound was less than fifteen minutes away from their house, but Adia had never been there. Dominique had chosen to live close to SingleEarth’s healers, but they normally came to the house so hunters did not need to profane SingleEarth’s cherished lands.
It wasn’t that hunters weren’t allowed at SingleEarth, exactly, but they certainly were not welcome.
As the name implied, this was supposed to be a safe place. Those inside were protected from persecution, whether by hunters or others of their own kind. The Vida, Arun and Marinitch lines had sworn to honor that agreement, even though SingleEarth’s dominion caused a great deal of frustration. There was nothing quite so frustrating as knowing that someone in this place had information, or a history of slaughter, and not being able to do anything about it.
Everything had changed when Dominique had invoked the Rights, though.
Adia pitied Michael a little. It had seemed like a bad idea to bring someone as volatile as an Arun to SingleEarth, so Michael was assigned to check the house where Kristopher and his sister, Nissa, had previously stayed.
It wasn’t entirely busywork. The witches were bound to tell the others of their lines about the Rights of Kin, but no one would have told Nissa. If she had any brains at all, she would have disappeared when she’d learned that her brothers had tangled with a Vida, but maybe she wasn’t that bright. Maybe Michael would get lucky.
Adia doubted it. Their prey was much more likely to have gone somewhere like SingleEarth, where they would assume that the witches’ own laws would protect them. Therefore, Adia much preferred to be here, with Zachary. Zachary had moved out when he was sixteen and Adia was nine, so they had never been as close as siblings. But when they exchanged a glance at that moment, Adia could see that he was as thrilled by their new freedom as she was. She knew that her expression did not show her excitement—she had trained too long and hard to let such an emotion betray her—but her cousin would see it in her eyes just as she could see it in his.
Sarah would have.
And just like that, the excitement came crashing down.
“You take the resident halls,” she said softly. “I’ll check the common rooms.”
Vampires had the irritating ability to disappear and travel any distance in the blink of an eye. A well-trained witch of their line could disrupt that power, but to do so required touch, which meant it was normally hard to catch someone who wasn’t arrogant enough to come out and fight. They would have only one chance at this, before their target learned that the Rights of Kin were in play, so it would be best to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. This early in the morning, most of SingleEarth’s vampires were still awake and social. Adia would have been happy to wait until they were curled up asleep in bed, which most would be within the next couple of hours, but she did not want to risk waiting and having word reach their targets.
After they split up, Adia was the one who got lucky. She found Nissa in one of the art rooms, receiving instruction on stone carving from a girl who reeked of a vampiric taint. She was not a vampire, but a bloodbond to someone old, and powerful.
“Nissa?”
The vampire lifted black eyes as Adia said her name. A sad smile crossed her face, but she walked fearlessly toward Adia.
“Adianna, right?” she asked. “You’re Sarah’s sister.”
Adia nodded tightly. Unfortunately, Nissa wasn’t dumb. Adia doubted she would say anything helpful without coercion.
“And you’re … Kristopher’s sister,” Adia said. At least for a little while recently, Kristopher had pretended