All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [9]
“Are younger sisters as much trouble as brothers?” Nissa asked, shaking her head. “If you were hoping to get in touch with Sarah, I can pass a message on for you.”
Adia winced. She couldn’t help it.
Nissa stepped forward and put a comforting hand on Adia’s shoulder. Adia resisted the instinct to pull back, instead letting her power seep subtly over Nissa’s, tangling it enough to hold her in place when she decided the wise course of action was to flee.
“I know what you’re going through,” Nissa said. “I’m sure your whole world has been turned upside down. But it gets better. I don’t approve of a lot of the choices Nikolas and Kristopher make, but they’re still my brothers, you know?”
Adia couldn’t handle too much more of this. “Do you know where I would find Sarah?”
“She and Christine are—” Nissa stopped and frowned, her body going tense. Her eyes searched Adia’s face. “Are you looking for her because she’s your sister, or because she’s your prey?”
Adia let herself look offended and innocent, eyes wide. “I just want to see her,” she said. It didn’t hurt to try, right?
Nissa looked ambivalent. “I can pass on a message, and see if she would be willing to meet you here,” she suggested.
Adia considered it. If Sarah didn’t know that the Rights were in play, she might show up, believing herself safe. On the other hand, she was smart and knew Vida law as well as Adia did. If she received such an invitation, she would wonder why Adia was extending it, and might deduce what was going on, at which point Adia would have lost her best lead.
Adia didn’t need Nissa to tell her anything, really. The twins protected their kin.
“I need you to come with me,” Adia said.
Nissa looked shocked. “You’re hunting her,” she said. “You’re really … You would really kill your own sister?”
Adia was sure she could take Nissa down in a fight, but with Zachary’s help, she could take Nissa alive. The twins would undoubtedly come to avenge her, but the hunters had more leverage if she was alive. Adia sent out a thread of power to Zachary, prompting him to come back to her, and answered Nissa’s question as a stall tactic.
“In a heartbeat,” she said, “before I let her kill anyone else.”
She was glad her voice was steady. She did believe her words but was still pleased that her voice didn’t betray that her heartbeat was rapid with fear of the moment when she would have to follow through with the promise.
“Not all of us are killers,” Nissa snapped. She wasn’t running yet only because she didn’t know she needed to. She probably thought she could convince Adia to change her mind.
“Oh?” Adia answered, letting her anger into her voice. People became more involved in emotional arguments than calm ones; she wanted Nissa’s guard down. “And what about your brothers—you know, the ones Sarah is staying with? The ones teaching her how to hunt.” Anger was a double-edged sword, of course. The emotion was real as she spat the last word. As she continued, she sensed that Zachary was circling to slip in behind Nissa from the opposite door. “In fact, what about you? You’re here at SingleEarth. I can feel how weak you are. Tell me you’ve never in your century and a half taken a human life.”
Nissa hesitated, as Adia had known she would. Adia couldn’t sense death on her, but it wasn’t possible for a vampire to live so long and never kill.
“Really,” Adia added, “please do. I would love to believe it.”
Were those words honest? She didn’t know.
Nissa yelped as Zachary reached her and grabbed her wrists. He was better with raw energy than Adia was, so she relinquished her hold over the vampire’s power.
“How can you live with yourself?” Adia asked her, wondering if there was any grain of similarity between them. Nissa was the one who had changed Nikolas into a vampire. Adia did not know the circumstances of that decision, and she didn’t care. Maybe Nissa hadn’t known what Nikolas would turn into then, but how could she do nothing now?
Defiantly, Nissa snapped, “I have my