The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [76]
She had steeled herself to talk to him by the time she reached her history class, only to have Mr. Smith immediately divide them into groups for a project. Her group included two humans she had not met before, and the mysterious Robert, who was not hiding his hostility any better today.
“What’s eating you?” one of their other group members demanded after he shot down yet another of their ideas. “If you don’t want to help, then just keep your mouth shut. Don’t make your bad day mine.”
By the time the class was over Sarah was glad to get away from Robert — the human had been putting out waves of contempt and distrust strong enough that they were making her stomach churn. She would need to speak to him sometime soon, but not here, not in front of other humans.
She had calmed down slightly by sculpture, where she continued to work on the sickly dog Nissa had named Splotch. Nissa finished her figure. Under her expert hands, the violinist gained clear Roman features, sympathetic eyes, and wicked, sensual lips.
“Someone you know?” Sarah asked. The face was so vivid, so alive, she felt like she should recognize it.
Nissa nodded, pausing in her work. “Yeah.” Her voice was soft, sad.
“Who is he?”
“A …” She trailed off, as if none of the words she had been thinking of would work. “Someone I used to love. His name is Kaleo.”
Sarah’s heart skipped as she heard the name. Kaleo had a reputation for ruining lives on a whim, and changing young women into vampires whom he fancied himself in love with.
If Nissa was one of Kaleo’s fledglings, Sarah had to pity the girl.
“Anyway, it’s over,” Nissa stated. “I miss him sometimes, but … it’s over.”
“Then why are you sculpting him?” The question was sharper than Sarah meant it to be.
“He is beautiful,” the girl said wistfully Then she jumped as the bell rang for lunch.
They did not speak as they cleaned up their stations, and Nissa stayed behind to talk to the teacher while Sarah swung by her locker. Inside she found another present from Christopher — a picture of her left hand, which she had been writing with since she had broken her right arm.
Her nails were cut short so they wouldn’t hinder her grip on her knife; there was a small scar on the back from the glass window she had punched the day her father had been killed. It looked like a pale teardrop.
On the back of the drawing was another poem.
Skin like ivory, perfect; A goddess, she must be.
Slender fingers, unadorned; beautiful simplicity.
A single teardrop; when did it fall?
Could this goddess be mortal, after all?
If only he knew, Sarah thought dryly. That scar was left over from the least perfect moment of her life.
Yet somehow Christopher had made the flaw beautiful, no longer a badge of her dishonor, but a mystery for an artist to unravel.
CHAPTER 6
“CHRISTOPHER … are these from you?” she asked at lunch, careful to make her tone light as she placed the two picture-poems on the table. Christopher’s eyes fell to them, and he smiled.
“Yes.”
He didn’t ask if she liked them, and he didn’t seem embarrassed.
Sarah was flattered, and somewhat surprised by Christopher’s easy confidence. Even so, her natural suspicion surfaced. “Why?”
“Because,” he answered seriously, “you make a good subject. Your hair, for one, is like a shimmering waterfall. It’s so fair that it catches the light. It makes you seem like you have a halo about you. And your eyes — they’re such a pure color, not washed out at all, deep as the ocean. And your expression … intense and yet somehow detached, as if you see more of the world than the rest of us.”
Flustered, she could think of no way to respond. Did he just say this stuff from the top of his head? Only her strict Vida control kept her from blushing.
Meanwhile Nissa entered the cafeteria. She started to sit, then glanced from the pictures, to Christopher, to Sarah. “Should I go somewhere else?”
Christopher nodded to a chair, answering easily “Sit down. We aren’t exchanging