The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [80]
As she drove, she found herself hoping wildly that Christopher and Nissa would tell her they were part of SingleEarth. If they were, then even Dominique could not forbid Sarah to associate with them — it would be an insult against the witches who ran that organization. Dominique would be furious at her daughter, but she couldn’t kill them, or disown Sarah.
Considering how weak they both are, they’re probably part of SingleEarth, Sarah tried to reassure herself. Please, let them be in SingleEarth.
She jumped, swerving, as a squirrel darted in front of her car. Calm down, Sarah. Focus.
Try as she might, her strict control was shattered. She had been purely scatterbrained all evening, and was grateful that she wasn’t expecting a fight tonight.
As she parked in Christopher and Nissa’s driveway, she thought she heard faint music from the house, but it might have been her imagination. Bracing herself, she knocked on the door.
CHAPTER 8
SOMEONE SARAH DID NOT KNOW opened the door. Black eyes gave him away as a vampire, but his light aura showed him to be almost as weak as Nissa.
“Come on in,” the vampire greeted her. Sarah could only nod mutely as she realized what was going on. She had just walked in on a bash.
“Thanks,” she answered, dazed. The vampire gave her a strange look, but Sarah paid no heed to him, because her attention had just been drawn to a couple seated on the couch.
A more naïve guest might assume they were making out. One pale hand was wrapped around the back of the boy’s neck, and the girl’s long hair fell around her face, blocking from view the seam between her lips and the human boy’s throat. His eyes were half closed, and one hand twined absently in the vampire’s hair, holding her to his throat.
Sarah recognized the dark hair, the slender form, and she wished she did not. Nissa.
Forcing her attention to the rest of the room, her aura brushing over the others, Sarah picked out the vampires easily. This crowd was weak, not killers — and for that she thanked every god and goddess she had ever heard of — but she did not recognize any of them from SingleEarth, either.
That meant there was some danger here for her. Even vampires who did not frequently kill would be nervous in the presence of a Vida, and entering a large group of them, barely armed and weakened by injury, seemed a bad idea.
She was about to leave, but the vampire who had opened the door was talking again. “I haven’t seen you around here before,” he said. “Who invited you?” Though his tone was not exactly suspicious, she could tell the vampire was uneasy around her. Having someone ask about her was unusual; at most of the bashes she had crashed, the vampires didn’t care who a guest was, so long as she could bleed.
“She’s with me.” Sarah turned, barely checking her instinct to draw her knife, as she sensed someone approach behind her.
The vampire who had been asking sighed. “I should have known.” He wandered off.
Christopher ran his hands through his short black hair, nervous. “Sarah … I would have invited you, but …” She could guess his thoughts. How do you explain something like this to someone you assume is human?
“You don’t have to explain,” Sarah offered in an attempt to save the vampire the unease of beginning the conversation. She could sense Christopher’s shock even through his midnight eyes.
“I don’t?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw Nissa release the human she had been feeding on. He lay back, a bit dazed, but he looked like he would be fine; if there was anything a vampire knew, it was how much blood a human could afford to lose without being harmed.
The girl looked up, and her eyes widened as she saw Sarah standing with Christopher. She wiped her lips clear of blood with the back of her hand.
“I already know what you are.” The sentence had been directed at Christopher, though