The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [81]
“Why don’t we go upstairs for a minute?” Christopher suggested, looking from his sister to his unexpected guest. Nissa nodded.
“That sounds good,” Sarah answered. Christopher led the way and Sarah saw Nissa quickly snatch a mint from a table next to the couch before the wall cut her off from view.
A few moments later, the three gathered in Nissa’s room, which was not open to guests. Sarah hesitated in the doorway as Nissa and Christopher made themselves comfortable.
The room was surprisingly normal. While Sarah had known better than to expect a coffin, bats, and bricked-over windows, it was still surprising to see the scattering of schoolbooks that littered the desk. A composition book had been tossed casually in a corner amidst a flurry of crumpled paper and pens, and the pastel blue walls were decorated with posters from musicals like Rent, Les Misérables, and West Side Story.
“Well, then,” Nissa breathed, and Sarah caught the scent of mint barely disguising the reek of fresh blood.
Sarah meant to speak instantly, telling them who she was, but Christopher forestalled it, asking hesitantly, “Are you part of SingleEarth? Or …”
She barely managed not to laugh at that question. Sarah Vida, a member of SingleEarth? Oh, Dominique would have a heart attack at the very suggestion.
Nevertheless, she was here, talking with two vampires, two friends who just happened to be bloodsucking fiends.
She was flattered at least that he thought of SingleEarth before the alternatives. He still thought she was human, and if she was tolerant of his kind, then it stood to reason that she was either part of SingleEarth, or one of those pathetic creatures who chased after the vampires in order to have her blood taken.
“No, I’m not,” she said slowly, trying to decide how best to tell the truth. She would rather have been somewhere else, anywhere but in the middle of a house full of vampires she did not know and whose behavior she could not predict. “I didn’t know you had a circuit,” she stalled.
“It’s Nissa’s,” Christopher answered, nodding to his sister. “She hosts. I just hang out.”
The vampire bashes that Sarah frequently crashed followed a pattern. The members of each party circuit alternated hosting, so as to keep the hunters guessing where the next one would be. All that Sarah had attended had been violent, deadly for any humans who attended, but she had heard about ones like this, where the human guests were simply that — guests, not a main course. They donated blood occasionally but not at risk to their lives.
“Do you go to bashes often?” Nissa asked from her perch on the bed.
“When I can,” Sarah answered truthfully wondering how — and if — she should ease into the topic she had come to discuss. The presence of several unknown vampires downstairs made her a little hesitant to reveal herself.
Christopher flinched, worry in his eyes. “Not all of them are as safe as Nissa’s group.”
“I know.”
“The worst is Kendra’s circuit,” Nissa warned. “If you stumble on one of theirs, they’ll probably kill you without a thought.” Softly, she added, “That’s the one Kaleo travels in.” The name seemed to strike a chord in both vampires, and Sarah remembered Nissa’s sculpture of the leech.
Stop stalling, Sarah, she ordered herself, even as she commented, “You were telling me about Kaleo in sculpture.”
“Kaleo … was the one who changed me,” Nissa said hesitantly She glanced at her brother, who just shrugged.
“If you want to tell it, it’s your story,” he pointed out.
“We grew up in the South, just before the Civil War,” Nissa began softly. “Our father worked at a nearby plantation and I took care of the owner’s two daughters, while my brothes worked as stable hands for one of the other wealthy families. We weren’t rich, but we were happy. My mother died when Christopher and his twin brother were both very young, and I more or less raised them.”
With a sigh, she continued, “We were an artistic family. I was the singer, though both of my brothers had