Wow. I look down at my party clothes. “I guess I’m dressed for it already.”
My mother eyes me sharply. “Did he give you that jewelry?”
“Burma rubies,” I tell her with a slow nod, my fingers pressing against the jewel on my chest.
She looks at my father. “What do you think? Is it bewitched?”
My father peers at my necklace for a moment and then gently brushes my fingers off the stone, pressing his finger on it. His eyes fall closed for a moment.
“It’s bewitched,” he says after a moment. He looks at me. “But it’s not to harm you. It’s to protect you. I just don’t know what it is exactly.”
“Then I’m keeping it on,” I tell them.
Both of them study me closely, thinking. Then my mother nods. “Okay.”
It isn’t until I’m packed and in their car, heading through the darkened city streets toward Nob Hill, that I ask them a question that has been burning at the back of my head. News about the earthquake is all over the radio, but driving through it looks like nothing major was damaged.
“If Absolon is a mercenary, that means you did an exchange. Something in return for my … for Alice and Hakan’s whereabouts. What did you end up giving him? What did he get out of it?” I pause. “Oh my god, please don’t tell me you promised him my hand in marriage.”
My mother turns from the passenger seat and gives me a severe look. “Are you kidding me? You think we would do that?”
“Then what did you promise him?”
My father kneads the steering wheel for a moment. Clears his throat. “We promised him that no slayers would ever kill him.”
My mouth drops open. “But you just tried to kill him back there!”
Silence fills the car. My mother shrugs. “Terms and conditions change.”
I sit back against the seat, surprised once again at who my parents really are. Deep down, I don’t think they’re any better than Absolon is.
And so, what does that make me?
Chapter Thirteen
They say vampires don’t sleep that much. I’m starting to think that’s one of the myths that holds true.
No matter how tired I am, I can’t drift off to sleep. My eyes keep opening, looking around the hotel room, afraid that there’s someone in here with me.
But it’s not Solon. I imagine him appearing in the room, using the Black Sunshine to get me, or perhaps just knocking at my door. But he doesn’t appear. And he’s not who I fear anymore at any rate. Oh, I’m enraged at him, for lying to me this whole time, for being involved in my real parents’ death when he pretended to be all sentimental about it. But I want to see him face-to-face so I can yell at him.
No, I’m afraid of the things my parents told me. Not so much Atlas, but other witches who mean me and my parents harm.
And then there’s Skarde. Vampire king. I know nothing about him, and yet he already terrifies me. Every time I try to picture what he looks like in my head, I keep seeing people in dark cloaks, red curtains of thread hanging from hoods and obscuring their faces. I keep thinking I’ll see them in the room, along with the slithering shadows I saw outside my apartment, in the black and white world.
Eventually I get out of bed and draw up the curtains, lean against the glass and stare at the city of lights below, the line of the coming dawn appearing on the east horizon like a golden slash against deep indigo.
I feel like I’m on top of the world here. My parents got me a room on one of the top floors, and with the hotel’s location on the hill, plus the large windows, I feel like I can reach out and touch the tip of the Transamerica Pyramid, the city breathing and living and humming below.
I stare out the windows, watching the sun come up, watching the bay come alive. My eyesight is startlingly good now, so from my perch I feel like I’m seeing things no one else gets to see.
Eventually though, I bring out my laptop. My parents told me to stay here in the hotel and to not leave, that one of them would come by this evening and that they would call throughout the day when they could.
But I’m twenty-one now. Since when do I listen to my parents?
I pull up my Facebook and send a quick message to Elle, telling her I still don’t have a phone but I’m back in town and ask if she wanted to meet for day drinking at the Top of the Mark. Drinks are my treat.
It doesn’t take long for her to get back to me. She calls me a bitch a bunch of times, so I know she’s still a bit pissed at me just ghosting her, plus is probably a bit taken aback by my choice of location. But she agrees.