Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - Shattered Mirror

“What did I do?” Christopher asked when she hesitated to explain.

“You”— are a blood-sucking leech —“didn’t do anything wrong,” Sarah answered. She took a breath to brace herself for her next words, because they would hopefully end the closest thing she had ever had to a true friendship. “But I need you to leave me alone.” Only seventeen years as Dominique Vida’s daughter kept her own pain from her voice. She couldn’t continue this double life, and Christopher would be safer knowing nothing. “I want you to stay away from me,” she continued, driving the knife home. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t come near me. Don’t even look at me.”

“If that’s how you feel,” he answered, his voice cooler than a moment ago, though she could still hear his hurt in it. She had hidden enough of her own emotions in her life to recognize that he was trying to do the same.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be—you aren’t the first to turn me down, and you probably won’t be the last.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt, Christopher.” He shrugged, turning away, as if it didn’t matter.

“It’s harder to do than one might think,” he answered bitterly.

The words gave her a moment of pain. “Christopher, turn around.” She couldn’t leave him like this, without understanding. She was trying to protect him; she did not want to hurt him.

“I’m leaving. I won’t bother you.”

“Christopher, look at me!”

He turned around, his face completely neutral except for a hint of anger behind his eyes.

“What?” His voice was cold, controlled—very different from the Christopher that Sarah had come to know. She wondered when in his life he had needed to learn how to show nothing of his thoughts, nothing of his feelings.

“It isn’t you,” she said quietly. She couldn’t stand to let him leave without telling him her reasons. “It isn’t who you are . . . and it isn’t even what you are. Well, in a way it is, but . . .” She sounded like a bumbling idiot, she knew, but the necessary words did not come easily to her. “It’s not just what you are. It’s what I am.”

Christopher started to ask a question, then paused.

“Christopher, I’m a witch. A Daughter of Macht,” she elaborated. Unlike the modern Wiccans, her kind was not human, had never been human.

“I don’t care if you’re Dominique Vida herself,” Christopher declared brazenly.

Christopher’s words caused a hysterical giggle to catch in Sarah’s throat. Her mother was the most famous—or in vampire circles, infamous—vampire hunter born in hundreds of years.

In answer, she drew the knife from her back; the moon glinted off its silver hilt. Christopher swore under his breath, and she smiled wryly. “Christopher, Dominique is my mother.”

Now he looked at her with a small amount of skepticism, which was the last thing she expected. Most vampires were far more wary of her kind. “You? But you’re . . .”

She sheathed her knife, trying to show that she meant no threat to him. “I’m what?”

“I’ve met a lot of hunters in my time, Sarah . . .” He raised a hand, gestured vaguely. “You don’t seem like the type.”

Stepping forward, she put her right hand flat-palmed against his chest and her left over his throat, pushing him back into the wall.

Shock filled Christopher’s features, but then he said, “Your knife is still on your back, and if this was a real fight, we both know I could kill you before you could reach it.”

She closed her right fist, drawing Christopher’s attention to its position above his heart, and then moved her hand to the wall.

With her mind she reached out and triggered the spring on the knife she wore on her wrist, and the blade snapped out, slicing two inches into the wood paneling of the wall.

“Don’t underestimate me, Christopher.”

“Are you going to kill me, Sarah?” he asked, but there was no fear in his voice—just an edge of anger. He was getting defensive, trying not to let his hurt show. She recognized the act; anger was much less painful to feel than the sorrow.

“I’m not going to kill you. I don’t want my family to.”

“I can take care of myself.” So fearless. Most vampires were afraid of her kind, but Christopher did not seem the least bit worried.

“Meaning what? If my mother or sister attacks you, you’ll kill her? There is no good situation here, except for you to leave me alone. I’m not right for you.”

“Sarah, I don’t care who you are,” he repeated. “I’ve taken a knife from one of your line before. I have a scar, but I’m still alive. If someone attacks me, I leave. That’s how I’ve survived for more than fifty years.”

She flinched. How had he taken a Vida knife and lived?

That question was shoved from her mind as she processed the comment about “fifty years.” According to the story Nissa had told, he was easily three times that old.

She bit back her questions, and focused on the issue at hand.

“Christopher, maybe you don’t care, but I have to.”

“You’re a teenager—it’s your job to act out against your parents. What’s the worst they could do to you?” The question was shockingly naпve.

“The worst? Christopher, you don’t understand. I am Sarah Tigress Vida, youngest Daughter of Vida. If my mother finds out I have befriended a vampire, she will disown me. I’ll lose my title, my name, my weapons, and even my magic.”

“That could be rough, but you’re strong enough to get through it,” Christopher said, still not understanding.

“I would be defenseless. I’ve killed too many of your kind before. I’ve made a lot of enemies. If I can’t fight back, I’m dead. If my line disowned me, it would be the same as them killing me.”

“That’s why you want me to leave you alone?”

She paused for only a moment. “They’ll kill you, too, if they see you with me again. Maybe you’re willing to risk that, but I’m not. I would hate myself for doing it, but I need to defend myself, so if you come near me again, I will have to act.”

For an instant, some trick of shadow combined with Sarah’s guilt made Christopher look not like a friend who had been betrayed, but like an enemy who had been wronged.

“Fine,” he answered, and now his voice was like a steel door, closing on some of the best times Sarah had ever had.

AS SOON ASChristopher was out of sight, Sarah ran from the school grounds, vaulted into the driver’s seat of her car, and put the key in the ignition. Her hands were trembling; as soon as she noticed, the movement ceased.

Sarah Tigress Vida was not perfect, but she hadn’t lost control since her father had died, and she didn’t intend to now.

But she absolutely could not face her family right now. Dominique and Adianna were the last people she wanted to see. Neither did she care to see the other vampire hunters with whom her family would be celebrating the New Year.

At nearly eleven o’clock, she pulled into the brightly lit parking lot of SingleEarth Haven. The mishmash of brilliant auras seeped out of the magically protected building—vampires, shapeshifters, witches, and humans.

She found Caryn near the door. The healer took one look at Sarah and led her to an empty room.

“Why the gloom?” Caryn asked gently, as Sarah collapsed onto the bed.

When Sarah did not answer, Caryn put a hand on her shoulder, friendly despite the fact that they had never been friends. The other witch’s aura was like a warm breeze, gentle and soothing as it brushed over Sarah’s skin.

“Sarah, what’s wrong?”

“Can I just stay here tonight? I can’t face my mother right now.” Sarah grimaced. “If I don’t come home tonight, she’s going to want to know where I’ve been. She’ll be upset if I miss the gathering, but it’s not against the law for me to be here.”