Page 51 of Bent Out of Shade
13
Dinner was a silent affair.Sadie was sulky from being grounded while the rush of sympathy I’d felt for Zev since racing out of Blood Alley was messing with my appetite. I pushed my spaghetti and meat sauce around. Loath as I was to admit it, the contagion had placed Zev in a terrible position. First, he’d betrayed Tatiana to save Yoshi, then he’d forced the estrie to do his bidding to save other infected vampires, and now Ryann’s directive prohibited him from recovering his population.
Tatiana was rightly pissed off, but Kian didn’t even acknowledge that she had any responsibility toward the survival of a species that she’d helped to create. She’d displayed a narcissistic fury on a whole other level, which, worryingly, wasn’t as freaky as the way she moved. If I’d been told they modeled the scary girl from The Ring on Kian, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I toyed with my water glass. Why did she let me leave? Did I not matter since Zev was the sole target of her anger? Or was the demon seeding chaos, knowing the master vampire would come after me?
Vincenzo, Zev, even Kian. I’d like to tap into their brains and tear out their secrets so I could find Sabrina with minimal bodily harm to any of us.
The buzz of a text made me jump. Shit, Vincenzo was coming to town.
More than one desperate family had gone to the station to ask Eli if he’d caught their loved one’s killer yet, their actions sometimes bordering on harassment. As determined as I was to find Sabrina, I felt far more comfortable with several thousand kilometers and a border between me and the accident-causing fiend.
I messaged him that he should stay in Vegas until I got hold of him, but he didn’t respond, and the phone call I placed didn’t even go to voice mail.
“Damn it!” I threw my cell onto the table.
“What’s with you?” Sadie said.
“Having a bit of a day.” I forced down another two bites before pushing my plate away. “How was school?” I craved her chatter to anchor myself in the moment instead of all the torture scenarios that ran through my head should I fail to save Sabrina.
However, when I got only grunted responses, I gave up.
After Sadie cleared the dishes, I dumped soap and water on them but didn’t wash them. I didn’t even wipe down the counters.
What did housekeeping matter anyway?
Grinding my teeth against the pain rocketing along my right hip and up through my neck from all the stress, I popped a “house pill.” I’d nicknamed it that because it had the same shape as a child’s drawing of a home, but it was a heavy-duty painkiller that my doctor had prescribed several months ago for horrible menstrual cramps due to perimenopause. It knocked the pain out all right, along with my fine motor skills and proper enunciation.
Sadie had retreated to her bedroom, so I curled onto my magnificent sofa, stroking the velvet pile as a calming technique. I didn’t have the emotional or physical energy to play spy but sitting here wouldn’t accomplish anything other than feeding my fears.
I decided to attempt something less dangerous than a James Bond mission. Potentially less dangerous. I brushed my nose against the velvet couch. Differently dangerous.
Giulia couldn’t murder me for asking to borrow the ring Laurent had given her, right? It would just be a little favor.
Since I had about an hour until the house pill made me too groggy for anything other than sleeping, there was no time to waste. I checked on Sadie, who was doing homework, to tell her where I was going.
She looked up, her brown eyes clouded with worry. “Be careful.”
“Eh. How much damage can one little cat do?”
“Hmm.” She pursed her lips. “Are we talking bashing you with her stone head, ripping you open with her claws, or just crushing you? Because my money’s on the gargoyle.”
Scowling despite my desire to do a happy dance at her teasing, I chucked a hoodie at her from the pile of laundry on her chair. “You’re a brat. And put your stuff away.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She made a “run along” motion.
Figuring that Zev wouldn’t be up to attacking me tonight, and he wasn’t about to do anything to Sadie so long as their deal stood, I threw on a warm jacket and hobbled my way into the KH with one hand on my back.
Pyotr was reading to his Chinese evergreen plant, Scarlet. At my entrance, he placed a fat finger between the pages of the final Lord of the Rings book, which he’d gotten from his friend Malorie. He looked me over, commented that I was more hunched and twisted than his grandmother—and the sculptor who’d carved her had been drunk—and returned to his place in the story.
With that charming comment, I shoved a sock into a pocket and hobbled along the gloomy path until the exit appeared in the rock, then I stepped onto the downtown street in front of the condo complex on the edge of Yaletown where Giulia lived. I peered in through the wrought iron courtyard fence, but no one sat outside among the softly glowing solar lamps.
Continuing to put one foot in front of the other while in this much pain was overwhelming so I sat down on the stone fence outside the tower’s front door. I didn’t have the energy to whistle or loudly call out for her, depending on her acute hearing to respond to me saying her name.
It was cool tonight and I hunched into my coat, glad that I’d worn jeans because the cold seeped up from the stone into my butt.
“Ciao, bella.”
