Bloodlines

In some ways, I reflected bitterly, maybe I'd done Keith a favor. With only one eye left, maybe he wouldn't find it so "impossible" to keep it off uninterested young women in the future.

No, I certainly couldn't tell Adrian any of that, but he was still looking at me, a million questions on his face as he tried to figure out what in the world would have reduced me to hiring Abe as a hit man.

Laurel's words suddenly rang back to me. You know, you can be scary as hell sometimes.

I swallowed. "Remember when you asked me to trust you?"

"Yes..." said Adrian.

"I need you to do the same for me."

Long moments followed. I couldn't bring myself to look at Abe because I knew he'd be smirking.

"'Spunky' was kind of an understatement," Adrian said. After what felt like forever, he slowly nodded. "Okay. I do trust you, Sage. I trust that you have good reasons for the things you do."

There was no snark, no sarcasm. He was deadly earnest, and for a moment, I wondered how I could have earned his trust so intently. I had a weird flash to the moments just before Abe had arrived, when Adrian had spoken of painting me and my feelings had been a jumble.

"Thank you," I said.

"What," demanded Angeline, "are you guys talking about?"

"Nothing of interest, I assure you," said Abe, who was really enjoying this all too much. "Life lessons, character development, unpaid debts. That sort of thing."

"Unpaid?" I surprised myself by taking a step forward and fixing him with a glare. "I've paid that debt a hundred times over. I don't owe you anything anymore. My loyalty is only to the Alchemists now. Not you. We're finished."

Abe was still smiling, but he wavered slightly. I think my standing up for myself had caught him off-guard. "Well, that remains to be - ah." More knocking.

"Here's the rest of our party." He hurried to the door.

Adrian took a few steps toward me. "Not bad, Sage. I think you just scared old man Mazur."

I felt a smile of my own begin to form. "I don't know about that, but it felt kind of good."

"You should backtalk people more often," he said. We grinned at each other, and as he regarded me fondly, I felt that same queasy feeling return. He probably wasn't experiencing that exact sensation, but there was an easy, bright mood about him. Rare - and very appealing. He nodded toward where Abe was opening the door. "It's Sonya."

Spirit users could sense each other when they were close enough, even behind closed doors. And sure enough, when the door opened, Sonya Karp strode in like a queen, tall and elegant. With her red hair swept into a bun, the Moroi woman could have been Angeline's older sister. Sonya smiled at us all, though I couldn't help a shiver as I thought back to the first time I'd met her. She hadn't been nearly so pretty or charming then. She'd been red-eyed and trying to kill us.

Sonya was a Strigoi who'd been restored back to a Moroi, which really made her the ideal choice to work with Adrian on figuring out how to use spirit to prevent people from being turned.

Sonya hugged Adrian and was walking over to me when someone else appeared in the doorway. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised at who it was. After all, if we wanted to figure out what special spirit magic in Lee had stopped him from being turned again, then we needed all the data possible. And if one restored Strigoi was good, then two were better.

Adrian paled and went perfectly still as he stared at the newcomer, and in that moment, all my high hopes for him came crashing down. Earlier, I'd been certain that if Adrian could just stay away from his past and any traumatic events, he'd be able to find a purpose and steady himself. Well, it looked like his past had found him, and if this didn't qualify as a traumatic event, I didn't know what did.

Adrian's new research partner stepped through the door, and I knew the uneasy peace we'd just established in Palm Springs was about to shatter. Dimitri Belikov had arrived.