Lily glanced over her shoulder. “Hi, Quinn.” A sweet smile lit pretty features framed by long, sleek, black hair.
“Hi, Lily.”
Without glancing away from the computer screen, Zack grabbed a slice of pizza out of the top box. Overlong curly red hair framed an engaging face as he wolfed down half of it in one bite and appeared to swallow it just as quickly.
“Hey, sis,” he greeted absently. Though only half siblings, they resembled one another rather markedly, except for the hair. They’d both inherited their dad’s lanky height, green eyes, wide mouth, and straight nose. But while Zack had that mass of curly red hair, her own was as blond and straight as her late mother’s. Their personalities, too, were nothing alike, which was probably why they got along so well. Zack personified laid-back serenity, while Quinn couldn’t stay still to save her life. Something had to be in motion—her mind, her body—preferably, both.
Only two things truly mattered to her. Zack and her work. In that order. She liked her job, and she was damned good at it. But if Zack gave her the slightest hint that he’d like her to follow him to California after he graduated, she’d move. Just like that.
But he wouldn’t. Zack had Lily, now, if he didn’t blow it with her. He didn’t need his sister. He’d never really needed her. Not the way she needed him.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed around a bite of pizza as some kind of bomb went off in the middle of the game. “Did you see that, Lily? Awesome.”
Quinn grabbed a slice of pizza, then turned up the volume on the television and switched the channel to the local news.
“Another person has been reported missing in downtown D.C. in a string of disappearances that has police baffled. This brings the total number reported missing in the past six weeks to twelve. This last incident is believed to have occurred near George Washington University.”
“G.W.?” Lily asked.
But when Quinn glanced at her, the girl had already returned to her game, her lack of concern mired in the youthful belief that bad things only ever happen to other people. A view Quinn had never shared. Unlike most young adults, she’d never believed her world to be a safe, secure place. Never.
Quinn finished her pizza, then carried her laptop back to her bedroom and got online. Sometime later, she heard the front door close and glanced at the time. She’d been on the computer nearly two hours. Was Zack going out or coming back? Closing her laptop, she went to find out.
She found her brother in the kitchen, his head in the fridge.
“Did you walk Lily home, Zack?”
“Uhm-hm.”
She grabbed a glass and filled it with water from the sink. “Want me to fix you something?”
“No, thanks.”
Zack and Lily, both computer science majors at George Washington, had met their freshman year and become instant friends. They’d interned together this summer at a small Silicon Valley gaming company—a company who’d offered them both jobs upon graduation. Zack had mentioned that they might be doing some testing for the company over the school year.
“Were you guys playing or testing tonight?”
“Both.”
Zack wasn’t the world’s greatest conversationalist. Nine times out of ten, she had trouble getting more than one or two words out of him, though every now and then she asked the right question, usually about gaming, and he talked her ear off.
He straightened, holding a small bottle of Gatorade. “Want one?” Her brother’s eyes crinkled at the corners, the unspoken love they felt for one another sparkling in his eyes.
She smiled. “No thanks.”
With that, he left the kitchen, his mind wholly engaged by whatever thoughts forever zinged around his head. He’d always been that way, seemingly unaware of anything around him. And yet he’d always been there for her. Always. Zack’s love was the one constant, the one absolute, in her life. And always had been.
Quinn downed her water, then poured herself a glass of wine and followed him into the living room, curling up on the sofa, utterly content to listen to Zack’s tapping at the computer keyboard as she read. She tried to give Zack some privacy when Lily was here, though she was pretty sure he’d never taken advantage of it in any way. As far as she could tell, Zack considered Lily a friend and nothing more. One of these days, he was going to wake up to the fact that his best friend was a beautiful young woman who happened to be in love with him. And when that day . . .
Quinn froze as a familiar chill skated over her skin. Her breath caught, the hair lifting on her arms. Oh, hell. She’d felt this same chill more than half a dozen times over the past few weeks. Only recently had she connected it to the visions.
She set her wineglass down so fast, it splashed onto the lamp table, then she lunged off the chair and crossed to the window with long, quick strides. But as she approached, she slowed, hesitating, her pulse kicking hard and fast. She knew what she should see, looking out the window—the dorms across the street, two dozen windows glowing with light and life, cars lining the street below. Her heart thrummed with anticipation and dread at what she would see instead.
Dammit, why does this stuff always have to happen to me?
With a quick breath, she stepped forward and lifted shaking hands to the windowpane, curving her hands around her eyes to close out the light from the room. And, just as she’d feared, she stared at an impossible sight. A line of two-story row houses, decrepit and crumbling, lit only by the moonlight falling from above, stood where the dorms should be. This street, unlike the real one, was unlit, unpaved. Uninhabited?
Three other times over the past weeks, after she’d felt that odd chill, she’d looked out the window to find this exact same scene. Why? If it weren’t for all the other strangeness in her life, she might think she was hallucinating. Or going insane.
Maybe I am.
The sound of a horse’s whinny carried over the sound of the real traffic, for the normal sounds had never died away despite the change in scenery. Her eyes widened. Maybe her imaginary street wasn’t quite so uninhabited after all. She pushed up the window and leaned forward, as close to the screen as she could get without actually pressing her nose against it.
“Zack, turn off the light and come here.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to pull them back. She’d spoken without thinking. Then again, if he saw it, too . . .
Zack never did anything quickly, but the tone of her voice must have gotten through to him because he doused the light, except for one computer monitor, and joined her a handful of seconds later.
“What?” He folded his long length and peered through the screen beside her.
Quinn swallowed. “I thought I heard a horse. Do you see one?”
His shoulder brushed hers as he turned and looked in one direction, then the other. “Nope. Probably just one of the mounted cops.” He straightened and returned to his computer.
Quinn pressed a fist against her chest and her racing heart. Just once, she’d like not to be the only freak on the planet.
The distinctive sound of a horse’s clip-clop grew louder, overlaying the true traffic sounds. And then she saw it, pulling a buggy down that empty dirt street, a dark-cloaked figure holding the reins. A moment later, incongruously, a yellow Jeep Wrangler burst onto the scene, swerving around the carriage, causing the horse to sidestep with agitation. The buggy driver shouted with anger. And then the strange sounds and sights were gone, and Quinn once more stared at the dorms and cars that were really there.
“LILY’S MISSING.”
At the sound of Zack’s frantic voice through the cell phone the next morning, Quinn leaped from her lab bench, her free hand pressing against her head. “Are you sure?” God. The disappearances!
“We were going to meet out front and walk to class together like we always do. But she never showed up. And I can’t find her.”
�
�She’s not picking up her phone?”
“No. She texted me to say she’d be here in five minutes, but that was fifteen minutes ago, and she’s not here. She’s not anywhere, Quinn. I’ve been walking around looking for her.”
“Zack.” She’d never heard him sound so frantic—she’d never heard him sound frantic at all. She scrambled to think of a logical, safe explanation for Lily’s disappearance and couldn’t come up with a single one that fit Lily’s serious, responsible nature. “Have you called her mom?” Lily lived with her parents about six blocks away.
“I don’t know her mom’s number.”
Crap. “Do you know either of her parents’ names?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Wang.”
“Zack. There have to be hundreds of Wangs in D.C.”
“I know.”
“Where are you?”
“Starbucks on Penn.”
A couple of blocks from their apartment. “Stay there. Inside. I’m on my way.”
Thirty minutes later, after handing off her work to a fellow technician, racing to her car, and flying through more nearly red lights than she cared to admit, she found Zack right where he’d said he’d be, his body rigid with tension as he paced. He looked up and saw her, the devastation in his expression lifting with relief. As if she could fix it. Oh, Zack. His T-shirt was plastered to his body, his face flushed and soaked with sweat. He loved that girl, she could see it in his eyes, even if he didn’t know it, yet. If Lily was really gone, her loss was going to slay him.
And his grief was going to slay Quinn.
She took his hand, squeezing his damp fist. “Where have you looked?”
“Around.” His eyes misted, his mouth tightening painfully. “She’s not here, Quinn.”
“We’ll find her.”
But he wasn’t buying her optimism any more than she was. The cops hadn’t found a single one of the missing people, yet. Not one.
“Do you know where she was when you last heard from her?”
“She was close. Within a block or two of our apartment.”
Quinn cocked her head at him. “Doesn’t she usually buy coffee on her way to class?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
He blinked. “Here.”
“Have you asked if they saw her?”
His face scrunched in embarrassment. “No.” He pulled out his cell phone as he walked up to the counter, stepping in front of the line and holding out his phone and, she assumed, Lily’s picture, to the barista. “I’m looking for my friend. Did she get coffee here a little while ago?”
The man peered at the picture. “Yeah. Lily, right? She ordered her usual mocha latte no-whip.”
Zack turned away, and Quinn fell into step beside him as they pushed through the morning-coffee crowd and left the shop. She squinted against the glare of the summer sun. “She went missing between here and the street in front of our apartment. It’s just two blocks, Zack.” And the chances they’d find her, after Zack had already looked, were slim to none.
Together, they walked down the busy sidewalk, dodging college kids, locals, and tourists as they searched for any sign of Lily or what might have happened to her. Quinn’s chest ached, as much for Lily as it did for Zack. His anguish, thick and palpable, hung in the steamy air.
When that familiar chill rippled over her skin, it startled her. Oh, hell. Not here. Not now.
They were nearly to the block their apartment sat on, the street where, just last night, she’d seen an old-fashioned horse and buggy. In the dark. Surely she wouldn’t see it in bright daylight.
Her pulse began to race in both anticipation and dread. What if she saw that strange scene again? What if, as always happened when she peered out the window, she suddenly couldn’t see the real world? Would she start running into people? Maybe walk in front of a car?
She grabbed Zack, curling her fingers around his upper arm.
His gaze swung to her, hope wreathing his face. “Do you see her?”
“No. I just . . . I don’t feel well.”
His brows drew down, and he pulled her hand off his arm and engulfed it in his larger one, closing his fingers tightly around hers.
Hand in hand, they crossed the street, pushing through a throng of backpacked college kids, and walked around the construction barricade that was blocking her view of her building. As they cleared the barricade, Quinn swallowed a gasp at the sight that met her gaze. Superimposed upon a small section of her apartment building, to the left of the entrance, was what appeared to be a house of some sort. Or row house. It was set back and partially illuminated as if by a spotlight, surrounded by shadows. A crumbling, haunted-looking house that wasn’t really there.
Holy shit. She pulled up short.
“You see something.”
Zack’s words barely registered, and she answered without thinking. “Yes.”
“What?”
His excitement penetrated her focus. “I’m not sure.” But she started forward, her gaze remaining glued on that impossible sight. The shadows fully blocked the sidewalk, extending almost to the street, as if the vision were three-dimensional, as if a slice had been cut from another world, a square column, and dropped into the middle of hers. But the house didn’t appear to actually stand within that column. In fact, the column didn’t appear to quite reach the front of her apartment building at all. It was as if the shadows acted as a window into the world where the house sat, alone and abandoned.
She frowned, trying to make sense of it. Why, when the scene appeared at night, was she able to see what appeared to be the entire landscape of . . . what? Was it another world? Another time? No, it couldn’t be another time. Not with a Jeep Wrangler racing across the landscape.
Why could she see it when no one else could? And, clearly, no one else could. People were walking right through those shadows as if they weren’t there.
She had no intention of doing the same. With her luck, her face and hair would turn purple.
Zack squeezed her hand. “What do you see, Quinn? Something to do with Lily?”
“I’m not sure. Probably not,” she replied out of habit, not about to admit to her weirdness. If Zack knew about it, he’d never said a word. And if he didn’t, if he’d remained happily clueless all these years, well, there was no need for him to find out now. “Just give me a moment, Zack.” She let go of his hand. “Wait here.”
Quinn eased forward, dodging a couple of college kids as she neared that strange column of spotlight and shadows. It wasn’t a spotlight, she realized, but sunlight illuminating the front stoop of a house that stood only about twelve feet away. Mold and mud splattered the ancient brick; glass, long since broken, left gaping holes for windows; and the front door hung askew, dangling on one hinge. On that door, a tarnished lion’s-head doorknocker sat cockeyed and snarling at unwary visitors. Visitors long gone.
It looked so real.
The column itself was only about six feet wide, yet the house sat farther back than those six feet. To either side of the spotlighted front stoop, shadows and darkness lingered, like a nightscape cut by a beacon of sunlight. Yet people continued to flow through that shadowy column, oblivious. Unaffected.
“Lily’s pen.”
Quinn hadn’t even realized Zack had followed her until she saw him reach for the bright green ballpoint pen lying on the sidewalk just inside the shadows.
“Zack, no.”
Instinctively, she grabbed his bare forearm just as his arm . . . and her clutching hand . . . dipped into the shadows. Energy leaped at her through the hand that held him, attacking her with an electrical shock that raced over her body like crawling ants, shooting every hair on her arms and head straight up.
Her breath caught, her eyes widened. Her brain screamed, Let go of him! But her fingers couldn’t react in time, and, suddenly, they were both flyi
ng forward.
Into nothingness.
An Excerpt from
A KISS OF BLOOD
by Pamela Palmer
FOUR MORE DAYS until Quinn Lennox’s life, as she knew it, was over.
Quinn paced the lamplit living room of her apartment on the George Washington University . . . GW . . . campus, releasing her blond hair from its ponytail with restless fingers, then refastening it into a casual knot at the back of her neck. In truth, her normal life, if her life had ever been normal, had ended a month ago, when she and her brother Zack stumbled through a crack in the world and found themselves fighting for their lives in the dark vampire otherworld that, impossibly, shared physical space with much of Washington, D.C., and had for 140 years.
Washington, V.C., the vampires called it. Vamp City.
God help her, how was it possible there were vampires and werewolves and sorcerers?
She picked up her water glass, took a quick sip, then set it back down and continued to pace. Always restless, the past week and a half she’d been positively crawling out of her skin. Because two things were going to happen on the equinox in four days.
She hoped.
One: The immortal son of the sorcerer who’d created Vamp City would renew the crumbling magic, curing Zack of the illness he’d developed.
And two: The vampires, now trapped by the magic’s failure, would once more be free to come and go from the real world as they pleased. Which meant the vampire master and sadistic monster, Cristoff, would send his goons after her. She’d escaped him twice now, and she had no doubt he wanted nothing more than to make her pay.
If she could flee now, she would. Hell, she’d have left a week and a half ago, when the vampire Arturo Mazza first freed her and Zack. The trouble was, he’d warned that the two of them could possibly have become affected by the failing magic and should remain close until the magic was renewed. For once, he’d told her the truth.
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