When six a.m. arrived and sleep finally started to steal away her alertness, Sabrina felt for her cell phone and thumbed out an email to Cory Morse and her assistant. She couldn’t go into work in this state. She’d be useless. She’d worry about the consequences later. Right now, she could barely think above the simple function of putting words together to form a coherent sentence.
Emails sent, she closed her eyes, shoved the cell phone under her pillow and finally, finally, slept.
* * * * *
Even their narrow, primarily residential Soho street was busy on a weekday, with delivery trucks, workers heading for work and mothers taking children to school. The sun climbed higher and beamed almost directly into the room, making Sabrina hot and uncomfortable. She glanced at the clock. Nearly eleven.
With a groan, she pulled herself from the bed and threw on her wrapper and headed to the kitchen. Coffee was most definitely the first priority.
Jake and Nyanther were sitting at the tiny table, talking in low voices.
Sabrina paused at the doorway into the kitchen, surprised.
Jake put down his coffee cup. “I just made a fresh pot,” he told her.
“You’re not surprised to see me here.” She moved into the kitchen and glanced over her shoulder as she opened the pantry doors to survey the contents for a meal idea. “Did you smell me again, Nyanther?”
“I heard you,” he corrected in his deep voice. “You tossed and turned all night. Then you didn’t get up to go to work.”
“Ny said you were waking again and I desperately wanted coffee anyway, so….” Jake shrugged.
She wanted to be annoyed that Nyanther was able to glean so much personal information about her, that her privacy was a joke when he was around, except the powerful aroma of fresh coffee and their thoughtfulness was hard to ignore. “Thank you for the coffee,” she said at last. “No day job for you today, Jake?”
“We didn’t get in until late.”
“She knows,” Nyanther said, his voice rumbling.
Sabrina closed the cupboards and settled for pouring coffee, instead. She wanted coffee more than she wanted food. She could think about breakfast while she was drinking it.
Then she heard a soft baby sound from the floor above and her chest squeezed. “Chloe is up. I’m going to go and say hello,” she told them and picked up the mug. Then she got the hell out of the kitchen before she said anything more.
The fact was, she didn’t know what to say to either of them. The simplest comment, an innocuous observation that Jake hadn’t gone into the office, provoked odd responses that reminded her yet again that Nyanther was not human and Jake was a part of his world, not hers.
She had plans. Ambitions only a normal human could have and they were good dreams. Even Nyanther had said so. She hadn’t survived the last thirty years of her life just to give up on everything she had worked for.
She refused to.
Sabrina climbed the stairs to the next floor carefully, so she didn’t spill any coffee. She had learned the hard way the iron stairs became as slippery as ice if liquid was spilled on them, despite the tread pattern stamped into each step.
Riley was sitting on the baby blanket with Chloe, talking and playing with her. She smiled at Sabrina as she sat on the sofa next to them. “You look tired,” she told her.
“So do you. I think we’re both operating on about four hours of sleep right now. How did the hunt go?”
“Are you asking to be polite, or do you really want to know?”
Sabrina blinked, surprised at the question…and her answer. “I really want to know,” she said honestly. “Until Saturday, I don’t think I really understood what the gargoyles were. Nick and Nyanther…they’ve really been hunting them all their lives?”
“Pretty much,” Riley said. She resettled herself so her knee was behind Chloe, who was sitting most of the time but still had moments when her balance deserted her. Riley’s change of position put her in front of Sabrina, so she could look at her more directly. “The hunting was a bust,” she added.
“Sorry.”
Riley shrugged. “It happens. The gargoyles know we quarter an area straight after we’ve found one of them, so they usually relocate immediately afterward and we have to go back to waiting for them to screw up, which tells us where they are.”
“I thought you tracked them? Isn’t that what you do?” Sabrina was puzzled.
“Outside the cities we can track them if we know where to start. They can fly…well, they glide, but they’re very efficient at it. Enough to cross oceans when they need to, but they usually glide over land where the thermals are. It can take them a long way away from northern New York.”
“Then why do they keep coming back here?” Sabrina asked. She knew enough of Riley’s history to know the gargoyles had returned here several times. “Are they…do they feel emotions? Are they coming back for revenge or something like that?”
“Rage defines them,” Riley said, rubbing Chloe’s tummy as she gurgled and whacked the stuffie in her hand against the floor, to make it squeak. “You heard Nyanther on Saturday. The gargoyles became what they are now because of resentment. Because they wanted more. More strength, more land, more power.”
Sabrina nodded. “So they come back here because of you.”
“Me, my family and Nick. Nick is their nemesis. He killed the last of the clan in the 1870s and again, thirty years ago. Now he’s doing his level best to kill them all over again. They know as well as we do that with Azazel gone, this will be the last time.”
“So they’re pissed off and desperate,” Sabrina concluded. “Yeah, I’d probably come back to shit on the guy who did that to me, too.”
“Spoken in true Sabrina style,” Riley said, grinning. “How come you’re not at work?”
“Everyone coming back last night woke me. Then my brain kicked into high gear and that was me done for the night.” She sipped the coffee, trying to make it look casual, even though her heart had jumped again as she remembered what her brain had been obsessing over last night.
At least Riley couldn’t hear her heart or smell her reactions the way Nyanther could.
Riley tilted her head. “Got a touch of the envies, Sabrina?” she asked softly.
Sabrina drew in a breath very slowly, trying to hide her reaction to Riley’s near-miss guess. “Nope,” she said flatly.
“Jake was with you before he was with Nyanther…and Nyanther would have been willing to take Jake’s place, if you’d let him.”
Sabrina sighed. “Nick and Damian told you, didn’t they? It’s just unfair the way they sense everything.”
Riley shrugged. “I told you, I’ve given up resenting the complete lack of privacy one gets, living with vampires. They’re never malicious about it. They told me when it was clear Nyanther was actually with Jake. They were worried about you.”
“Nick and Damian? They were worried about me?”
“You think they shouldn’t be?” Riley asked curiously.
“Honestly, Riley? I sometimes think Nick has forgotten I exist. He rarely speaks to me directly.”
“Because he knows you don’t like being reminded of the hunting world and the supernatural and he is both.”
Sabrina gripped her mug harder. “Why is everyone reminding me of that lately?” she muttered.
“Of what?” Riley looked puzzled.
“It’s like everyone is tiptoeing around me, making allowances for what you make sound like a dysfunction.”
“They’re being kind,” Riley said flatly. “As much as they can be, anyway. I know you don’t want to hear this, Sabrina, but you’re a part of the hunting world whether you like it or not. It’s my fault, because I was actually born into this world. I just didn’t know it. It’s also your fault, because you could have walked away from all of it and lived a purely human life.”
“I couldn’t leave Chloe. Not completely,” Sabrina said stiffly. “Especially not now.”
“Why not now?�
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“It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly. “I’m not a hunter. I never will be.”
“It doesn’t mean you can’t be part of this world. Look at Damian.”
“He’s a vampire. He’s part of the hunting world whether he picks up his sword or not,” Sabrina said.
“So what is it about supernaturals and hunting you really object to, then?” Riley asked, with a touch of asperity. “Because you’re not one of those people who think anything not human or natural is demon-seed and should be cast out with brimstone and fire.”
“What do you care? You have Chloe.”
Riley’s lips parted in surprise.
Sabrina tried to claw it back. “I mean…it’s not what I meant to say. At all. I’m sorry.” She was making it worse, so she gripped the mug and stayed silent. She considered getting up and going back downstairs, only Nyanther and Jake were there, with their uncomfortable observations about her.
Riley had always been good company…until now.
Riley patted Chloe’s back and resettled her on the blanket as she reached too far and almost fell over. She put the stuffie back into Chloe’s hands, studying Sabrina as she did it.
“What’s happened?” Riley asked softly. “I thought nothing mattered to you except financial independence and success, so you could tell the world to fuck off?”
Sabrina winced. Their long cherished ambitions had always been to rise above the scars of being a foster child, the woeful start in life it had given them and become raging successes at whatever they wanted, despite everything. Nights spent drinking too much and talking had always revolved around this shared ambition and the bitter memories that drove it.
“You wanted it, too,” Sabrina reminded Riley. “Until you found Nick and Damian.”
“I’m still telling the world to fuck off,” Riley said sharply. “I’m just not doing it the way we thought we had to. Neither of us knew there were other ways, ‘brina, but there is. You can choose what you want and go for it, no matter what it is you choose. I don’t want the corner office anymore. I probably never did, not really. I wanted what it would give me and so do you.”
Sabrina swallowed. “I want the office,” she said stiffly. “I want the power.”
“Do you?” Riley asked gently. “Or do you want the money and respect that comes with it? The love that might come out of it?”
Sabrina shook her head. “No. Love isn’t…that’s not a part of my plans.” Not anymore.
Riley’s eyes glistened. “How could you not want love?” she whispered.
“What man is going to love me, when I can’t give him children?”
Riley looked bewildered. Then horrified. “The appendicitis….” she breathed.
Sabrina nodded.
Riley’s tears fell, rolling down her cheeks with poetic loveliness. Even crying, Riley was beautiful.
Sabrina sighed. “Don’t. Please don’t,” she begged.
“I didn’t know…” Riley whispered. “Oh, Sabrina, I’m so sorry….”
Sabrina closed her eyes and shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have told you. I didn’t want to upset you.”
“Not being able to have children…it doesn’t mean you can’t find love. Look at me.”
Sabrina swallowed. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go,” she said thickly. “God, Riley, we used to talk about this all the time. The corner office, the great career and the absolutely essential businessman husband, the two kids, the big house in the Hamptons. The clothes, the travel….” And as she said it, Sabrina thought of Jake Summerfield, who lived the life.
Riley looked down at her knees and Chloe balanced between them. She was wearing jeans, as she nearly always did these days, boots and a loose sweater. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders and if she was wearing makeup at all, it was so subtle even Sabrina couldn’t see it.
“They’re designer jeans,” Riley said, with a little note of protest in her voice.
Sabrina didn’t know where the humor came from, but she found herself suddenly laughing. Riley smiled, too, making her dimples show.
It healed the little crack that had suddenly appeared between them and Sabrina was glad. She still needed to explain it to Riley, though, because it was important her one true and greatest friend, her sister-by-choice, understand this much about her. “Seriously, Riley. The sort of man who lives the life I want…he’s the sort of man who considers marriage to be part of the mergers and acquisitions portfolio. A suitable wife to adorn his arm and provide the heirs to his kingdom. What man would want me, who can’t give him children?”
Riley sobered. She considered Sabrina for a moment. “Would you really want to love a man who thinks like that?” she asked softly.
“In all the years we talked about this stuff, neither of us pretended love would be part of it,” Sabrina said, just as gently. “You’ve only started talking about it since you fell in love.” She tried to smile. “In typical Riley fashion, you went all out and fell in love with two men at the same time.”
Riley gave a small smile of her own. “And they’re not even men, by normal standards,” she added. “That’s just the point. You can have love and you can have the life you want, too. It just might not look like the life you keep thinking it should be.”
“Well, I’m not in love and there are no suitable candidates on the horizon,” Sabrina said, getting to her feet. “So for now, I’m hanging on to what I’ve always wanted.”
“Even if it isn’t what you want now?”
“It is what I want,” Sabrina said quickly.
“Well, okay, then,” Riley replied.
Sabrina climbed back down to the apartment, frowning. That I know better, I’m just not arguing with you about it furrow between Riley’s brows—Sabrina knew it from many years of their equally strong stubborn streaks colliding. They’d learned to work around each other and that was Riley’s strategy—step away and wait it out, until she was proved right.
Except she wasn’t right this time. She couldn’t be, because if she was right, then that left Sabrina with more than a decade of hard work and nothing to show for it…and that was where her stubborn streak kicked in. No way was she going to blow ten years’ worth of dreaming and wishing and working her ass off.
No fucking way.
Chapter Thirteen
It seemed that boys were fascinated by toys, no matter what world they lived in, Sabrina realized.
Once everyone in the two apartments was awake, dressed and functioning with or without caffeine, Damian served up a late lunch—two huge trays of sandwiches and subs, deli cuts, cheeses, fruit and veggies. All of it was finger food and all of it was served on the flat top of the ancient old gramophone against the wall next to the windows, because the table was taken up by bags of gear, equipment and an array of weapons that would have gotten everyone in the room instantly arrested, if a cop had seen it.
Riley and Talia were both hunters, yet they sat on the sofa while Sabrina sat in the armchair and Chloe lay on her blanket on the floor between them. The men all gathered around the table, pawing through and examining Jake’s gadgets and gear. Jake explained the various functions of the netting and fold-away knives, the anti-venom spray and more.
Sabrina only half-listened. She wondered if anyone else in the room realized the toys were all the products of advanced research and tech development, the sort of stuff that came out of experimental labs. It was the sort of weaponry for which governments paid billions to take off the market, so no other country except them could acquire it.
Sabrina had supervised the financing of such deals more than once. It seemed odd to see such products put to such strange uses. Jake had applied some very lateral thinking to skew the end-product to this highly specialized application.
Talia was glancing over now and then. Mostly, she concentrated on eating the enormous amount of food on her plate.
“You don’t want to check out the weapons, too?” Sabrina asked her.
Talia shrugged. “There’s no point.”
“They could help you hunt the gargoyles.”
Talia’s smile was sour. “It’s not like we could ever afford to buy that sort of shit.”
“A sword edge does the job, anyway,” Riley added.
Talia nodded. “Exactly.” She glanced at Sabrina. “Look at you. You’re earning lots, got the nice clothes and stuff that goes with it, yet you spend all your time on the job. You’re probably feeling guilty because you’re not there right now.”
Sabrina pressed her lips together. She was fighting off nagging sensations of guilt and worry about not being at the office.
“We can’t work the sort of job that brings in the money to buy things like that,” Talia said, glancing at the table. “We have to stay fluid. It’s not like demons clock off at five like you do.”
Sabrina shook her head. “Nine to five isn’t the only way to make money.”
Talia laughed. “No, there’s swing shift and graveyard shift, too. A woman’s gotta sleep sometime.”
“No, I mean there are ways to make money that don’t involve any sort of job where someone pays you to do their work for them,” Sabrina said patiently.
Talia just stared at her.
“She’s talking about passive income,” Jake said, from his place at the corner of the table.
“Passive income?” Talia repeated.
Miguel was holding one of Jake’s fold-away knives in his hand, up in mid-air like he had forgotten it was there. He was looking at Jake, too. “Passive sounds a lot like not working, amigo,” he said carefully.
“That’s exactly what it means,” Sabrina said, lifting her voice so Miguel and Jake could hear her, too.
“It’s not something that would work for hunters,” Nick said sharply. “There are no products they could use to generate the income.”
“It just means they haven’t developed them yet,” Jake pointed out.
Sabrina’s gaze fell on the two duffel bags sitting on the table between the vampires and hunters and the devices and tools they were pulling out of them.
“Look at the knife in Miguel’s hand,” she said. “Someone did all the R&D on that and will earn royalties for life when it goes into production.”
Sabrina's Clan Page 13
