Edge of Twilight

“Should I call the airlines for you, Amber?” Susan asked.

“No, I.I think I’ll drive. It’ll give me time to … process all this.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” Alicia got to her feet. “Are you guys all right?”

“We’re dealing with it as best we can,” Angelica said. “It’s not easy on any of us. But Eric’s refusing to give up hope, and maybe there’s some chance he’s right.”

“But you don’t really think so, do you?” Amber asked.

Her mother lowered her eyes, but Amber heard the hopelessness in her heart.

Alicia said, “Amber, let’s get back. I’ll help you pack, maybe even make you a few snacks for the road, huh?”

Smiling her thanks, Amber nodded. She got to her feet, let her father hug her hard. “When you go out there, Amber, forget your own pain. Think of easing theirs.”

“I will.”

“I know you will.”

Edge was staked out in the shadows outside the kitschy little New Age-slash-magic shop in one of Rochester, New York’s suburbs, a town called Irondequoit. The sign in the window read Pandora’s Box, and included a stylized drawing of a treasure chest with its lid open and purple sparkles spiraling from within. The apartment where Amber Lily Bryant lived with her mortal roommate Alicia Jennings was on the second floor, and his research showed the two were joint owners of the shop, which they’d purchased from its former owners two years ago.

Why the Child of Promise was sharing an apartment and a business with a mortal, rather than living under the constant protection of a dozen vampiric bodyguards, he couldn’t begin to guess. None of the vampires he’d questioned in order to track her down had offered a reason. The information he’d been able to glean had been piecemeal at best, but he’d been persistent, nosy, less than ethical, and he’d picked up the occasional unguarded thought. Taken together, the pieces had led him here … where she lived in an ordinary apartment with an ordinary mortal girl. She must be the most sought after prize of every vampire hunter in existence—and he had heard of many, besides the rogue DPI agent Frank Stiles. And yet she lived like a mortal. Unprotected.

If she had guardians, he thought, they ought to be taken out and beaten.

There had been no one at home when he’d first arrived, but the two woman returned around 2:30 a.m. in a car that made his mouth water even more than the red Corvette in the garage had done. A black Ferrari. Not that he would trade his ‘69 Mustang for anything in the world, but hell, a man could look.

They pulled into the driveway, but not into the two-car garage that was attached to the rear portion of the shop.

He took great pains to mask his presence from the Child of Promise, to shield his mind, his thoughts, his very existence, from her. He had no idea what powers she might possess, whether she had the ability to detect his presence or not, so he was taking precautions.

Not that she would have noticed him anyway, he realized once he took in her state. She got out of the car, took two unsteady steps toward the two-story building where she lived, and then stopped, braced one arm on the brick wall and lowered her head. Her hair was long, perfectly straight, and so dark he’d thought it black at first. But it wasn’t. It was the darkest shade of auburn imaginable, deep shades of burgundy that gleamed in the glow of the streetlights. If pressed, he would describe her hair as black satin, rinsed in blood. It hung forward, so he couldn’t see her face. But he could feel her—sense her, the way he could sense any other living creature. She didn’t feel like a mortal, but not quite like a vampire, either. There was an electric energy about her, a static charge that made his skin prickle, his groin tighten and the fine hairs on his arms stand erect.

She made a sound, a sob that caught in her throat, and he realized she was crying.

Edge took an instinctive step closer, jerking into motion like a kneecap tapped by a doctor’s mallet, before stopping himself. He dismissed the gut reaction, covering it with his more characteristic sarcasm. Just what he needed, he told himself. More blubbering females. What the hell was wrong with this one?

The other one was beside her a second later, and then the two hugged each other fiercely, both of them sobbing. The other girl was clearly the mortal one. She had short hair, as blond as his own. It would be curly if allowed to grow long, but in its present state it shot out in all directions in a stylized mess that looked good on her. She was attractive. She smelled faintly of magic. He thought she’d been doing more than stocking the shelves and managing the register in that shop of hers. She’d been studying, experimenting a bit, and keeping it to herself, he thought.

“I can’t wait until morning, Alicia,” Amber said, when she could control her sobbing enough to speak. “I need to leave sooner. As soon as I can get ready.” She sniffled, wiping her eyes and stepping out of the other woman’s arms. “I didn’t see any sense in giving Mom a reason to object.”

“And she would have. She’s trying, Amber, but she can’t help but be overprotective. Throw a few things in a bag, hon. I’ll go online and get the directions while you pack.”

Amber nodded, and the two went up the exterior stairs to the second floor apartment, arm in arm, locking the door behind them.

Not that a locked door had ever been a problem for Edge.

2

Edge couldn’t take his eyes off the woman, and she was that, a woman, not a girl, and not a child—of promise or anything else. Twice, she stopped what she was doing, went very stiff and alert. She felt his presence, despite all his efforts to conceal it. She felt his eyes on her.

He leaned against the bricks on the little balcony outside her bedroom, watching her through the sheer black curtains as she packed clothing into a suitcase. Every now and then she would pause as grief swept over her. He could feel it. She wasn’t shielding herself tonight—either because she thought there was no one around who could read her, or because she didn’t care. He rather thought it was the latter. He wasn’t certain what had happened to her tonight; he thought perhaps someone had died. It was that kind of grief. And yet, there was something else lying beneath it. Something she was struggling to ignore. A kind of stubborn denial. A streak of rebellion he recognized. A fighter looking for a fight.

It was buried under all that grief, but it was there. He would know it anywhere.

As she moved around her bedroom, adding items to her suitcase, he was finally able to see her face. She had these huge, deep, wide-set eyes, oval and thickly fringed. They were stunning, her eyes—such a dark shade of blue he’d thought at first they were ebony. The rest of her face was beautiful, pale and delicate and finely boned. He’d never been overly fond of beautiful women. Wouldn’t have given this one a second look—if he’d had any choice in the matter. But it didn’t seem as if his mind or body were obeying his personal preferences here. She drew him on so many levels his head was spinning.

It must be one of her powers, he decided.

He turned away. But he had to watch her, had to figure out what she was doing, how he could best get her to tell him what he needed to know. So he looked back again, just in time to see her glancing out her bedroom door into the hall, before closing the door and locking it. She was trying to be quiet, acting … sneaky.

Frowning, he watched, riveted.

She climbed up onto a chair and, reaching above her head, pushed one of the ceiling panels upward. Now this was interesting. Reaching into the opening, she tugged out a large file box, one of those cardboard numbers for storing documents and file folders. Edge moved closer to the glass, riveted as she climbed down, set the box on her bed and removed the lid. Her lips pursed, she tugged something out of it: a black three-ring binder, with a white label on its spine.

Squinting until his eyes watered, Edge focused on that spine and eventually managed to read the words on its label.

X-1: Volume A.

“X-1,” he whispered. It was Stiles’s name for her. Then those binders—the box was full of them—had to be his notes. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “She’s got everything he learned about her—all of it, right there.”

And maybe the answers Edge needed. The key to Stiles’s vulnerability.

She skimmed pages for a while, and Edge slipped inside her mind, trying to listen in. Her parents thought these notebooks were still locked in the safe at their home, he heard her thinking. She felt a little guilty about that. Someone called Eric had made copies of everything and taken them to his lab, while the originals had been secured in the house at Irondequoit Bay. Only they weren’t. They were here, hidden in her bedroom. He couldn’t get deep enough to read through her eyes, to see what she was seeing—but he felt her frustration before she slammed the book closed.

Whatever she was looking for, she wasn’t finding it.

She dragged another suitcase from underneath her bed, slung it onto the mattress and opened it. Then she piled the notebooks into it, lining them up carefully, side by side, then adding a second layer, narrow front to wider spine. Finally she laid a few articles of clothing over the top and then zipped the bag. She put the empty cardboard box under her bed, double-checked the ceiling panel to be sure it was in place, and then unlocked and opened her bedroom door.

“I’m about ready,” she called, snagging the two suitcases from the bed and heading into the hallway.

Edge left his post then, jumping to the ground, and creeping around to the front of the apartment again, where she’d left her car. The trunk popped open before she even exited the house. Remote control, he guessed. Then she was hurrying from the apartment, with her friend on her heels. She slung the cases easily into the trunk and slammed it, then went to the driver’s door.

The blonde handed her a sheaf of papers and a grocery bag. “Here are your directions. And a few snacks for the road.”

Amber Lily—God, the name was ill suited to her, Edge thought. She was more vibrant than amber and far tougher than any fragile lily. At any rate, she took the bag and peered inside. Then the other one took it back from her, opened the passenger door and set it on the seat. She laid the sheets of paper on the dashboard and turned to Amber again. “I love you, you know.”

“I know. And I know why you’re not going with me.”

“Do you?”

Amber nodded. “I do. And I’m grateful. You’re right, Alicia. I need to go alone.”

“I’ll come later. Give you a few days to be alone with Will.”

Who the hell was Will? Edge wondered. And he wondered it with a passion that surprised him.

“I don’t know how alone I’ll be. Aunt Rhi’s there. And don’t forget ‘Fina. I’ll be lucky if she lets him out of her sight.”