A couple more tries and she leaned back in frustration. After a minute she rapped on the wall behind her headboard. Her sister knocked back, and a little later Hannah sneaked in through the door. When she saw the game, she got excited and jumped on the bed, bouncing the pointer into the air.
"How do you play!"
"Shh!" God, if they got caught like this, they were totally grounded. Forever.
"Sorry." Hannah tucked her legs up and held on to them to keep from spazzing. "How do - "
"You ask it questions and it tells you the answers."
"What can we ask?"
"Who we're going to marry." Okay, now Jane was nervous. What if the answer wasn't Victor? "Let's start with you. Put your fingertips on the pointer, but don't push down or anything. Just - like that, yup. Okay... Who is Hannah going to marry?"
The pointer didn't move. Even after Jane repeated the question.
"It's broken," Hannah said, pulling away.
"Let me try another question. Put your hands back up." Jane took a deep breath. "Who am I going to marry?"
A squeaky little noise rose up from the board as the pointer began to move. When it came to rest on the letter V, Jane trembled. Heart in her throat, she watched it move to the letter I.
"It's Victor!" Hannah said. "It's Victor! You're going to marry Victor!"
Jane didn't bother shushing her sister. This was too good to be -
The pointer landed on the letter S. S?
"This is wrong," Jane said. "This has to be wrong - "
"Don't stop. Let's find out who it is."
But if it wasn't Victor, she didn't know. And what kind of boy had a name like Vis -
Jane fought to redirect the pointer, but it insisted on going to the letter H. Then O, U, and once more to S.
VISHOUS.
Dread coated the inside of Jane's rib cage.
"I told you it was broken," Hannah muttered. "Who's called Vishous?"
Jane looked away from the board, then let herself fall back onto her pillows. This was the worst birthday she'd ever had.
"Maybe we should try again," Hannah said. When Jane hesitated, she frowned. "Come on, I want an answer, too. It's only fair."
They put their fingers back on the pointer.
"What will I get for Christmas?" Hannah asked.
The pointer didn't move.
"Try a yes or no to get it started," Jane said, still freaked out over the word she'd been given. Maybe the board couldn't spell?
"Will I get anything for Christmas?" Hannah said.
The pointer started to squeak.
"I hope it's a horse," Hannah murmured as the pointer circled. "I should have asked that."
The pointed stopped on no.
They both stared at the thing.
Hannah's arms went around herself. "I want some presents, too."
"It's just a game," Jane said, closing the board up. "Besides, the thing really is broken. I dropped it."
"I want presents."
Jane reached out and hugged her sister. "Don't worry about the stupid board, Han. I'll always get you something for Christmas."
When Hannah left a little later, Jane got back between the sheets.
Stupid board. Stupid birthday. Stupid everything.
As she closed her eyes, she realized she'd never looked at her sister's card. She turned the light back on and picked it up off the bedside table. Inside it said, We will always hold hands! I love you! Hannah!
That answer they'd been given about Christmas was so wrong. Everyone loved Hannah and got her presents. Jeez, she could even sway their father on occasion, and no one else could do that. So of course she would get things.
Stupid board ...
After a while Jane fell asleep. She must have, because Hannah woke her.
"You okay?" Jane said, sitting up. Her sister was standing by the bed in her flannel nightie, an odd expression on her face.
"I gotta go." Hannah's voice was sad.
"To the bathroom? You gonna be sick?" Jane pushed the covers away. "I'll go with y - "
"You can't." Hannah sighed. "I gotta go."
"Well, when you're finished doing whatever, you can come back here and sleep if you wanna."
Hannah looked to the door. "I'm scared."
"Being sick is scary. But I'll always be here for you."
"I gotta go." When Hannah glanced back, she looked... all grown-up somehow. Nothing like the ten-year-old she was. "I'll try and come back. I'll do my best."
"Um... okay." Maybe her sister had a fever or something? "You want to go wake up Mother?"
Hannah shook her head. "I only want to see you. Go back to sleep."
As Hannah left, Jane sank back against her pillows. She thought about going and checking on her sister in the bathroom, but sleep claimed her before she could follow through on the impulse.
The following morning Jane woke up to the sound of heavy footfalls running outside in the hall. At first she assumed someone had dropped something that was leaving a stain on a carpet or a chair or a bedspread. But then the ambulance sirens came up the driveway.
Jane got out of bed, checked the front windows, then poked her head into the hall. Her father was speaking to someone downstairs, and the door to Hannah's room was open.
On tiptoe, Jane went down the Oriental runner, thinking that her sister wasn't usually up this early on a Saturday. She must really be sick.
She stopped in the doorway. Hannah was lying still on her bed, her eyes open at the ceiling, her skin white as the pristine snowy sheets she was on.
She wasn't blinking.
In the opposite corner of the room, as far away from Hannah as possible, their mother was sitting in the window seat, her ivory silk dressing robe pooling on the floor. "Go back to bed. Now."
Jane raced for her room. Just as she shut her door, she saw her father coming up the stairs with two men in navy blue uniforms. He was talking with authority and she heard the words congenital heart something.
Jane jumped into her bed and pulled the sheets up over her head. As she trembled in the darkness, she felt very small and very scared.
The board had been right. Hannah got no Christmas presents and married no one.
But Jane's little sister kept her promise. She did come back.
Chapter One
"I am so not feeling this cowhide."
Vishous looked up from his bank of computers. Butch O'Neal was standing in the Pit's living room with a pair of leathers on his thighs and a whole lot of you've-got-to-be-kidding-me on his puss.
"They don't fit you?" V asked his roommate.
"Not the point. No offense, but these are wicked Village People." Butch held his heavy arms out and turned in a circle, his bare chest catching the light. "I mean, come on."
"They're for fighting, not fashion."
"So are kilts, but you don't see me rocking the tartan."
"And thank God for that. You're too bowlegged to pull that shit off."
Butch assumed a bored expression. "You can bite me."
I wish, V thought.
With a wince, he went for his pouch of Turkish tobacco. As he took out some rolling paper, laid down a line, and twisted himself a cig, he did what he spent a lot of time doing: He reminded himself that Butch was happily mated to the love of his life, and that even if he weren't, the guy didn't play like that.
As V lit up and inhaled, he tried not to look at the cop and failed. Fucking peripheral vision. Always did him in.
Man, he was a perverted freak. Especially given how tight they were.
In the last nine months he'd grown closer to Butch than anyone he'd ever met in his over three hundred years of living and breathing. He'd roomed with the male, gotten drunk with him, worked out with him. Been through death and life and prophesies and doom with him. Helped bend the laws of nature to turn the guy from human to vampire, then healed him when he did his special business with the race's enemies. He'd also proposed him for membership in the Brotherhood... and stood by him when he'd been mated to his shellan.
While Butch paced around like he was trying to get comf with the leathers, V stared at the seven letters that were carved in Old English across his back: MARISSA. V had done both the As, and they'd come out well, in spite of the fact that his hand had been shaking the whole time.
"Yeah," Butch said. "I'm not sure I'm feeling these."
After their mating ceremony, V had vacated the Pit for the day so the happy couple could have their privacy. He'd gone across the compound's courtyard and shut himself up in a guest room at the big house with three bottles of Grey Goose. He'd gotten saturated drunk, real rice-paddy flooded, but hadn't been able to meet the goal of making himself pass out. The truth had kept him mercilessly awake: V was attached to his roommate in ways that complicated things and yet changed nothing at all.