Page 56 of Almost Midnight

It wasn’t all from his comment about vampire drool.

She still looked about ten or eleven years old to him, or maybe an old-looking nine, or averyyoung-looking twelve.

He couldn’t help but see things in terms of human ages, even now.

Vampires didn’t age at all, and seers aged very slowly and strangely compared to humans, with very few wrinkles and shockingly pristine teeth, which they regrew or regenerated every few decades, so maybe it was just easier to the stick to the frame of reference he understood.

Human was simple.

It was also the first aging system he’d ever known.

Plus, he’d never really watched a child seer age until now.

Still, occasionally she looked older, like now, when she appeared to be genuinely concerned about him.

The depth and sincerity of her emotions still had the power to throw him.

She adjusted her seat where she sat cross-legged on a furry, purple cushion about four feet from where Nick sat cross-legged on a furry, green cushion of identical size, shape, and furriness. Her dark hair was back to how it had looked when Nick first met her at that park in downtown Manhattan. It hung straight in that way he used to associate with Asian hair back home, and she’d dyed it ice-blue-silver at the tips, including on her bangs.

The dye almost exactly matched the color of her eyes.

Itcouldn’tmatch the depth of her eyes, or the light he could see in them, that eerie, fairy-like light that lived only in some full-blooded seers’ eyes.

But the effect was still neat.

The rest of her hair, she’d returned to its natural, raven-wing black.

The exact same color as Nick’s own hair.

The same color as her brother, Malek’s, hair.

It was too easy for Nick to see her and her brother as part of his family, for a lot of reasons. The odd biological similarities just made it a tiny bit easier.

“When did you do this?” he asked, gruff.

He leaned a little closer to gently tug her hair.

“Yesterday,” she said promptly. “Do you like it?”

When he nodded, she smiled, but the smile faded when he didn’t say anything more. Her voice grew impatient, and strangely younger-sounding than it had before. She might as well have crossed her arms, and stamped her foot.

“You could say more than that!” she said. “It took me hours!”

“It’s lovely, Tai,” he said sincerely. “It’s still my favorite way you do you hair.”

Mollified, she relaxed her shoulders and the heat in her eyes diminished. She looked him over with that scrutiny again, and chewed her lower lip.

“Did you see anything at all this time?” she asked. “Or was it like before? Just a big blank? Malek thinks you’re all blank again,” she added, a touch sourly.

Nick’s eyes shifted to the mirror directly across from him, and directly behind her.

He knew it was only a mirror on the one side, and that on the other, Malek sat inside the observation booth, possibly on yet another colored cushion. He wondered if St. Maarten sat in there with him––

“No,” a male voice said over the loudspeaker.

It sounded like he was right in the room with them.

Nick rolled his eyes. “Well, then why don’t you just come inhereand sit with us, weirdo? What possible reason is there for you to hide behind that mirror? Or are you getting off on the power-kick of viewing someone else as a lab rat for a change?”

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