Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Eighteen



When Jack stepped out of the virtual world, Blair still sat in the same chair, his back to the computer, looking completely inhuman. Pale and handsome, he appeared to be staring unblinkingly into space. He was either asleep or dead. Both, probably.

An instant later, it was worse, because his dark eyes leapt into focus on Jack, so alive with sheer hunger that Jack almost bolted back into the safety of Adam’s virtual world.

Instead, he said as calmly as he could, “You should go before daylight. Do you want a lift?”

The hungry look vanished into eerily silent laughter as Blair threw his head back in obvious mirth. Jack flushed. His offer had been stupid for many reasons, but common politeness died hard in him. After a moment, Blair met his gaze and shook his head, with at least as much courtesy as mockery in his gaze.

Consoled, Jack said, “So are you going or what?”

Blair shook his head again and passed a phone to Jack. It was his own phone, which he must have left beside Blair’s bottles at some point, and it displayed a text from Sera: “Weather better, driving down this morning. Stay with Jilly. Bringing Blair’s biking gear.”

Jack nodded, and since he had the feeling Jilly didn’t want him back too quickly, he pulled a box from the corner and sat on it, thoughtfully drinking his coffee.

It was bizarre. He could see the rest of the lab, including Jilly. Only Adam was completely absent. Although Jilly was sitting at a very peculiar angle in his chair, her arms raised, her hands gripping the air like claws.

Jack blinked. “F*ck. Is she crying?”

He leapt to his feet, glancing at Blair for confirmation. Blair only nodded, but when Jack began to stride forward, he suddenly found himself back on the box with an unpleasant bump and spilt coffee running down his sweater. Blair shook his head at him.

Jack swallowed. Adam wasn’t hurting her. This was their tender farewell. Although he turned his back like the gentleman he hoped he was, his lips twisted. “Who’d have thought it? I didn’t think Jilly could cry.”

Blair, of course, didn’t reply. Only for an instant, his eyes, which Jack always thought of as dead, betrayed a sudden storm of emotion, so profound, so all-consuming that Jack felt paralysed.

The vampire’s eyelids swept down, releasing him, but Jack felt shaken to his core. Everyone cried. Even hard-edged, tough-as-nails Jilly with the family from hell. Even Blair, who’d exist forever, an eternity without Sera. For the first time, Jack suspected Sera was more to him than the sex and snacks Jilly had accused him of wanting of her. He might not know what the vampire felt, but that he did feel and at least as deeply and intensely as anyone else, Jack could no longer doubt.

He suspected it was to be one of many revelations that day.

****



Dale rose with more optimism than he’d felt for a long time. The poltergeist, not Adam after all, but the f*cking psycho Killearn, had gone, thanks to the psychic. And at last the new system was coming together and looked as if it would be ready in time for the planned launch. On top of which, he got to pretend that nothing had changed and to chat with Adam just like the old days.

Well, not quite the old days, he acknowledged ruefully as he emerged from the shower, vigorously towelling himself dry and reaching for his clothes. But Adam, or Adam’s program, whatever or whoever was in his lab sorting out the company mess, seemed to have forgiven him for doing so little to save his life. Now Adam just had to accept that he’d forgotten about resigning and rehab and Australia. And let’s face it, as well as good to be around, Adam was useful. On the whole, given what had happened, things could not be better.

And Petra never needed to know the latest twist in events. He glanced at her, still sound asleep, her beautiful face calm and untroubled as he hadn’t seen it for months, even in slumber. Things were coming right at last.

Dale strode out of the room, ran jauntily downstairs to the kitchen. After a quick chat with Adam, he’d head into the office again, make sure everyone knew things were turning around, and okay the publicity campaign for the launch he’d reviewed yesterday. The buzz was good, expectations were high, and the new system would blow his competitors out of the water for years to come.

He’d take Petra to St. Tropez this summer. They could buy that house they’d wanted in Florida. Or LA, if Petra preferred. Retire within two years or so and finally relax and enjoy the life he’d worked so hard for.

Through the kitchen window, while he waited for his toast to pop up, Dale saw with surprise that it had snowed last night. Although it was thawing now into dirty slush all over his garden, he could see it piled high on the garage roof. He remembered a particularly amusing snowball fight with Adam and Stuart and a bunch of others when they were students. In the days when life was half fun and half ambition, before women had become more than the former and complicated everything.

Just for a few minutes, while he ate his toast and contemplated the snow, he let himself yearn for those simpler days. Now Dale owned a highly successful computer gaming company that was about to reach its greatest triumph so far; Stuart was a slightly maverick but increasingly respected neurosurgeon, and Adam was…

Dead. It was so hard to keep remembering, to keep telling himself.

“F*ck,” Dale whispered, bumping his forehead against the glass. Not just dead, but with his reputation in tatters. A tragic footnote in the history of the company that bore his name. That wasn’t fair.

But it couldn’t be undone. Dale dropped his uneaten crust on the plate and reached for his coffee. He strode out of the kitchen, whistling, trying to recapture his earlier mood of optimism. It would be easy with Adam.

Sweeping through the gracious entrance hall toward the stairs, he frowned, realizing the place looked untidy. Three pairs of boots skulked by the pristine glass of the front door. One dainty ladies’ pair of ankle boots, one large pair of green wellies, and an equally large pair of Doc Martens. Presumably the gardener had arrived with his assistant to clear the paths and driveway and they were having breakfast first with the housekeeper. Irritation rose and was squashed. Better they took their shoes off than trailed dirt and slush all through the house. And he knew the footwear would be gone from his view by the time he left for the office.

But first, to see what magical progress Adam had made with the work backlog! He felt curiously excited to see his old friend again—like meeting up again at university for a new term, or the euphoria of first setting up the company together. It was a new era, a new