A World of New (A Shade of Vampire, #26)

“You’re going to take me up there?” he asked, craning his neck to gaze up at the treetops.

“Yup. This is where I live.” I felt a sense of pride as I said the words. Even though I had lived in this penthouse since birth, I hadn’t lost sight of the fact that my upbringing had been extremely privileged. My parents had made a point of instilling gratitude into me and making me aware of the kind of living standards that most of the world was subjected to.

I wondered where Josh had been brought up. I wished that I knew where he had been plucked from by the hunters. Josh’s accent indicated that he was from England, but that seemed kind of an odd place to kidnap someone from when there were far closer countries to the portal IBSI had located that led to The Woodlands. Why not just find someone from the Philippines? If they had wanted to experiment on a half-blood, they could’ve easily created one from scratch. We knew for a fact that they had a stock of imprisoned supernaturals in their custody—vampires included—those they had caught causing trouble for humans, or so they claimed. My own mother had once been taken by them to one of their research centers. She had witnessed firsthand the myriad of creatures they had access to.

Drawing myself back to the present, I pushed the button in the elevator. We ascended to the veranda that lined our apartment and I pushed Josh inside. Before revealing my surprise, since he seemed so fascinated by The Shade’s tree houses, I decided to give him a little tour of our apartment first. I showed him the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, before taking him to my bedroom.

On stepping inside, I realized that, apart from Benedict and my other male relatives, this was the first time I had brought a boy in here. Now that I had, I felt painfully aware of how girly it was and frankly… juvenile. My shelves were still filled with keepsakes from my childhood, silly trinkets and plastic toys, but mostly fluffy animals. I used to collect them… when I was nine.

I was about to clarify that my constantly busy schedule had been keeping me from doing a much-needed clear-out when Josh’s lips curved in a smile. He had just laid eyes on Podgey, a stuffed elephant almost the size of my desk chair, slumped in one corner.

“What?” I asked, defensive.

He coughed. “Uh… How old are you?”

Oh, man. Here comes the humiliation…

“I’m seventeen,” I murmured.

He nodded, his smile broadening.

At least his mood had lifted, even if it was at my expense.

Time for a change of room.

I gripped the handles of his chair and backed him out of the room, even as my cheeks heated to a rosy red. “Well, while we are on the subject of age,” I said, “you really have no idea how old you are?”

There was a pause, then he said, “Eighteen.” As my eyes widened, he clarified, “I’m not sure why I believe this, since I don’t remember my eighteenth birthday. It’s just a feeling.”

“Okay… that makes sense.” When he wasn’t scowling or grimacing, he looked about eighteen to me.

I wheeled him down the corridor toward the spare bedrooms before finally reaching our destination. My pulse was racing stupidly fast as I reached for the handle and pushed the door open.

As I pushed him inside, my eyes were glued to his face. His first reaction was to frown as he gazed around at the elaborate setup I had worked hard on yesterday. And then he looked up at me, cocking his head to one side and raising a brow.

“This is… for me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, beaming. “All for you. For as long as you’re with us.”

His hands slipped to the wheels of his chair and he moved himself forward on a tour of the room. He eyed each of the apparatuses closely. He reached out a hand and grazed his fingers over two of the smallest weights. Then he looked out of the main window. It was low enough that he could comfortably see through it while seated, and it was broad enough to be able to get a breathtaking view, even when standing on the other end of the room. And we were so high up that if one blocked out the walls from one’s vision, one would almost feel like they were flying.

“Thank you, Grace,” he said. “When you said surprise, I… really didn’t expect this.”

He returned to the pair of small weights that he had touched earlier. Although they had been the lightest and smallest in the whole of the school’s gym, they weighed down his arms instantly as he picked them up. It looked like it was a legitimate effort to even bring them up to his lap.

But I did not even consider going to help him. This was his playground now. I would be here with him to make sure that he wasn’t putting himself at risk of any serious damage, but otherwise, I wanted him to feel like he was completely on his own here. Free to do whatever he wanted. His fingers tightening around the two weights, his face scrunched, but slowly, he raised them up over his head. They dropped down swiftly, but he pushed them up again and again.