She drapes her arms around my neck. “Yeah.Allof them.”
40
Dexter
We shower and dress,and I don’t fail to note the looks of shock on Garrett’s and Amber’s faces when we walk into the kitchen.
“Holy…dude!” He stands and slowly paces over to me, circling me. “Youdorealize it’s daytime, right?”
Amber giggles and throws herself at me for a hug, then Eilidh. “It worked!”
“Yeah, it did,” Eilidh says. “My dad and Zeuzehn were right. Where are they?”
“They’ll be back soon,” Amber says. “Your dad is down in his lab, and Zeuzehn ran to the market.”
Garrett’s still staring at me in shock and reaches out, poking my shoulder.
Normally, that might offend me, but not today.
Nothing can shake my good mood today.
I grin. “You thinkthat’scool? Checkthisout.” I walk over to the kitchen door, open the shutter covering the window, and, after testing it against my arm first, I stand in the sunlight spilling through, closing my eyes against the glare as I tip my head back and greet the warmth of the sun.
“Shhhiiiit!” he gasps.
“Thishasto stay a secret in our world,” Eilidh says.
I turn and step back inside, closing the shutter behind me. “Why?”
“Because if it doesn’t, I become a target of Data-X and others,” she says. “So would you, most likely. If you think they’d lock me in a lab to make me a breeder, they’d do the same to you, if they thought your sperm would father hybrid children, or that they can use your blood to cure or trigger vampirism. If they find that they can’t use you, they’d kill you.”
Garrett runs a hand through his hair. “She’s right.” He looks to Amber. “Thoughts?”
She closes her eyes for a moment, her arms crossed over her chest. When she finally opens her eyes, she grimly nods. “There are still secret programs out there. Our work’s not done closing down the labs. Not just Data-X, but others. I can see more now. A lot more. Stuff that didn’t make sense before, but does with this new context.”
Garrett throws his head back, hands on his hips. “Aw,shit,” he mutters. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Parxon walks into the kitchen and pulls up short at the sight of me standing there. He slowly approaches, smiling as he looks me up and down. “It worked, I take it?”
“Yes!” Eilidh says, smiling up at me. “It did.”
He briskly nods. “Excellent. But you can’t let anyone know.”
I chuckle. “Already covered that.”
“They’re right,” Garrett says. “Youespeciallycan’t let Lucius and them know. None of the other vampires can ever know about this. About you and the sunlight. You absolutelycannottell them. And if you ever turn her, and she retains the ability to handle sunlight, you have to hide that from them, too.”
“Yeah, Igetit.” I turn to Garrett. “I need your permission to do something.”
“To do what?”
“I need to see if there’s something I can still do. I need to find out now, before we return, so I don’t screw up and do something that we can’t fix. And there’s only one human here.”
We both look at Amber.
She nods and says, “Okay,” as Garrett says, “Fuckno!” and moves to stand between us.
Amber puts her hand on his arm. “It’s okay.”
