The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Cold Heart/Warm Heart, pt. 2

Mark and I were seated next to each other on the plane. He was fidgeting with his TV screen, flipping channels absent-mindedly. He groaned audibly when the captain announced we were lucky to be missing the fluke mid-spring blizzard about to hit New England by flying just south of there into New York. I was disappointed too. Just when he was breaking free of himself, I was there to drag him back.

En route, I tried to explain to him that going to New York was not about Cole. Specifically, it was not about going to see Cole without telling Everett.

The truth was, I needed money. I wasn't going to be out of money in the next twenty-four hours or anything, but I'd need it soon. It was expensive enough traveling the way I did, but buying nine plane tickets at over £5000 a piece that day made me realize how my life had gotten, at the least, nine times more expensive lately. When we got to New York, it'd be more hotel rooms or a bigger suite that I'd have to get to fit the three of us. We had gone to Europe with only traveling packs, so we needed clothing and supplies. This pattern of spending would just continue, so it was time to arrange the sale of the other red diamond I'd been carrying around with me for three years. I could sign it over to Christie's and they could do what they were good at doing. And then, hopefully before I needed it, I'd have more money.

Mark didn't buy this for several reasons. One, he thought it logistically impossible for someone like me who owned no home, no diamonds of her own, had only one car, and flew commercial airlines everywhere could go through the kind of money I had in just three years. I asked him if he'd ever met his sister. He was not amused. Then I reminded him of the not one, but two Land Cruisers he'd purchased for me, his prized possessions that I had invested nearly six figures a piece in. Then he shut up.

Mainly, though, he believed I felt a need to fix things with Cole, a point I wanted to argue, but it was true.

I thought there would be a way to fix things without further thickening the mess I was already in with Cole and jeopardizing Everett's trust in me. But that is why I needed to go to Manhattan now. If not now, then when? If I couldn't fix things with him now, then when would another opportunity arise?

Mark vehemently disagreed, but he didn't try to stop me. He knew better. I had to love him for that. A good brother—a good ally—he was turning out to be.

When we arrived in Manhattan, I asked Mark to help Parker understand why we needed not to tell the others where we were. I wasn't sure if she would play along. After all, what loyalty did she have to us?

I'd found us a suite at a boutique hotel in the Village on short notice with the help of an American Express concierge. The next morning, all three of us bought new clothes and discarded the tattered and filthy ones we'd been wearing for over a month. Midday, I put a call into my contact at Christie's, and by late afternoon, I sat at the bar in the hotel with Parker and Mark, working up the nerve to call Cole. Biding time, I watched in amazement as Parker downed four martinis and Mark grew evermore charming. I hadn't thought about the nosferatu being susceptible to alcohol, but of course, they would be. After all, all you needed to get drunk was a metabolism.

I imagined this is how it went for Mark before he met me and when he could get time away from Anthony's acquisition trips. Find some girl—presumably not a human, but apparently not just a vieczy —wine and dine her. Flirt. Flash that Winter smile. Be brazen. Be... hot.