Page 237 of Hunters and Prey

He looked at me, as if he hadn’t thought about it that way, either.

“No,” he said, still studying my eyes. “No. I guess they didn’t.”

“And that didn’t strike either of you as significant?”

Looking at Allie, Black let out a half-humorous, half-annoyed snort.

“Trust me, sister,” he said. “We’ve had a whole range of options to choose from, in terms of what a ‘precipitating event’ might be for either one of us. It’s been a non-stop parade of good times back home, between quasi-military coups, riots, human cults, Miri’s uncle and his ‘kill all the vampires and enslave all the humans’ kick… and Miri’s oldest friend getting turned into a vampire and going on a massive killing, raping spree.”

Scowling, Black looked at me.

“Now this thing with Miri,” he added, his jaw hard. “We haven’t had a lot of time to sit around and ‘theorize’ about supernatural beings, and which one of them we might be, based on the religious mumbo-jumbo of a bunch of monks from a dead planet.”

Allie smiled at that.

It struck me that she looked at Black almost like Lily, her daughter, did.

Both of them looked like they wanted to hug him.

I didn’t feel anything sexual behind it, but a part of my light geared up anyway, halfway in protectiveness of Black, and halfway in jealous annoyance.

That’s when Allie glanced at me, nodding towards the door and outside.

“I think we should go,” she said simply.

Her expression had slid back to neutral as she rose gracefully to her feet, leaving Black and me to frown at one another from across the low table that sat between us.

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