Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,44
face in, destroy the monster who’d so hurt a child, his own child.
A man, it seemed, could do worse things than abandon his kid.
Shoving back his chair, he leapt to his feet and paced around the large room, kicking and punching the walls, because, after all, no one could hear him. It made his knuckles bleed, but he didn’t care.
Online friends were a large part of JK’s life. He knew that. What was he except a form of online friend? Where was the harm in that? If she needed him, if she just liked hanging out with him, he should be there, for as long as he was allowed to be. She was strong enough to have survived childhood abuse by the person who should have protected her most, so yes, she was more than strong enough to survive a kiss with the virtual Genesis Adams.
Smiling with rueful self-mockery, Adam flung himself back into his chair and typed.
Exodus: Where do you think I am? A man has to sleep after beating up the Nazis.
Chapter Ten
Jilly was damned if she’d let her father interfere with her morning’s plans. She just hoped Sera didn’t break any of his bones, because the bag of shite was quite capable of pressing charges. Of course, they both knew how to talk him out of that one, but Jilly really didn’t want to waste her time on it.
Finding a couple of pounds in the pocket of Sera’s coat, she caught a bus up to the Scotsman Hotel, and since the receptionist there smiled so brightly at her, she asked for Roxy. The receptionist looked slightly flummoxed.
“Do you have an appointment with Miss May?” she asked at last.
“No, but she’ll be glad to see me,” Jilly lied. Roxy was here incognito. No one was meant to be aware of her presence. Therefore, the receptionist would reason, hopefully, that Jilly must be Roxy’s friend to be in the know.
“One moment,” the receptionist said and bustled over to the back office.
Oh well, reception had only ever been a courtesy. Jilly already knew the room number. She turned smartly and skipped off up the stairs.
Converted from the old Scotsman newspaper office, the hotel was not an easy layout to grasp, but it didn’t take Jilly long to track down the right room. She knocked briskly and hoped her quarry had the decency to be in.
She had. Roxy opened the door with a flourish, a glass in her other hand.
“Hello,” said Jilly, brushing past her. “Remember me?”
“Sure,” Roxy said after a pregnant moment. “Won’t you come in?”
“Sorry,” Jilly said without much sincerity. “I skipped past reception; don’t want the staff to come upon me skulking outside your room.”
Roxy let the door go, and it slid to an expensively silent close. “I can understand that. Er—why were you skulking outside my room?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Roxy frowned. “How did you know I was here? Did Dale and Petra tell you?”
Jilly opened her mouth to lie, then changed her mind and sat down on the opulent sofa. “No. I hacked the hotel register.”
To her surprise, Roxy’s lips twitched. “Wow. You really did want to talk to me. What about?”
Jilly took a deep breath but held the other woman’s gaze. “Genesis Adam.”
“Are you a journalist?”
“No. I work for a psychic who’s trying to exorcise a poltergeist from the Ewans’ house.”
“Shit,” Roxy said, turning away toward the open-bar cupboard. “I’m going to need another drink for this. Want one?”
Jilly never drank during the day. Not with her mother’s example. Or Elspeth’s, although the receptionist had been good as gold about the demon drink recently. But right now, she felt she needed one, and besides, people talked more with a drinking companion.
“Go on, then,” she said and watched Roxy slosh whisky into two glasses.
“Salute,” Roxy said, passing one glass to Jilly and sitting down beside her.
“You’re Italian?” Jilly asked.
“Half Italian, half Irish. Suppose I picked the wrong half to toast in whisky.” She raised the glass to her lips and regarded Jilly over the top while she drank. She lowered the glass. “I probably won’t tell you anything, but what do you want to know and why?”
Jilly liked her. Which gave her a nasty pain somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She could imagine Adam with this woman. They’d have made a striking and eccentric couple.
Jilly swirled the amber liquid around the glass, watching the colours change in the light. “I don’t know if you believe in this stuff or not, but we think