Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,83

the empty sofa where the still figure of Petra sat. She didn’t bat an eyelid as he pushed it down the cushions behind her. But then it wasn’t Petra, it was Adam’s program of Petra, and he’d obviously had no idea what she’d been doing after the fight began. Good. This could be changed with ease…

So why was he so terrified of the outcome? Because even after everything that had happened, he wanted Adam’s approval, Adam’s forgiveness?

Then why was he as afraid of Adam killing Killearn as of the other way around? He couldn’t help it; he just was.

Because that was how he’d felt the first time, the night this had really happened. The VR machine knew what he knew and was casting his own memory in his way. Adam had known it would. That was why he’d done this. Fuck, not so easy after all…

He found he was clutching his head, circling the fighters much as he’d done on the night in question, only now for rather different reasons. Back then, he’d been paralysed by the knowledge of who’d brought James Killearn into his home. He’d read it in her calm face.

****

Jack emerged from under the desk in Dale’s outer study and shook himself. It was as well the desk was large, since it had had to hide both himself and Blair.

“Better stay there just now,” Jack warned the vampire and walked out the study into the gallery.

Jilly should really be doing this part, he thought ruefully, but she’d refused point-blank to leave Adam and insisted on recording everything herself from behind the virtual sitting room sofa.

What did he do? Walk up to her bedroom door and knock? Mrs. Ewan? Your husband is asking for you in his office. That might work. He certainly didn’t want to go in there and carry her sleeping person from her bed to the scene unfolding in the lab.

Although Jilly had seemed to think this the best possible outcome. “She’ll wake into the world and assume it’s real,” she’d said with considerable satisfaction.

“Well, you do it, then,” Jack had said flatly, and she’d backed down, since she couldn’t actually force him to do it her way.

In the end, it was taken out of both their hands. As he walked along the gallery to the Ewans’ bedroom, the door of it opened and Petra emerged in a long, fluffy white robe. Wearing no makeup, she looked a little older than the virtual-reality Petra Adam had shown him, but she was still undeniably beautiful and walked with the kind of sexy elegance that would make any man weak at the knees. Jack, however, being a realist, suspected his own shaking limbs had more to do with his mission than his libido.

She stopped short at the sight of him but at least didn’t seem inclined to scream. “Okay,” she said calmly. “Who are you?”

“Jack Urquhart, Mrs. Ewan,” he said civilly. “I’ve been sent to ask you to join Mr. Ewan in his office.”

There were, he supposed, advantages to looking academic and unthreatening—which, of course, he was in most senses. Mrs. Ewan didn’t bat an eyelid, merely sighed and without so much as a thank-you, walked past him and along the gallery to the study.

Hurrying after her, Jack hoped Blair was still hidden under the desk, or the game would be up. She’d seen Blair before.

Well, wherever he was, he wasn’t skulking around the study. By the time Jack got there, she’d sailed through the open door into the lab and paused. She could see what Jack did: the bare test lab with her husband standing in the middle of it, clutching at his hair in clear distress. There was no sign of Jilly, cleverly hidden from the real world by the lab bench as she was from the virtual world by the sofa.

“Dale?” Petra said sharply, walking toward him. She halted, flinging up her hands as the green light blinded her. “Dale, what the hell is this?” she cried out, stumbling forward.

For a moment, she may have glimpsed herself sitting on the sofa. Adam had said the makeshift VR Petra would vanish when the real Petra arrived to replace her. She most certainly saw Adam, however, for she spoke his name in a hoarse voice of sheer panic.

“She’s in,” Jack said. By the time he’d finished speaking, the vampire loomed at his shoulder.

****

Adam hadn’t underestimated how difficult it would be to relive this scene. Even the bits he already knew, like the violent struggle with Killearn.