VA 2 - Blood Jewel by Georgia Cates Read Free Book Online Page B

jealous,” Gia
answered. “And yes, Solomon...I know you can hear me inside the
house.”
    “Take it easy, girls,” I
urged.
    “Alright, we’ll forget the buffoon
and get back to the task at hand. You’ve already given her the most
precious piece of jewelry she’ll ever wear. Any type of bling-bling
you come up with will only pale in comparison, so you shot yourself
in the foot when it comes to jewelry,” Lairah told me.
    “She loves your art, so paint her
something. You can have it ready by tomorrow because you’re so
awesome,” Gia suggested.
    I blew that one, too. “That’s not
going to work. I did a soft pastel of her on the day I met her, so
anything I did would pale in comparison to that. Now, I’ve shot
myself in the foot when it comes to art.”
    Solomon walked out of the house and
added, “Nice going, one trick pony.”
    “In my own defense, she was never
supposed to see it. It was supposed to be for my own private
collection.”
    Sol jumped into the pool with the
girls and then came up. He ran his hands back over his slick dark
hair. “I’m not jealous. If anyone is jealous it’s the two of you
with your crazy ideas and dreams of romance that’s never going to
happen for you. Both of you are living vicariously through this
poor human girl and she’s probably scared to death to tell either
of you ‘no.’ Shame on both of you.”
    “You’ve become such an ass since
Curry found Chansey. There’s no way you’re not jealous. I just
haven’t figured out if it’s because Chansey is taking Curry away
from you or because you want an Agápe too,” Gia accused, then
bumped fists with Lairah.
    A smug look crossed Sol’s face.
“Well, this ass has a perfect idea for Chansey’s birthday, so do
you want to know what it is or not?”
    I threw my hands up. “Hey, I didn’t
accuse you of anything. You’ve always been an ass in my book and
that hasn’t changed since Chansey came along,” I joked.
    He nodded in recognition and said,
“You damn skippy.”
    I was anxious to hear his
suggestion. “So, what’s your idea, Skippy?”
    “If I’m right, Chansey is so going
to dig this and you’ll score some major fiancé/husband/Agápe points
with her. Do you remember when you went back to Pascagoula about
twelve years ago and went by your house?”
    I was puzzled by where this was
going. “Yeah , I remember.”
    “If I recall correctly, you had
just become very interested in photography and you took a lot of
pictures of the house. You made me look through like five thousand
pictures I cared nothing about, but I remember the owners were in
some of them and they were having a birthday party for a kid out in
the yard. Is it possible for that to have been Chansey and her
family? If it was her, then you saw her for the first time when she
was a kid and you captured it on film.
    He was right. I went crazy taking
pictures that day and used every roll of film I had with me. “You
are absolutely brilliant, Sol. Girls, you can’t call him a buffoon
anymore.”
    Gia splashed water at Sol and said,
“You don’t know if that was Chansey and her family, so we reserve
the right to call him a buffoon until we have proof
otherwise.”
    Sol dunked Gia and when she came
up, he said, “You are both going to eat your words on this one,
girls. There’s no doubt in my mind that those negatives are full of
Chansey Leclaire and her family because he was like a madman with
all of the pictures he took of that girl and her family. At the
time, I wondered if he was some kind of weird vampire pedophile,
but it all makes sense now. It didn’t matter that she was a child.
Even then, he was drawn to her because she was his
Agápe.”
    “I think you’re right and what
makes this even more awesome is that Chansey told me today that she
has no pictures of her family together because she lost all of them
in Hurricane Katrina.” I started walking toward the house. “I’ve
got to find those negatives before Chansey wakes