Free Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) by Samantha Snow Page B

lighting a slim little clove cigarette.  Philip watched her do it and then wrinkled his nose.
     
    “Oh, come off it, Philip, still?” she chided, a look of condescending amusement on her face. 
     
    The topic of her smoking was only one of many the two of them had fought about on and off throughout the years.  It was one of many because the two of them could have fought about anything.  If Philip said the sky was blue, Caroline would have sworn it was pink. 
     
    They could have argued about gravity, about whether or not the sun would come up the next morning.  They would argue about any and everything so it was no great surprise that the topic of smoking had come up from time to time.
     
    “It’s a disgusting habit, Caroline,” Philip replied with his nose still wrinkled, “especially for a lady.”
     
    “A lady?  A lady ?  I might well have been a lady a long, long time ago, but I haven’t been for a while.  And it’s not like it’s going to kill me, is it?  So there’s really no reason to have a problem with it.”
     
    Philip could have come up with any number of reasons, just because she said that they weren’t there, but he resisted the urge.  He was sure that she had come here for a reason, and it hadn’t been to talk about her smoking.  If he was in the mood for a fight, he was sure he was going to get it.  Quite sure, painfully sure.  Just the idea of it made him tired.
     
    “OK, Caroline, OK, fine.  You’re not a lady and there’s nothing wrong with it.  Now why don’t you tell me why you’ve come?”
     
    “Can’t a girl come and visit her baby brother?”
     
    “She can,” he said carefully, not even close to being fooled by her cheery demeanor, “if that’s why she’s really here.”
     
    “OK fine, whatever.  Have it your way.  Why do you think I’m here if it’s not for the pleasure of your company?”
     
    “The phone call.  You came because of the phone call.”
     
    His voice sounded flat, dead, to his own ears and he knew it must sound the same way to Caroline.  That stupid fucking phone call, the one he had tried to dismiss and hadn’t been able to shake off at all. 
     
    That was one of the lessons he had learned after years bleeding into each other, one after the next, until time immemorial.  You could try to get away from a thing, try to outrun it, but a memory was always somewhere in the background, just out of reach.  A person, a vampire, lived his life but the past went right on living just out of reach.  Just out of reach but terribly accessible nonetheless.  If that were true with the bad memories, the really bad parts of the past, how could he expect it not to apply to things as stupid as an unpleasant phone call?
     
    “Yes, Philip, that’s right.  I came because of the phone call.  The one in which you hung up on me.  You remember that?”
     
    “I sure as shit do.  I’d do it again, too.  I’d do it right now if you were on the phone instead of standing here in my office.”
     
    “I know you would.  Which is why I’m here.  See?  You figured it out all on your own.  You didn’t need to ask me any kind of question at all.”
     
    The look on her face was nauseatingly smug and although Philip had never hit a woman before, neither one living or one turned, he was very tempted to do so now.  Not a hard hit, just enough to get rid of her all-knowing smile.
     
    “I guess I didn’t.  Not about that, anyway.”
     
    Caroline cocked her head to the side, daring him to keep going.  That was how a lot of things went when the two of them got together.  Even when they were on the phone or emailing, for God’s sake, this was the way things went between the two of them.  He loved her, he supposed, but loving someone and liking them weren’t always the same thing, were they?
     
    No, no they most definitely were not.  So yes, Philip loved his sister but it was much easier to like her when she was thousands of miles away.