Page 12 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

“It’s too exposed. And you will have to navigate too many unfortunate souls and other monsters, who may not have gotten the message that Ariel himself wants to talk to you.

If you go around back, there’s a hidden entrance there, down an alley.

No one would dare be in the alley without Ariel’s permission, so it’s safe.

Even for you. That’s how you should access the school. ”

I think about this woman, who is almost certainly the only person who has ever worn cashmere under this roof, taking mixed martial arts lessons. Is that her secret? She’s badass in disguise?

I don’t ask her. That’s my power move. I blow out a breath instead. “I guess we’ve all decided that I’m actually going to the MMA school, then.”

Savi takes a sip of the coffee she’s had in her hands for some time, and I watch her struggle not to look horrified. For some reason this entertains me a lot more than maybe it should. Or maybe it’s easier to focus on that than ... all the other things I should be concentrating on.

“It seems you have come to the attention of a great many powerful creatures,” she says after a moment. “This is a reality that comes with some significant downsides, I suppose you might say.”

I want to ask her what she means by that.

I don’t. There’s something about the way she looks at me that makes it clear she knows perfectly well who visited us last night.

But there’s no way she could have seen Ty on the front porch unless she was out on the steps of her cottage and therefore visible to me at the door. That has to mean she’s a monster too.

Trouble is, I have no idea what kind.

“I don’t want to be the focus of anyone’s attention,” I tell her quietly. “I want to live what’s left of my life right here in the woods and be left alone while I do it.”

Her expression grips me then. An old, deep sadness, maybe, overlaying a kind of hard recognition.

“No one asks a sacrificial lamb what she might have liked to do with her life,” Savi says after a moment, and not exactly bitterly. Not exactly . “They light the fire, chant out their incantations, perform their rituals, and bury her in the swamp of their dirty little religions.”

I’m pretty sure I see her chest move, like she’s breathing too hard.

In my head I can almost see chants around a fire, a scream in the dark—

No, thank you. My own nightmares are bad enough. I rub at my temple as if it aches again.

I force a smile. “If this is a pep talk about trotting off to the vampire’s lair to get ritualistically exsanguinated or even, you know, just plain old killed, I think we’ve veered off track.”

Savi collects herself. She sets her nearly untouched coffee back on the countertop with a decisive click .

“You can’t put yourself back in the dark of oblivion,” she says after a moment. “He knows who you are. Too many others know who you are. Oblivion is not an option. All you can do is try your best not to get burned in the light.”

I decide later, while neatening up in Gran’s room, that she probably really did consider that a pep talk. That makes me feel kind of sad for the both of us.

“Your mouth is drooping, child,” Gran says from the depths of her chair. “What can be so terrible?”

I don’t know who she thinks I am today, but that’s all right. “Sometimes,” I tell her quietly as I restack her books so she can reach them from her chair, “I think too much is expected of us. Specifically, women.”

To my surprise, my grandmother chuckles. “What’s the alternative?” she asks, and then laughs all the more.

I laugh too, because this kind of hilarity from her is unusual.

That afternoon, during a happily boring shift at my job, it occurs to me that Gran was throwing some serious shade at my grandfather.

Possibly my father and my brother, too. I remember my grandfather as a tough, fair sort of man who was baffled by his children and their choices.

My father was never good enough for my mother, in my grandfather’s opinion.

I love them both, but I can’t disagree.

It’s just that before today, Gran never really seemed to take a side in all that.

Augie once dared to yell at her about it.

But the last thing I need to be doing while scanning the customers and the surrounding parking lot for monsters is lose myself in old, unhappy memories.

Augie had been mad at me that same night. You think that you’re winning points by saying nothing, don’t you? You think you’re really doing something , but all you’re actually doing is sticking your head in the sand.

Not everything I feel needs to be broadcast to the entire fucking world, I snapped at him.

I relive that a lot.

I ask myself, often, if that was the moment he decided to stop fighting the darkness in him. Oh, I have other moments to choose from, but I remember that one so clearly. The look on his face, like I had stabbed him. A kind of dawning understanding, like he didn’t know me at all.

I think about that expression all the time.

It wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes, with a damp spot on my pillow.

But when a very rude blast from a truck horn slaps me back into the coffee stand and the line of angry, not-entirely-human customers comes back into focus, I’m grateful.

Pathetically grateful to think about nothing but coffee drinks until it’s time to go home.