Page 2 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

I settle her in her chair again when we come back so she can slurp her coffee. I make her bed because she complains if I don’t.

“Remember what I told you,” I say, though I don’t expect her to. Her memory took off right around when my parents did. That was maybe a month before the Reveal, and it was a blessing, in its own way. For a while, Augie and I told her they were on their way back from the store.

Now she thinks he is.

I wish I didn’t know better myself.

She frowns at me suspiciously, a little gnarled root of a woman in a chair that dwarfs her. Her frail little ankles stick out from beneath her nightgown because she likes slippers, not socks, and I find the sight of them heartbreaking, the way I always do.

“I remember,” she says, the way she always does.

“We’re going to have some new people around,” I tell her in this weird, cheerful voice I only use in her room. Neither one of us buys it, but I can’t stop. “I’m finally renting out the cottages. It’s going to be fun.”

She scowls at me, clearly not remembering that it was initially her idea that we open up the cottages to neighbors in need after the monsters started burning people out of their homes. “My mother always said that only a dire house takes in strangers.”

I want to tell her that the house is dire as is.

That it was so dire that cleaning it out made me feel as close to actual tears as I think I’ve ever been, and I’m the stern twin.

That was what Augie always called me. I was the stern one and he was the sensitive one, but that’s another dire thing, because now he’s too sensitive to live and I’m so stern it might kill me.

I don’t tell her that.

I want to tell her about my meeting with Franklin Hendry, the local mortgage broker who is my father’s age and once dated my mother when they were kids—according to him, and she’s not around to confirm or deny—at the bank at the end of last month.

I want to share with her how dire that was.

It’s the end of the world in real time, but Franklin Hendry’s out here ruining what few lives remain.

I could tell her that it never occurred to me that anyone would come for the bills when there hasn’t been an internet or cell phone service in years, or even any way out of this valley.

But Franklin Hendry was not devoured by the werewolves who cluster in the hills around the still-standing historic town of Jacksonville and no longer wait for full moons to change shapes.

He was not exsanguinated with sneering contempt by the vampires who came out of the shadows and never went back in.

He apparently avoided whatever that horrible clawed thing is that tore up my vegetable garden.

Some monsters are human, and this one has given me a deadline. I have until Halloween to pay off the back mortgage or Franklin Hendry is throwing us out.

I don’t tell Gran that it’s not me I’m worried about. It’s her. I’d love to tell Franklin Hendry to go fuck himself, but I can still pretend there are things I might outrun, given enough of a head start. She can hardly walk.

Taking in a few tenants is the least of all these evils.

If I could find my manager at the drive-through coffee hut on the road that heads south, toward Ashland, I would officially ask for more hours and a raise, but no one’s seen poor Doug in months.

Someone stocks the place, though. And I get an envelope of cash every Friday.

That’s the only reason I still show up. That and because I like a routine that feels normal when nothing else does, or ever will be.

Also, it turns out monsters like caffeine, like anyone else.

I don’t tell Gran any of this. “It’s a new adventure,” I say instead, brightly . “When I was a little girl, you always told me that being afraid of new adventures was my cross to bear.”

Gran frowns at me in that censorious way she never used to, but it’s better not to think about the past. The good memories are harder to deal with. At least I know I survived the scary shit when the Reveal hit. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s something.

“I would never say something like that to my own daughter.” She huffs at me. “I raised you better than to tell such lies, Lilianne.”

I lean over and kiss her on her soft, wrinkly cheek. I stack her books and those battered, spooky old cards on the table beside her. I don’t tell her I’m not my mother.

“Besides,” Gran says in that dark, knowing way she does sometimes, “you never had the gift. It would be cruel to taunt you.”

Sometimes my grandmother creeps me out more than the monsters roaming the valley—and the world—but I try not to let that get to me.

Just like I try not to think about all that weird shit she had in her craft room.

Knobby old roots and alarming figurines that looked a little too much like the shapes and symbols on her cards, no thank you.

“It’s light out,” I mutter. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Blow the horn if you need help.”

I give her the usual song and dance as I place the air horn on the table, within reach.

I don’t know if she’ll remember to blow it.

I don’t know if the neighbors will come running the way they claimed they would.

I don’t even know if the Petersons made it through the night last night, or over the past week, because I haven’t actually seen them in a while.

But when everything is uncertain, it’s like nothing is. I act like what I want to be true is a fact. Because what else can you do?

Then I slip outside, making sure all the bolts and gates are shut tight behind me.

I keep my weapons primed and ready as I head for my truck, scanning the yard for any incoming threats.

I also look at the three cottages tucked into the edges of the woods, all of them “rustic,” certainly, but a lot nicer than they used to be.

Not something that can be said about much else these days.

I don’t exactly hold my breath, but I don’t really exhale fully until I’m in the driver’s seat, the engine’s running, and everything’s locked. Better yet, until nothing blocks my exit out of our drive and onto the road that leads into town.

I used to love this drive. It winds through the woods, cutting its way down a neighborhood tucked into a hillside, into the main part of Jacksonville.

Jacksonville itself is a perfectly preserved Western town that looks like Old West cowboys should come swaggering out through the doors of the old saloon, though these days, if they did, you’d have to accept that they were vampires.

Growing up, it was filled with cute boutiques, festivals, restaurants, and a trolley that took tourists into the Applegate Valley wine country outside town.

But now the Applegate is overrun with monsters.

Vampires feasted on the big megachurch out that way, gobbling up most of the parishioners one bloody Sunday.

No one knows what happened to the wineries.

I’ve heard rumors that there are human settlements way out by the lakes, where the California border lies and the gulches are easier to defend, but no one knows that for sure.

Jacksonville fared better. It was designated the only human-safe space in the valley about eighteen months ago by the powers that be in this valley, most of them monsters.

Supposedly, we can walk around free of fear and don’t have to worry about getting eaten.

Or being dragged off to be someone’s plaything in sick games I’d rather not think about too closely.

At first, no one believed we could ever be safe.

Then we all got a little too comfortable with it.

Every now and then, there’s a monster who forgets the rules, and we all get vigilant again for a few days.

The truth is, life is much shorter and more brutal than it used to be. We always come back out in the open.

This morning there are already people walking around, basking in the illusion of all that safety.

I slow the truck when I hit the main street, because I see Samuel Ruiz on the corner.

Samuel is a few years older than me. He was a football player in high school and went on to play for the Ducks, which people cared about back then.

Now he’s basically the mayor and the entire city council of Jacksonville.

“Nice to see you out and about, Winter,” he says into my window when I roll to a stop beside him. His voice is low and perfect , and his eyes are still green. Still so ridiculously green .

That’s his way of saying, Nice you’re not dead. And maybe more than that, I like to think. Maybe he’s also saying he’s glad I’m not dead.

“I’m going to do a few hours at the coffee hut,” I say, stupidly, because I’m sure he knows where I’m going. There aren’t that many people. We know each other’s routines because knowing them means we also notice when you get dead.

He still has that same football body, I can’t help but note. I’m not dead, not yet. And neither is he. He looks at me in that piercing way he has, then shifts that gaze to sweep for monsters and nod hello to other humans. Like a normal person would.

Like I should, but I don’t.

“Jenny tells me you’re taking in renters,” he says, and then all that green is on me again. “Be careful. You don’t want to wake up with a monster under your roof.”

“Will the monster pay the rent money on time?” I ask, and he actually laughs, and I don’t think about much else all morning.

Not even when a pair of hungry-looking vampires take advantage of the smoke that’s filled the valley over the course of the morning, turning everything a choking gray.

They don’t have to worry about bursting into flame in the sunshine when the smoke strangles it, so they come at the window of the coffee stand and only back off when I turn the holy water squirt gun on them—the best thing ever found in the ruins of the local church by one of my coworkers, and left here to keep the vampires in line.

I watch them run and jump into a very nice Escalade they likely took after feeding on the poor driver—whoever he was—then peel out.

Then I think about Samuel some more. And more specifically, that day in the first year after the Reveal when Jacksonville’s remaining humans actually crept out and met up for the first time.

He’d organized that. He’d been the one to get everyone thinking about community again, instead of just hiding away by themselves.

Then later he’d walked me home, up the hill to say hello to Gran, and he stayed.

I remember his mouth on mine in the dark of the crowded living room, piled high with crap and fortifications. I remember his body pressing me down, and how I’d wound myself around him like I was clinging to him for life.

It had been a dark, hot rush, and sometimes I think I dreamed it.

I hate dreams—they’re why I prefer nightmares. Nightmares let you know where you are, that being some or other version of hell, and usually come in with a killer headache to make sure you’re paying attention. Dreams pretend you could be somewhere else.

I especially hate dreams that were never talked about and never happened again, though I still catch him looking sometimes. Like today.

I tell myself he was definitely looking today .

At midday I go home, because the Jenny he mentioned is his sister and she runs the paper, because we have a paper again now.

There’s power—no one has ever explained how—but no internet, no TV, no radio.

All of that blew up. Or someone ate it, who knows.

Jenny’s been collecting news for the past couple of years and passing it out all over the valley in the armored truck she got from one of the banks that didn’t make it.

That’s how I advertised for renters right here in the human safety zone.

I get home, I check on Gran and get her settled again, and then right on time, at twelve thirty, when I advertised that I’d talk to any cottage-rental hopefuls, there’s a knock on the front door.

I open the door, but not the metal gate, and stand there with my guns drawn, the way I’d greet anyone.

But this isn’t anyone.

This is a girl my own age.

A girl I recognize.

A girl I haven’t thought about in a long time, because she was one of the few who got out.

Back then, it wasn’t monsters that kept people in the valley—it was not having money or sufficient imagination, take your pick.

People hit ceilings in a place like this and stay put.

And often wither. My parents are a prime example of that kind of surrendered life.

Maddox Hemming had never seemed like the college type.

Too ... physical. Slinking around with her wild hair, covered in tattoos, she was always followed by a pack of boys who couldn’t seem to decide if she was one of them or their queen.

I’d assumed she was having the sort of glorious adolescence I certainly wasn’t.

That was a long time ago. Now it’s three years past the Reveal, and I see the truth about Maddox isn’t that she’s secretly an academic, despite her defection to her fancy East Coast school.

Maybe she’s that too.

But the important thing about Maddox Hemming is that she’s a werewolf.

And, I now realize with a kind of horror mixed through with something that’s not exactly admiration , always was one.

Because these days I know what a werewolf looks like in its human form—another gift of the Reveal. The way they hold themselves. That wild hair. And eyes that gleam gold when the light hits them just right.

She smirks at me. That’s when I realize I’ve cocked both guns.

“Damn, Winter,” she drawls, like this is a casual conversation in the bathroom of the old high school that someone burned down last year.

Like she isn’t a monster. Like I’m not pointing weapons at her face that she must know I’m fully prepared to fire.

“That’s an aggressive way to interview a potential renter. No wonder you have space to spare.”