Page 27 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

I’m out of breath again, shaking inside and out, when I finally climb into bed. I’m sure I’ll fall off a cliff into an exhausted sleep immediately, but I don’t.

Maybe the headache I already have is warning me that if I do, I’ll regret it. That terrible things wait for me there.

I lie there, wide awake with too many things on bright, intense replay, until it’s time to get up again.

I have an early shift at the coffee stand, so it’s still dark when I roll out of bed, rubbing at my gritty eyes.

I check out the yard the way I always do, dark or light, but not only are there no zombies out there now, there also appears to be no sign of them. It’s as if what Maddox said really is true. That this is actually protected land now.

But if Gran is supposed to be some big oracle, why wasn’t she protected already?

That makes me think about Franklin Hendry.

Does he really want this house? Or does he have a bone to pick with Gran herself?

And while it’s difficult to imagine so unimaginative a creature as Franklin Hendry believing that a woman with a deck of cards could tell his future, I wonder if she told him his.

And he didn’t like it, so he figured he’d change it. Through me.

I shake all that off as I get ready for my shift. I strap on my weapons, run my fingers through my hair, and congratulate myself for the ten-thousandth time that I was smart enough to cut it all off.

When I go down to the kitchen, I’m shocked to find Savi already there when the sun isn’t so much as an inkling in the sky.

There’s nothing but faith to suggest it might ever rise again, that’s how dark it is out there.

And despite the warm days, October is coming in fast, so the house is cold this early in the morning.

The kind of cold that, in happier times, made me think of getting cozy by a fire with nothing to worry about except how many pumpkin spice lattes I might drink.

Savi is sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in another matching set that is one more sumptuous example of luxury textiles. Her silky dark hair is piled on top of her head, making her cheekbones look more pronounced and her eyes even more intense from beneath her bangs.

She is sipping daintily from a mug, and I can smell from the doorway that it’s not coffee.

Some kind of tea, I imagine. Or, who knows, a tincture of some kind, the sort that you could always find for sale in the Ashland Farmers Market in cloudy brown jars from witchy women dressed in earth tones. It’s strange the things you miss.

“I’m delighted to see that you’re alive,” she says as she regards me.

I blink at that. “Was there that much doubt? Because last night I was under the impression that everyone seemed to think I could just waltz into Archangel MMA without weapons and be fine.”

“And you were.”

I shoot looks her way as I set about preparing the coffee I’ll take in the truck with me. I remember the way she and my grandmother interacted, as if they knew each other. I think about all the things she told me yesterday and the fact that she’s not a werewolf. Or a vampire.

But that doesn’t mean I know what she is. I just know she’s not quite human.

“Exactly how did you come by all this knowledge about the civilized behavior of the local vampire king?” I ask, trying to sound casual, but it’s a bit early for that.

“Because I’ve known about him for years, but I certainly couldn’t describe his habits to anyone.

” I clear my throat. “Were you one of his students?”

I’m convinced that’s amusement I see in her gaze when I glance over.

“All ancient and immortal creatures have something to teach us,” she says.

“If only about the different costs of longevity. Personally, I like to consider myself someone who is always open to a lesson. And I’m happy that in this case, the lesson was not as grisly as some. ”

I decide not to tell her that motivational speaking is clearly not her strength. “Me too,” I say. I don’t share with her that there are some lessons that are worse than dying.

They involve living with what you did. And daydreamed about all night. And would almost certainly do again, no matter what I might try to tell myself—all this while, for all I know, he’s got Augie secreted in one of those dark rooms I walked past on the way in.

Maybe the lesson is simple. I’m a terrible person.

“What exactly did he want?” Savi asks, and I recognize that casual tone because I just used it myself. It makes those little alarms ring inside me. I was digging. That means she’s digging now. But I still can’t figure out what she’s digging for . “Because if it was to kill you, you would be dead.”

“I’m still puzzling out what it is he wanted,” I tell her, and it rings true because it is true. “I would describe him as ... opaque.”

I see that gleam of amusement in her gaze again. “Vampires do love a mind game or two.” She says this the way I might once have said, offhandedly, puppies love treats , or something else so obvious that it hardly requires comment.

“You know so much about him,” I say, making myself sound admiring. Or that’s what I’m going for. “Or maybe it’s vampires on the whole? I guess I was under the impression that anyone who got close to them ends up as dinner.”

I’m relieved to finish speaking. I’ve never been any good at small talk. Or pretending I don’t know the things I know.

“I’m a very good listener,” Savi tells me.

She takes another sip of her drink, and for a moment it’s like I can hear that chanting, though her mouth doesn’t move.

Her smile is almost self-deprecating, but I don’t quite believe it.

“I listen, I remember. I’ve learned a lot this way.

It’s a very underrated talent, I think.”

I am not even remotely satisfied by this answer, but I fill up my favorite travel mug and make myself smile at her when I leave.

Then I take myself off to the coffee stand, and it feels deeply and surprisingly good to focus on tasks I could do in my sleep.

Opening up the stand. Getting everything ready for the morning rush.

And then spending the rush pleasantly unable to think about anything else but coffee drinks.

Coffee drinks and my instant assessment of the customers in each vehicle. Because I have to decide at a glance whether to hand each drink to the drivers or leave them on the shelf because they look like they might chew off my arm.

Something that was always true about feral caffeine addicts in the Pacific Northwest, it has to be said.

There is finally a lull a few hours later. The smoke has settled in hard after the usual ray or two of sunlight. I use the slower periods to clean up inside, deal with the garbage, and then barricade myself inside the stand once more.

At noon, my coworker’s car pulls up to the drive-through, which is standard procedure. We like to see each other before we let someone into the stand. Just to make sure that no one is, say, sporting a new set of fangs.

That was an example of a lesson learned the hard way.

I smile and start to say hello, but Birdie Jones—who I’ve known since we went to kindergarten together and have been friends with since roughly four seconds after we were dropped off at that Montessori school—lifts up her hand to give me the palm.

“I heard a rumor about you , Winter Bishop,” she says.

I freeze up at the window, wondering how anyone could know what happened with Ariel. Already. Was that the whole point of it? Was he filming it?

Do vampires even show up on film? Does that count as a reflection, or is it something else?

And even if he did all those things, where would he show this film? There is no internet these days for revenge pornographers to use.

Focus, I order myself.

“You know what they say about rumors, Birdie,” I drawl, with a careless sort of smile that I don’t feel. “One day you’re spreading them and the next day they’re burying you.”

“ Maddox Hemming, ” Birdie says. Reverently. “In your house. True or false?”

Samuel really has applied himself to getting the word out, I see. I feel the urge to lie. Or explain. I don’t. “Not in my house,” I say. “But in one of our little cottages, within sight of my house? True.”

Birdie sighs, dropping her hand and getting a wistful look in her eyes.

“Maddox Hemming is how I knew I was gay,” she tells me dreamily.

“It was sixth grade. I knew I wasn’t like everyone else, but I didn’t know why.

All the girls were clustered together at recess talking about boys and bras and who they wanted their first kiss to be with.

It was like everyone had a script and I didn’t. ”

“I don’t think anyone had a script,” I point out. “If they did, it would just have been school. Instead of twelve-plus years of trauma.”

Birdie isn’t listening to me. “And then one day, in gym class, Maddox Hemming was running .” She sighs again, and it’s deeper this time. “She was just running. In a little pair of shorts. I looked at her and just like that, I came online .”

“And here I thought you were going to yell at me for living with the werewolves.”

“In any other circumstances, I would,” Birdie says with a laugh. “But not when it’s Maddox Hemming . Who wouldn’t live with Maddox Hemming if they had the chance? I would live with her right now, in fact. Do you have an extra cottage? A spare room?”

I laugh too. “I don’t think that Miriam would like that much.”

“My wife is a woman of great discernment,” Birdie says with a cackle, as if I don’t know Miriam, wasn’t at their wedding, and don’t know all about her wife’s so-called discernment when it comes to Birdie ogling other women.

Though it’s true that Maddox is a law unto herself. “She would move us both in.”

Birdie’s still laughing when she goes and parks her car, then waits for me to open the back door. Once I’m covering the small parking lot with a shotgun, she jumps out and hurries inside, then helps me throw all the locks.

She smiles at me as she goes to make herself a drink to start her shift. “Tell me everything,” she says. “Like what shampoo does she use?”

“I’m not a stalker, actually? So I don’t know?”

“Now I might yell at you,” she says, frowning. “I need details .”

I’m feeling almost normal when I get back in the truck a while later.

I wave at Birdie—who yells something about documentation—and head back toward Jacksonville.

The smoke is brooding today, moving in sullen clumps along the road as I make my way back toward the Jacksonville town line.

In some spots I can almost glimpse a little blue sky.

In others, the smoke is so thick I can’t see much of the road in front of me.

I almost manage to convince myself that too-hot vampires, cavorting on rooftops with said vampires, and disturbing visions were nothing but a dream.

But as I make my way over the hill that winds its way down from what used to be vineyards into the heart of Jacksonville, a huge, gleaming SUV with ominously tinted windows swings around me as if it means to pass.

It comes out of nowhere. One moment there’s nothing but smoke in the rearview window, then they’re practically in my back seat.

“Shit,” I mutter.

Then I say it again, louder, when the SUV doesn’t pass.

It slows, then careens toward the passenger side of my truck.

I assume it’s going to run me off the road, so I slam my foot on the brake. They swerve ahead of the truck and end up perpendicular to me.

I assume this is an ambush.

Good thing I’m ready. I reach for the shotgun that rides shotgun, as is right and proper, pointing it out my window as someone in the vehicle before me rolls down its blacked-out windows.

And the only reason I don’t shoot is because I recognize them immediately.

First, I realize that they’re vampires. Two of them. Second, I realize that I saw them last night at Ariel’s studio, performing those disturbing, mesmerizing forms to perfection.

The vampire in the driver’s seat bares his teeth at me so I can see his fangs. Long and sharp. The smoke dances all around us, thick like fog on this part of the hill or he wouldn’t dare open a window in the first place.

I don’t lower my weapon. His companion, a woman, sneers.

“He wants to see you,” the first vampire says, and he makes it sound like an insult. “Tonight. Sundown. If I were you, I wouldn’t be late.”