Page 5 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

“I just know the vibe,” says the girl, and I can see the piercing in her tongue as she rolls her eyes. “Fancy car, fancy clothes, fancy life. Not like the rest of us.”

It’s true that she doesn’t look like she possesses any of those things.

She has a stocking hat jammed on her head, with black hair braided messily beneath.

She’s wearing a faded old Pixies T-shirt, baggy cargo pants, and is covered in tattoos.

There’s even one wrapped around her neck, like a background canvas for all the other piercings I can see on her face.

The beautiful woman sighs. I hear Gran’s wind chimes move in the old oak tree, though I can’t feel any breeze. “I’m looking for a private cottage to call my own,” she says to me, as if the other girl never spoke. “Are any left?”

I catch the girl looking at her with such animosity that it’s hard to imagine there isn’t at least some personal feeling behind it. Then again, it could be the silk and the smooth skin, like she’s spent the past three years in a spa.

But I stop worrying about their interpersonal dynamics, because I’m too busy trying to scan them for signs.

That they might shift into something scary.

That they are some kind of monster I can’t identify on sight.

I check the smoky sky behind them, and that’s the trouble.

They could be vampires. Especially the fancy one.

Substitute “crypt” for “spa” and she makes sense.

Despite some initial hopes that the vampires who turned up after the Reveal would sparkle and long to keep taking high school classes as their main form of entertainment, that has not proven to be the case.

They’re mostly just vicious and terrifying as they rampage at will, but true to most myths, they can’t go out in the sun.

How lucky for them that the weather here is either cloudy or smoky almost all year round.

I open the gate. Meaning, I throw the locks. Then do nothing else.

I step back, my guns in my hands because bullets slow anything down—at least enough for me to get the wooden stakes—and wait.

Understanding flashes in the woman’s gaze. She opens the gate and steps inside, no invitation required. Not a vampire. This doesn’t mean she’s not deadly, but she’s not that kind of monster. These days, everything is a process of elimination.

Both of us glance back at the stocking-hat-headed girl. She sneers as the gate slams shut in front of her, then flings it open herself and walks on through.

“No bloodsucking dickheads, apparently.” She glares at both of us, but mostly the fancy woman beside her. “I would have lost that bet.”

The woman—who, now that she’s closer, also looks vaguely the same age as me, though she’s so well kempt that it’s impossible to tell—sighs again. “Not the first bet you’ve lost, I imagine.”

I want to laugh, but that seems unwise. I shoo them back outside again and let the gate slam shut behind us.

Then I give them what I guess is now my landlady spiel.

“I’ll be armed at all times,” I tell them.

“You can only be visibly armed when I’m comfortable with you, and that will be unlikely.

You are allowed in the back of the house, meaning the kitchen and the laundry room.

If I catch you in any off-limits areas, immediate eviction.

Whether you break curfew or not is your business, but if you think you can get around that by bringing unvetted guests back here, think again.

You and they will be forcibly evicted. By me. In daylight.”

“That sounds eminently reasonable,” says the first woman, and her voice is so ... melodious that I wonder if it was really wind chimes I thought I’d heard before. Something in me even seems to shift at the sound of it, and that’s annoying. Also alarming. I grip my guns a little tighter.

“I’m Savi Wynn,” she says, and smiling graciously, she extends her hand.

“We don’t need to shake hands,” I tell her, because it’s never a good idea to touch something if you don’t know what it is. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Briar,” says the sneering girl. Still sneering. Then she pauses and we both look at her. “Briar Monroe.”

I don’t know that I believe that’s actually her name.

Then again, the thing about life-altering events like the Reveal is that people end up different on the other side.

Assuming this is the other side. Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world to take on a new identity.

Forge a new path. Do whatever you can with what little time you have left.

And anyway, there’s no court I can go complain to if it turns out they both made up their identities.

All I have is my gut, and it’s gotten me this far. I go with that as I take both of them out to the cottages and watch as they register the two that are left.

I expect them to get into a scrap over who gets which cottage, particularly because one of them is little more than a shed and held what I dearly hope was just old farming-type implements.

If not, it’s highly likely that one of my ancestors had a taste for the odd serial killing.

I don’t like to go in there, and not only because it’s tiny.

But Briar seems drawn to the place. She goes inside and closes the door, and I can hear her clomping around like she’s measuring the space with her feet.

Savi and I are out in the yard, our backs against different trees, while the smoke dances between us. For some reason it makes me think about my latest nightmare, smoky and scary, but I shut that down fast.

“I like this one,” Briar says when she opens the door and peers out. She glares, but not at me. “If that’s all the same to you, Your Majesty.”

“I think this is a very happy place,” Savi says. This time directly to me.

I can’t help but laugh at that. “You don’t have to flatter me. There’s nothing happy about this place. There never was, even before the Reveal. But the cottages are yours if you can pay.”

Savi smiles in that way of hers that I find surprisingly mysterious. And possibly aristocratic. “Money is no problem. Safe accommodation, on the other hand, is of paramount importance.”

The way she says that makes me wonder who she’s running from if she wants to hide out from them on a hill in the woods. I don’t ask.

“About that,” I say as Briar drifts back out into the yard. “How do you feel about werewolves?”

Briar snorts. “Which side of their teeth am I on?”

I shrug. “She’s someone I went to high school with. Didn’t realize she was a werewolf then, of course, but she is. She took the other cottage. Says she wants a little distance from the pack.”

“And you believe her?” Savi asks.

It didn’t occur to me not to believe her, and that’s interesting. I file that away.

“I didn’t shoot her. Yet.”

Once again, Savi and Briar look at each other in a way that seems to spark with an energy I can’t quite understand. It doesn’t feel personal, or romantic. Just heavy and clearly obvious to them—and I decide that letting on that I notice it is a bad play, so I keep that to myself.

“I’m fine with it as long as she keeps her fangs to herself,” Briar mutters. “Theoretically. I don’t really like dogs.”

“I do have some concerns about the full moon,” Savi chimes in. “As long as we all reach an agreement of acceptable behavior, I’m not opposed. Necessarily.”

“Great,” I say, like that was a full-throated agreement, and wave them toward the house with my gun. “It’s like we’re a happy family already.”

And after they leave, having signed my makeshift lease agreements and ponied up some cash, I go and check on Gran again. I’m happy to see she’s still snoring and decide that the smart move is not to sit around with this much cash on hand.

There are at least three people who know that I have piles of cash on me right now. That’s three too many, and more, it’s asking for an ambush.

I fire up the truck and head back down the hill into town.

It’s crowded again, and I can’t help but find that comforting.

Like normal might be a possibility again someday.

If I squint, maybe having to pay the mortgage is almost normal too?

But I can’t quite get there. I wave a hand at folks I recognize and then park my truck in front of the bank.

I grit my teeth and go inside, feeling more resentful with every step.

This place is part museum, part bank, because that’s how this town rolls. And no one works here except Franklin Hendry himself, that asshole.

“Come to cry uncle, Winter?” he asks, his smarmy voice filling the airless room, ricocheting in and out of the pioneer exhibit in the window.

I find it more satisfying than it should be to march up to his massive desk, look him in the eye, and slam that pile of cash down in front of his jowly face.

“I’ll need a written receipt for this portion of the mortgage payment,” I tell him. “Just to keep us both honest.”

He squints up at me in that same way he always does. Patronizing. Condescending. Pitying. The dick.

“It’s like trying to plug up a leak with chewing gum, Winter,” he says sorrowfully.

I wish for a moment that I had a pair of fangs at my disposal, but I don’t.

“A written receipt, please,” I say, and I hope it sounds like I think he’s a liar and a cheat, because I do.

I keep standing there, refusing to give him the satisfaction of sitting down, or looking cowed, or doing anything but staring back at him impassively as he takes his sweet time counting the bills.

He licks his finger between each one, which disgusts me.

I’m not sure if it’s because he keeps fondling the filthy money itself, or if it’s simply that fleshy slurp he takes off his finger each time.

Both, I decide. This is a man who’s gotten fat and rich while the world lies in ruins around him. He’s gross.

He pulls out an enormous ledger and ostentatiously marks the amount I gave him in it. Then he swivels it around so I can see how much I have left to go.

I already know. It’s a lot.

“You might want to face reality sooner rather than later,” he tells me. “There’s no shame in it. You’re just a young girl, and these aren’t even your debts.”

“I don’t need to be given permission to fail by the guy personifying predatory lending, thanks.” I do not call him “Mr. Hendry,” as he’s repeatedly requested. I think it’s a gift that I don’t call him the colorful names my father liked to use when talking about him.

He shakes his head at me as if I am a great disappointment to him—not a surprise—and detaches the receipt part of the page to hand it to me.

“I can’t say that I appreciate your attitude, Winter.

I’ve been nothing but accommodating. And you are only extending the agony.

Losing that house is inevitable, I’m afraid. ”

“Maybe you missed the part where monsters rose from the dark shadows, ripped the world apart, and left us nothing but trouble, ruin, and imminent death.” I laugh.

“You or I could be torn apart by zombies at any moment, but sure, let’s talk about the inevitability of defaulting on a mortgage payment when I’m pretty sure there are no real financial institutions left. ”

We stare at each other, maybe both contemplating the injustice of this—but we both also know there’s not much I can do about it.

Who is there to complain to? Franklin Hendry doesn’t scare me in and of himself, but I know he has his goons on hand to take care of the people he considers squatters.

I can’t have them roughing up Gran the way they did the family that lived in a fifth wheel that Franklin had his eye on last fall.

He claimed they owed him money, they refused to pay, and next thing you know they’re all beat into little more than bruises. No one’s seen the father since.

Franklin has his own crew of monsters. They just happen to be human.

If it were just me, I’d tell him to go fuck himself and take my chances with his minions, but it’s not just me.

We both know he’s got me.

“Halloween, Winter,” he says softly.

I feel sick to my stomach, because there’s nothing I can do. Because I feel helpless, and I hate feeling helpless. Not that anyone likes it, but it reminds me of too many things, only some of them monster related.

Watching my parents get worse and worse before finally taking off. Watching Augie follow that same path, telling lie after lie until it was easier, somehow, for him to simply disappear.

This almost feels worse, because Franklin Hendry doesn’t have to do this. He’s not compelled by forces outside his control to be a dick. He wants to bully people he thinks are weak and have no recourse.

I just have to come up with more money.

I turn and storm back out of the historic bank onto Jacksonville’s pretty main street and run straight into Samuel.

Straight into him so that he catches me by my elbows and I nearly collide with his chest.

I wish I did.

“Oh,” I say, suddenly feeling the polar opposite of sickened. “Hi. I just—”

“Did you really rent out outbuildings on your property to actual monsters , Winter?” Samuel demands, scowling down into my face.

His green eyes are blazing . This is more exhilarating than he means it to be, I’m sure.

“Is this some kind of death wish? Because you don’t have to go to all the trouble of putting out ads for monsters, you know.

You can just go down to the river, show a vampire your neck, and let it feed. Problem solved.”