Page 50 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

“Hey, Samuel,” I say, and I wait for that melting feeling to wash over me the way it usually does when I see him.

It doesn’t happen.

He’s staring right at me, and I look back at him and wait for my nervous system to react, but it doesn’t.

I try to drink him in the way I used to, but instead all I see is .

.. a guy. A good-looking one, sure. He still has those shoulders and those green eyes.

They are very green , and they look particularly good set against the black of his brows and his hair.

But he’s just a guy.

I’m not sure I understand until this very moment how wrapped up in Ariel I am. How deep I’ve fallen down that rabbit hole.

Or how little I want to come back up for air.

That’s the thought I try to push away before it takes hold, but I don’t quite get there. I have the urge to put my hand up and fit it over that tender place on my neck that only I know is where he bit me, but I don’t.

Still, the very idea of fangs deep in my body makes me heat up enough that I’m surprised I’m not letting off steam into the cool air.

Samuel strikes me as more of a memory than anything else as he comes off the porch of the little house to meet me on the sidewalk. A memory, but not one that has me feeling nostalgic.

It’s always nice to see old friends, I tell myself. Mostly because if I don’t, I assume they’re dead.

“I asked you where you’ve been,” he says as he draws closer.

I’m certain I misheard that. “What?”

“I saw your truck the other night,” he says in that same confrontational way. I’m so floored by this that I don’t do anything but stare. “Had to be three o’clock in the morning. Where the hell were you coming from at that hour?”

“Samuel.” I keep looking for the Samuel I’ve spent all this time admiring on his face, but he’s just glaring at me.

Maybe it wasn’t him I admired. Maybe it was just something to do while the world was ending.

That makes me feel something, but it’s still not nostalgia.

“Curfew is a suggestion, not a law. Even if it was a law, you’re not the police.

The only thing you can do is encourage people to behave in their own best interest. I don’t recall agreeing to file itineraries with you. ”

“So you are consorting with monsters.” He says that like he caught me out. Then he shakes his head at me. “Unbelievable.”

“If I am consorting with monsters, I would have learned that from you.” I’m nodding at him, encouraging him to stop doing whatever this is.

“You’re the one who built bridges with them in the first place.

It seems to me that we should all do the same.

Or all we are here in Jacksonville is a petting zoo. ”

I’m over my little walk and start to turn back but stop when he grabs my wrist.

There was a time, and not long ago, when a single touch from Samuel would have had me giddy for days. It was never the touch itself. It was that I would obsess about it. And it was nice to be touched by someone, especially after Augie disappeared. It’s not like Gran is tactile.

Now I find myself staring down at his fingers wrapped around my wrist, wondering what on earth gives him the audacity to think he can wander around grabbing people like this.

“Let go of me,” I tell him.

I don’t know what’s in my voice, or what he sees on my face, but he lets go.

I pull my hand back and grip my wrist myself, like I need to restore my equilibrium or wipe his touch away.

“You’ve changed,” Samuel tells me in a low voice, and this is clearly an insult.

“I don’t think I have.” What I think is that he doesn’t know me well enough to discern whether or not I’ve changed, but I don’t say that.

“I knew it was a bad idea for you to let those people live up there with you. Those things .”

“It could have been a terrible idea,” I agree.

“But it doesn’t really matter, because they pay me money.

I have to have money, Samuel, or Franklin Hendry will throw me on the street, which can’t happen.

Not because I couldn’t figure it out, but because my grandmother needs her house.

So what I don’t need is your commentary on the practical solution I took to solve my problem. ”

“You need to be careful.” He’s scowling at me as if I’ve defied him, or betrayed him, and I have to remind myself that this is the same person I banged in my living room one time , and neither one of us mentioned it again.

And this didn’t happen last week—it was a year and a half ago, or more.

“There are more important things than money, Winter.”

“Spoken by someone who isn’t going to lose the roof over his head anytime soon.” I shake my head. “Listen. Things are a little tense right now. I know that you made yourself the liaison between the humans here and the powers in this valley, so you’ve undoubtedly seen things the rest of us haven’t.”

“It was a position that needed to be filled. I was willing to fill it.”

I think he sounds defensive, but I don’t trust any of the things I’m feeling around him today. Or what I’m feeling in general. Maybe I really shouldn’t be out here interacting with anyone. Maybe I’m still processing what happened to me. What Ariel did to me.

What he made me, because I can feel that I’m different now.

“No one’s arguing that,” I tell him, and I’m not placating him. I can’t see any point in fighting with him. “There’s a big meeting tonight. Sundown. My house.”

He stares at me for far too long, until it’s like I’m looking at a stranger. “What are you talking about?”

“The werewolf alpha, the vampire king, and the sorceress,” I say, slowly, watching him take that in like it’s further evidence of me betraying him. “Everyone will be there. It would be nice if you came to represent the human voice.”

“And what are you exactly, Winter?”

His eyes are so green, but I don’t find them mesmerizing.

Not anymore. “I think you know. I’ve taken over for my grandmother.

” And he doesn’t deserve to know how stating something like that, so matter-of-factly when I’ve been trying so hard not to accept it, hits me.

Or how the cards that are wedged inside my shirt seem to hum.

I make myself smile. Sort of. “Anyway, I hope to see you tonight?”

For the first time I can remember since the Reveal started and I spent more time with Samuel—only once not in public—I can’t wait to get away from him. I keep that smile on my face, back away, then turn and walk briskly back toward my truck.

I feel good about myself for extending that olive branch.

It’s not his fault that the crush I had on him has disappeared like it never existed. There’s no reason for me to treat him any differently. After all, he is exactly the same.

I’m the one who’s changed.

When I make it home, I tell myself that I should probably get something to eat since I can’t remember the last time I put food in my body—

But I stop dead before I make it to the front door, because Savi’s there.

She’s sitting on the front step and looks a lot like she’s sitting on a throne, though that could be because I know who she is now.

Once again, the sweep of her dark hair is so glossy it defies description. Her eyes are luminous and direct. Her skin is dewy , and I’m not even the kind of person who notices things like skin . Today she’s wearing what looks like a simple pair of trousers and a sweater, but this is Savi.

So of course she looks like a magazine spread.

She gazes at me for a long while. I return the favor.

“Sorcery,” I say. Eventually. “You’re a sorceress .”

“I’m afraid so.”

“That would explain the chanting I always hear from your room. Not a happy little meditation practice, I’m guessing.”

“I find spell work can be very meditative.” Her lips curve slightly. “But no, I’m not much for yoga.”

“And almost everyone in this house knew who you were. Everyone but me.”

“I wasn’t hiding.” Savi says that very matter-of-factly. “Though I am also not in the habit of illuminating those who seem perfectly happy in the dark.”

“What about people who don’t know they’re in the dark because they’re being manipulated by the sorceress who plays with the weather?”

She inclines her head. “I have been in this valley for a long time. Long by your standards, anyway. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to find, especially when there’s an interstate that runs right through it, but even before the Reveal it was something of a forgotten place.”

Five hours to the Bay Area, five hours to Portland—not that either place is likely standing these days. “Is that something you did deliberately?”

“It’s true that I don’t wish to be found.” Savi does not answer the question. Not directly. “I’ve been on the run for some time.”

“From your family,” I say, remembering something Ariel said.

“From my own family, yes. And also from my husband.” I work hard not to react to that. I get the feeling she’s doing the same. “It’s hard to say, century to century, if they’re still looking. Sorcerers love nothing more than an epic grudge, however. So I imagine they are.”

I think about the cards that follow me wherever I go. I think about Gran. About the inevitability who is Ariel. “I didn’t have any choice about the things that chase me. Did you?”

Her smile widens. “I see you’re stepping into your role.” But her expression shifts. “Very few of us do. You do your best to survive, and if there’s space, you do what you can to thrive a little, too. Whether your life is short or long, that’s really all there is to it.”

“Great pep talk,” I tell her, and I’m surprised to find I feel like laughing.

“In case no one told you, I’m calling a meeting.

Right here at sundown. I’ll need you there.

I’m tired of playing games, and maybe you haven’t heard in between making the rain and the smoke, but there’s a death goddess with a major attitude problem on the loose.

Might make sense for the big, bad supernatural creatures to focus on that. ”