Page 51 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

“We are all tired of playing games.” She laughs, but when she tilts her head slightly, her gaze is assessing. “Though it is not my experience that anyone or anything cares if you’re tired. You still have to play.”

“Noted,” I say. “That sounds like an order, not a pep talk.”

“Who am I to tell an oracle what her future holds?” Savi replies, lightly. Very, very lightly.

I can feel the cards nestled against my heart, pressing in hard.

I forget about getting food, because the truth is, I’m not that hungry any longer. When I let myself into the house, I go to Gran’s room. I don’t let myself look out the windows to see what Savi might be doing.

I’m not sure what I’m expecting. I haven’t left Gran here for this long in years, and I have no idea what state I’ll find her in. I’m already mad at myself, though I know I couldn’t have done anything differently.

But when I walk in, she’s sitting up in her chair by the window looking clean and well kempt.

“I was beginning to think you died out there,” she says with a sniff.

“I’m sorry I left you for so long, Gran.” I decide not to play the game of does she know me today. “I figured you would understand. But I’m glad you seem to have managed.”

“Savi helped me.” Gran lifts her brow at the expression on my face then. “I might not be on death’s door, but I’m no spring chicken. As I’ve said. Besides.” She looks at me gravely. “I’ve known Savi for some time.”

I refuse to ask how Savi got in. I’m sure I don’t want to know. “The sorceress, you mean.”

We stare at each other. I realize I’m standing just inside the door, my arms crossed belligerently, so I move farther into the room and go to sit on the edge of her bed. So we can face each other.

“The fact that you’re not overwhelmed with joy that you are the oracle is a good thing,” Gran tells me. Slowly. “It’s those who are a little too pleased to find they have the sight that end up blinded. It’s appropriate to be apprehensive. Seeing what is to come is a heavy load to carry.”

Her gaze doesn’t waver. “There is a large part of me that was pleased that Lilianne was spared. She could never have held up to the demands of the cards, let alone the visions themselves.”

“I saw Augie.” I blurt that out. “I actually talked to him. He’s not well in the sense of being clean, but he looks well. I’m not sure which is worse.”

“When I see him, I see him in despair,” Gran says quietly. “Buried somewhere in the earth, not dead but not quite alive, either.”

“Yes,” I say. “More or less that.”

We sit there for what feels like far too long, and I hope Augie feels it, down there in his cell. I hope he knows that there are people here who still love him.

“I need you to listen to me.” Gran surprises me by leaning forward and taking my hand in hers.

“I have always known that this gift would be yours. I have always understood that you would be the one to take my place. I waited for you to step into the role and accept it as only you can, but I want you to know that I never had any doubt. Not the way I did when I wondered if it would be your mother. I knew she couldn’t handle it.

But you’re something else. You’re stronger in every possible way. ”

I think about the things that Ariel did to me. The things I let him do. The things I begged him to do. The things I am pretty sure I would do again, if he asked, no matter how I might have left him earlier.

“I don’t think I’m stronger at all,” I say quietly.

“It’s not a question of opinion.” Again, she looks at me in that intense way of hers, as if she’s looking straight into me, right past all my defenses. “Remember, child, I have always known where this is going. And you are the only one strong enough to survive it.”

“I met Vin?a,” I tell her. “The Goddess of Filth herself, in a vision. At least, I think it was a vision.”

“But to look upon her face is to die,” Gran says softly. “For such is the terror and wonder of her bearing. So it has been foretold.”

“The funny thing is that I think I did die,” I say after a moment. “I just didn’t realize it at the time. But it turns out I had a secret weapon.”

Once again, we take the measure of each other, my grandmother and me. We have gazed at each other too many times to count over the course of my life. But this time, maybe for the first time, we’re truly seeing who we are.

Indigo eyes and all.

“Do you still have a pulse?” she asks quietly.

“I have a pulse.” I can’t tell if she looks relieved or disappointed. “But between you and me, I’m not entirely certain I qualify as one hundred percent human any longer.”

“You are the oracle.” Gran says that with a little nod that tells me that whatever else she is, she’s deeply proud. I plan to think about that later, when I’m alone and don’t have to worry that what I feel shows on my face. “You can and should be whatever you wish.”

First there are chores to catch up on. I start with the laundry, and when I bring mine down into the laundry room I see that Maddox left me my hiking pack by the door.

It amazes me how long ago that hike feels to me now.

It seems like a whole different lifetime when I thought I could charge up a mountainside and outwit a death goddess, when it was only yesterday.

Like that Winter was very different from the one who called the most powerful monsters in the valley over for a meeting tonight.

By the time sundown rolls around, I’m more than ready.

“You want to do this outside?” Savi asks, sounding faintly scandalized when she comes down to find me settling Gran on the bench out on the porch.

“I sure hope it doesn’t keep raining,” I murmur. “That would suck.”

Sure enough, the rain tapers off and slides into a lovely, pretty evening.

The clouds are stacked high into the sky.

The sun plays through them, and Gran and I both sigh a little as we watch it, because it’s so typically Oregon.

And because we normally don’t stop to appreciate such things—mostly because they are usually wreathed in smoke.

As the sun cools and the sky darkens, we hear the sound of revving motorcycle engines in the distance.

“Here come the wolves,” Gran mutters.

They come roaring up the drive. Ty is first on a big-ass Harley, with Maddox sitting behind him. Two other men flank him, and they all pull up dramatically by the side of the house, in perfect formation.

I want to ask them if they practice their choreography. I think better of it.

Maddox swings off the back of Ty’s bike with her usual lazy grace. She comes sauntering over to the porch, sweeps a look over Savi and my grandmother, then settles on me.

“‘Sundown in the front yard,’” she says, but not in her own voice. It takes me a second to realize she’s quoting the note I left her. “‘Bring your alpha.’” Maddox shakes her head. “When did you get so butch, Winter?”

“Winter is the consort of the vampire king,” Savi reminds her. I’m not sure I like that word or feel that it describes my whole thing with Ariel, but she keeps going. “That would be a powerful position even if she wasn’t the oracle. Empires have been built on less.”

Maddox shoots me a speculative look. “You building empires, Winter?”

“Sure.” I have to make myself laugh. “I’ll get right on that.”

I realize I’m tense as the last of the light spills all around us in the last few moments of proper daylight before the sun disappears behind the mountains.

I’m tense—but then I see it. A sudden bit of mist when there was none there a moment ago, undulating up from the ground.

I know it’s him.

Sure enough, the mist resolves into a man, and it’s Ariel.

He looks around the clearing, taking in the group of us on the porch and the werewolves to the side. Then he does something with one hand, some kind of peremptory gesture, and a pair of vampires appear. I haven’t seen either one of them before, but I forget about them the minute I see them.

Because they’re holding Augie between them.

Ariel issues an order in a language I don’t understand. His vampire minions bow their heads slightly and disappear again, leaving Augie behind. Standing there in the cold, wet grass in the middle of our yard.

For a moment, everything is frozen.

Augie sways a little, and while I see they managed to give him a pair of pants and a T-shirt, he’s still in bare feet.

He looks unsteady on those feet, but he doesn’t fall over—and I wonder if it’s physical or emotional.

He glances at Ariel, who remains unreadable.

His gaze moves to Ty, who stares back at him unflinchingly.

He straightens when he sees Maddox and Savi over by the porch. He looks at me.

“Augie,” I whisper.

When he moves, it’s toward Gran.

It takes everything I have not to run to his side, to help him, to guide him. Yet somehow, I know better.

My brother walks haltingly at first, as if he expects vampires to appear and drag him back to that dungeon. A valid concern. When they don’t, he moves quicker, until he’s practically running.

He keeps going until he makes it to Gran’s chair, then he goes down to his knees in front of her.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “Gran, I’m so sorry.”

And my grandmother, who was always so strict and so unforgiving to our parents and to Augie before, opens up her arms and hugs him tight.

I have to blink to make sure I don’t cry.

It’s a very close call.

“It’s time for us all to work together,” I say, forcing the words past the lump in my throat before there can be any other surprises.

“Some of you have been working together already. Congratulations. But as far as I can tell, I’m the one with a connection to Vin?a, the very-much-more-than-foul bitch who wants to kill us all.

So maybe it’s time to stop keeping me in the dark. ”

“The oracle was never in the dark—you just took your time taking her place,” Ty says with a drawl. “If you want to be in the loop, you have to step up and face the responsibilities of your role. That’s just the way it is.”