Page 44 of The Monster and the Last Blood Match

“Hey, guys,” Everett said with a smile.

“Oh, Everett,” Mara cried. She wrapped her arms around his waist and gave him a big hug. He laughed at her and patted her twice on the shoulder.

“I’m okay, Mara.”

“What the hell happened to you? We thought you guys split.” She gave Reyna an accusatory look.

Reyna had a feeling this was more about the fact that she’d thought Everett and Reyna left together than to find out the details. It was pretty obvious that she liked him. It was strange that Mara was threatened by her. She had never been that woman before, and honestly she shouldn’t be now. She liked Everett as a friend, but that was it. Her heart was careening in a completely opposite direction. A direction she shouldn’t even be considering.

“Yeah. Are you all right?” Brianna asked, nudging Coop forward into the room.

It was starting to get very crowded. Reyna felt conscious of the fact that she was seated close to Everett.

“We’re both okay. We were attacked by a rogue vampire,” Everett explained.

Mara gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth. Everyone else looked stricken at the prospect.

“He fed from me. Drew enough blood that I passed out, and if I hadn’t been immediately transported to a hospital, I would have died.”

Reyna nodded solemnly. “He came after me next. Threw me against the dumpster, and I suffered a head injury, but uh…another vampire came and saved us.”

“What?” Brianna asked, confused.

“Another vamp?” Tucker asked. “A bloodsucker fending off his own kind?”

“Yeah,” she said softly.

Mara narrowed her eyes. “What the hell, Everett? Why would a vamp interfere?”

Reyna blushed and kept her eyes firmly fixed on the sheet. Everett remained silent. It would be hard to lie about this one. Lying about where she worked had been easy, but this was something else entirely. Vampires didn’t act like this without motive.

“Oh my God,” Mara cried. “You work for them, for Visage!”

Reyna cringed at the accusation in Mara’s voice. She wanted to speak up and tell her all the things that she and Everett had been speaking about only yesterday. How stigmatizing the work only hurt the people who were in it and how she had made her choice knowing full well what was going on, and feelingbadfor people who did this job didn’t help anything. But instead she just sat there.

Everett shook his head. “Mara, that’s enough.”

“Visage shouldn’t even exist,” Mara said. “I’m sorry, Reyna, but you shouldn’t be working within the system. You should be trying to take it down.”

Brianna sighed. “We want to help these people, not turn them away, Mara.”

Tucker and Coop were looking anywhere but at Reyna, caught in the crossfire.

“She’s the one who lied to our faces.”

“That was me, actually,” Everett said. “And you can’t blame her even if she did.”

Reyna squared her shoulders. She couldn’t sit back and let them voice this vitriol to her. “I’m still human. You could act like you have an ounce of humanity.”

“You’re giving up your humanity to them every time you let them drink from you,” Mara accused.

“Guys, stop it,” Everett yelled, silencing them all. “Leave Reyna alone.”

“How can you defend her?” Mara demanded. “She lets a vampire suck her blood for money. The only thing worse is a fucking vampire.”

“That vampire saved my life,” Everett reminded them. “Maybe not all of them are bad.”

“One exception isn’t enough to undo generations of atrocities,” Mara cried fiercely.

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