Page 103 of The Reveal
I’m not sure I understand until this very momenthowwrapped 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.Thatmakes 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. Thosethings.”
“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 roomone 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.”
