Page 118 of The Reveal
I sit with that long after she heads back out into the night, lit up by a chunky half-moon a little too close to three-quarters full. It reminds me how little time we have left.
“Did you have fun in town?” I ask Augie the next day. He and I are doing a perimeter check, though that duty has shifted, too. It used tobe that I was looking for holes in our defenses or evidence that monsters have been sniffing around. These days, I’m not that worried about defending us. If the monsters want us, most of them have a key.
But I still need to know what’s going on with our property, because the alternative feels like being willfully blind.
“Jacksonville was exactly the same,” Augie says. “And completely different. It was trippy.”
It’s a chilly morning. There’s frost on the ground, and the mist is thick and wet and decidedly unvampiric. The leaves on the trees are shades of gold. The pine trees stand green and tall. It’s October 26.
“It’s a small town,” I remind him as we check the woods behind the cottages. “Give or take a few apocalypses, that is.”
“What I want to know is how so many people got eaten, but the same pack of middle-aged barflies are still there. Not a hair on any of their heads harmed.”
“Maybe they’re too pickled to eat,” I theorize. “Not everybody likes a pickle. Hard as that might be for you or me to believe, I know.”
“I had Samuel in my face,” Augie says as we keep to the tree line, looking for tracks or tells, checking out angles and potential surveillance spots. “He thinks the monsters got to you.”
“He’s obsessed with monsters. It’s so weird. You would think that of all people, he would be the least wound up by the presence of them since he works with them. But I swear, after spending all this time negotiating with them, he’s just ...”
I don’t even know what he is. I do know that once again, out of sight is out of mind with him, and I still feel strange about it.
“I don’t think he’s obsessed with monsters, Winter.” Augie looks at me like I’m being dumb on purpose. “I think he’s obsessed with you.”
I laugh, and my voice startles a little cluster of wild turkeys. They flutter a bit, then saunter away, eternally unfazed.
“I can’t tell you how much I wish that were true. How much I would have loved that to be true about a year ago, but it’s not. You know we hooked up one time.”
“You hooked up? With Samuel Ruiz?”
I ignore the way he asks that, a littletoosurprised for my liking. “It was a long time ago, it never happened again, and honestly? I don’t even know if he remembers it happened in the first place. If he does, he didn’t care enough about it to discuss it, much less get moody about it years later. He’s not obsessed with me. Really.”
“Whether he is or isn’t, that’s how he acts.” Augie sniffs. “I told him to get it together. You’re the goddamn oracle. He’s beneath you.” He glares at me. “Which was also true before you were the oracle.”
I don’t know if he actually said that to Samuel or not, but I’ll admit that I choose to believe he did. Makes me feel warm and happy.
I try to hold on to that feeling as the last week of October begins, slinking in all ice and gloom, and Savi announces that it will be go time on Friday. Halloween.
Because, of course, it’s not only a full moon, but a blue moon. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing a self-obsessed bitch goddess like Vinca would like.
The plan is that we’ll go by day. Savi has a spell ready. She and the other powers have put their heads together and determined a strategy.
We go over this at sundown on Thursday, though it seems a lot colder and grimmer out in the yard now. Once again, Briar is nowhere to be seen. I’m relieved. I might not know who she is or why she’s here—or even if she’s human—but she’s not exactly a force for good.
Even on a simple tenant level.
This time, Ty comes without his lieutenants, and both he and Ariel crowd onto the porch.
It makes for a tight little group.
If Samuel’s nursing his obsession for me, he hides it well. He’s much too busy glaring at Ariel, then Ty, and then back again.
“Usually, these things are done at moonrise, in the dark,” Savi says for the human contingent, since I assume everyone else already knows this. “That’s why we’re not doing it that way. If we do it in daylight, it gives us an advantage.”
“Is this goddess a creature of the night?” Augie asks.
“Not at all,” Ariel replies. “It’s nothing but habit. It is easier to be scary in the dark, perhaps.”
I absolutely do not look over at him.
