Page 122 of The Reveal
I’d like to ignore that, but even here, in the midst of all this natural beauty and without the faintest hint around me that he exists or vampires evencouldexist, I can’t stop thinking about him.
That and the way he kissed me last night.
I scowl at the water, so blue it seems to bleed into me. As if looking at it makes you a part of it.
Samuel makes a low noise. I look up, blink the blue away, and see that our wolf guards are with us still. Now they’re sitting on either side of the little knot of us at the wall. They do not change into human form so they can communicate with us. This seems significant.
I recognize them as the lieutenants Ty brought with him to my house that time, but I can see that Samuel doesn’t.
I don’t identify them to him.
Especially because I get the distinct impression that they know that staying in their wolf form bothers him and are therefore doing it deliberately.
Ariel appears then, flickering into view in the middle of a thick tangle of conifers, high on the little swell of hill that juts out beyond the wall. He’s dressed differently today, or maybe it’s that I finally realize he’s been wearing different forms of combat attire this whole time. Today he’s pulled it all together. Those combat pants and the typical black T-shirt, though this one looks like it’s made of a more technical fabric. I can see every mouthwatering ridge on his abdomen. He wears a harness like mine, with wicked-looking blades attached to it and shotguns at his back.
He looks around, his gaze cool and assessing as he takes in the scene, and I have no choice but to think about what twenty-five hundred years of fightingreally is. It’s this. It’s him. He’s a weapon. From head to toe, one carved muscle to the next. Every inch of him is deadly.
I know that better than most.
I can’t let myself look at him beyond that initial first glance. I’m afraid that if I do, my own grandmother will see the longing on my face. And then, obviously, I will have to immediately die of embarrassment. Nobody wants that.
Gran moves forward to brace herself against the wall looking out over the lake. Augie and I stay back, watching—or in my case, not watching—as Ariel moves around in the gray morning, clearly performing tactical objectives he does not share with the group.
The cold gets to me and I shiver, then zip up my coat now that we’re out of the warm cab of Samuel’s truck. Augie’s gaze cuts to me and he lifts his chin. “Where’s that medallion?”
I stop mid-zip and feel around for it. “I think I took it off last time I showered. Must have left it on my bedside table.”
The truth is, I don’t remember the last time I had it on. Ariel’s apartment, maybe. But it burned. For some reason, I think of thatweirdo Briar standing there in the kitchen, scowling at me with her hand in the same place mine is now.
“You should find it and wear it,” Augie tells me. “It’s supposed to deal with evil spirits and that kind of shit.”
“Again, I think maybe you should wear it, then.”
He looks at me for a moment, then over at Ariel, who is studying the lake down below us now as if he expects an eruption at any moment. “Because your evil spirits are hot?”
I do not deign to answer that.
Also, my brother is right. Ariel is hot.
And I was up for most of the night drowning in that kiss of his. Reliving it again and again and again, and imagining it going further. I’m glad that our twin bond doesn’t allow foractuallyreading minds.
There’s a sudden golden light, and when Ariel doesn’t react to it, I know it’s Savi’s dramatic appearance. Sure enough, she arrives in an all-white ensemble that makes her look like a dream, and she seems to float above the snow when she moves. Maybe she really is floating.
Soon after, two wolves I recognize, one of them enormous and the other much sleeker than either of the lieutenants, lope over to take their place beside us.
There’s that thunderclap and flash, and then we’re all together again.
Ariel comes down from the little rise he’s walked all over so he’s closer to the group. “It seems very on the nose, but I can’t help thinking that they call it Wizard Island for a reason.”
“I do like the symmetry,” Savi says. “It’s not hard to imagine that another sorcerer would as well.”
We all gaze out at the little island that sits there. So named, as far as I have ever been aware, because it actually looks like a wizard’s hat.
“I know we’re all here for a serious reason,” Samuel says, and he has a big, sappy kind of grin on his face as he walks toward the end of the wall, near where Ariel is standing beneath the last tree. It makes me feel guilty for finding him so ... Well. For finding him less hot than I used to. Less ...everything, and how is that fair? I’m comparinghim to an immortal Spartan vampire warrior. Who could measure up? “But it’s only a serious reason that would get me to drive up this way, and probably, if I did it myself, I would’ve been eaten by goblins. Or whatever’s living in Union Creek.”
“You don’t want to know,” Ty assures him with an ominous-sounding laugh.
“Do they get to eat Beckie’s pie, though?” Augie asks me in an undertone.
