Page 123 of The Reveal
“The first serious question of the day,” I reply in the same tone.
When Gran glares at the pair of us, I feel like we’re little kids again. Being chastised in a public place, like the grocery store or our biannual church appearance, and I find myself grinning too.
“I used to come up to Crater Lake all the time,” Samuel tells us, and he seems more relaxed than he has lately. Maybe things are changing for the better after all. Maybe today really will solve our problems. Maybe this lake really is magic. “That’s one of the things I miss the most. It’s not safe to go hiking anymore. It’s certainly not wise to leave the valley and come all the way up here. No telling what lurks in the hills around a place as powerful as this.”
“It’s beautiful here,” Savi murmurs, looking out over the water. The rim of the crater is impressive, with mountains all around and cliffs that drop steeply and insistently into that wild blue water. “But dangerous. In many ways.”
“I wish it was sunny,” Samuel says, then sighs happily.
He keeps his gaze out on the water, and we all watch as he goes over and climbs up the bank a little bit, on the small rise that turns into the steep walls of the caldera, and slides all the way down into that unreal blue. He stops to stand beneath the trees like Ariel, still looking out across the crater.
I see the way Ariel looks at him, the way he would look at a pet that was acting out. Someone else’s pet, obviously. His are better behaved, and I flush when I think abouthowwell behaved I’d like to be for him.
Beside me, Augie shifts. “I can’t remember the last time I was up here. It was definitely sunny, though.”
“It was after we graduated from high school,” I say, because I remember all too well. I remember the good things. I collect them. “Late that summer. It was hot until we hit the water.”
Savi smiles. “I’m not opposed to a little bit of light,” she says. “To remind us what we’re fighting for.”
She looks over at Ariel as she speaks, and I realize why when he nods. He’s the vampire. He’s the one who has to worry about sunlight—and when his eyes go a bit unfocused and he does something with his hand, I assume he’s warning all his minions to take cover.
Savi chants, then seems to paint in the air. For a moment I see symbols on the breeze that remind me of the ones on my cards, but they’re gone before I can tell if I know them.
Her chant gets louder, and the gloom falls away. The sun beams down from its spot in the sky across the lake, and everything is suddenlydazzling.
Perfect.
The blues are impossible. The greens are glorious. The snow glitters and gleams like crushed diamonds. I canfeelall this light inside me, like it’s lifting me up and changing all my molecules as it goes. Like it’s infusing us all with joy, right here where we stand.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were more than one god or goddess stuck down there beneath all that unearthly blue, because the other thing that’s unmistakable about this place is the power that seems to sing out of the rocks themselves.
McLoughlin was the same. Volcanoes make themselves known, that much is for sure.
The sun feels good on my face. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it for more than a few sunrise or sunset moments, and longer still since I’ve had the time or felt safe enough to feel it all over me. I let my eyes drift shut. I bask.
When I open my eyes, I see Samuel still standing at the top of that little rise. He’s staring out at the sun with a smile on his face. He stands a little ways above Ariel, who is not gazing hopelessly at the sun as a person who’s watched too many vampire shows might imagine, but is instead looking down at the water with a strange expression I can’t quite place.
All of this feels like grief and love, hope and despair. All of it, from the sun on my face to the blue of the water so far below. The exquisite price of living, and maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe life has always been, like that song my mom used to play when I was little, so precious and so cruel.
Maybe monsters aren’t the only thing that’s been revealed in these last few years. Maybe the truth about the Reveal is that it’s a mirror, where we see who we really are.
I’m going to have to think about that, and now is not the time.
I wish that this moment of sunshine could last forever, but I can already sense the impatience coming in hot from Ty. And if there are spells to cast and goddesses to chain up tight, I’m for doing it quicker.
After all, I’m the one who had to talk to that bitch. I’d prefer to never dothatagain.
I turn to say something and see that Samuel is making his way down the hill. I think that it was sweet of him to suggest this and sweeter still of Savi to give the humans a moment. I decide to tell him so as he moves behind Ariel, who stands so still he might as well be one of the pines.
And then everything happens in slow motion. And almost cinematically.
Samuel lunges forward. Then Ariel is falling. Over the side of the cliff, out of the shadows and into the light.
The sunlight that immediately begins to burn him.
Everything in me screamsno—
I hear the werewolves howl—
