Page 133 of The Reveal
I decide, then and there, that I will.
No matter what.
30.
There’s another gathering the next evening, All Saints’ Day, or maybe it’s a kind of wake for the woman we all lost.
We sit around in the living room of the house, and these powerful supernatural creatures tell me stories about my grandmother. The oracle they knew, like it or not.
How imperious she was in the face of creatures who could eat her in two bites. How happy she was to lecture a werewolf or vampire on how they should clean up their act.
How certain she was that they would not dare hurt her ... and she was right.
“She was a terror,” Ty growls, but I’m beginning to understand the werewolf alpha now. I can tell the difference between his bark and his bite. He catches my gaze and holds it. “She will be missed.”
We talk about Gran for a long while.
Later, we turn to other topics, now that we’re all showered and fed and recovered. Or as close to recovered as we’re going to get.
“Do we think that the goddess will stay like that?” Maddox asks from where she sits on Ty’s lap. “My vote is no.”
“Almost certainly not, though the magic was good,” Savi agrees. She is a bit tired and pale, and she sits in the armchair in the living room, a poultice of unidentifiable herbs pressed to one temple. Though she smiles a little. “I think we have to assume that we only scratched the surface of her followers. Hopefully the last of that particular type. Allthose nasty priests and people consumed with religious fervor. There are other ways. Other kinds of interest in death goddesses. It’s not all cults and bird masks.” She laughs. “I hope.”
When the knock comes on the door, we all know what it is without having to look. Ariel confirms it, inclining his head to indicate to Augie and all the rest of us that it’s his delivery.
My twin brother stands. He looks around the room, and he seems ...
Not defeated. Not exactly.
“I hate this,” he says, baldly. Matter-of-factly. No self-pity discernible at all in his voice. “I can’t function without it, but I fucking hate vampire blood. And I don’t want to leave Winter with all of this again, which I feel is inevitable if I need something like this.” He shakes his head, and he looks at me ... but he’s not talkingtome. “I need to detox. I need to kick this.”
There’s a small silence. I’m holding my breath. I’m also certain that no one here understands the importance of what just happened.
I’ve heard Augie talk about quitting things before, but it was always couched in maybes. It was never statements to groups. It was never without drama and emotion, because he was never matter-of-fact about it.
Because he never meant it.
“Canyou kick vampire blood?” Savi asks. She’s looking at Ariel.
He lifts a shoulder and drops it. It is not reassuring. “I have heard that it can happen, though it is rare,” he says. That silver gaze is too knowing. He moves it to Augie. “It is a long, arduous process. There is no guarantee that you will survive it.”
Augie is still standing in the middle of the room. He still looksso goodto me. He looks healthy, happy. I have to remind myself that he’s not. That it’s the blood doing this to him.
“Most blood addicts don’t last as long as I have.” His voice is quiet. “They either try to ingest too much and it kills them, or they get drained and discarded by their dealers while they’re still pretty. I spent a lot of time in that dungeon, wondering what made me so lucky.”
The way he saysluckymakes my eyes tear up. I blink the moisture away.
“Blood,” Augie says. “It’s always blood, isn’t it?” He’s looking straight at Ariel now. “You wanted that oracle bloodline, and if Winter, the chosen heir, didn’t work out, you wanted to have the spare on hand.”
My heart skips a beat, though I had already gotten there. And Ariel doesn’t deny it. Instead, he nods.
“We are, all of us, controlled by our weaknesses,” he says. “Your sister’s weakness is you. Yours are your addictions. There is no possible way you do not know this already. If you can’t control yourself, anyone can control you. And therefore her.”
I want to slug him. I want to kiss him. I hate him for saying something like that to my twin.
I love him for saying it so plainly, no dancing around it at all.
The kind of no-bullshit intervention we never gave Augie, I’m ashamed to say.
