Page 35 of The Reveal
To my astonishment, he laughs. It’s a low, quiet thing, sounding faintly like music, or maybe that’s simply how my body interprets it.
And how it tries to sing along.
“It is very difficult to surprise me,” Ariel tells me. “And you’ve done it more tonight than anyone else has. In a long, long time.”
“Gold star for me.”
But I look away from the curious intensity on his face. I look up, and there they are. All the stars I didn’t know I would miss like this. The whole Milky Way itself, a bright, hot mess shining on down from so far away. Looking at this planet that, on the surface, probably still looks green and blue, spinning lushly about our sun.
Instead of black the way it is down here on the ground, washed over with blood.
I was always about the sunshine. I never would’ve guessed how much I’d come to miss dark. The night.
The stars.
I could tell him that I’ve seen the stars more recently than since the Reveal, but I don’t. It feels too intimate.
A feeling I should not be having around Ariel Skinner, King of the Damned. I shouldn’t be having any feelings at all. So I concentrate on the feelings I’ll allow myself. “Are you going to tell me about my brother? Or did you bring me up here to toss me off the side of this building so I can die like everyone else?”
“I don’t have to throw people off the sides of buildings to kill them,” he says, as if I’m being amusing.
On purpose.
That makes my temper kick in, and that’s a good thing. I need a little anger. I need ...something. Anything that feels like a weapon in a situation like this.
“You said that Augie is alive. Is he hurt?”
“His demons are bigger than he is,” Ariel says. “You can call that hurt if you like.”
“Let me see if I have this straight. You came to my door. You left a summons. I answered that summons, and you told me that ... what? He owes you money? So does that mean you think I owe you too if he can’t pay you?”
“Something like that,” Ariel says, and I choose not to think too closely about the way he’s looking at me. Or the way he said that, like he means something else entirely.
Maybe I can’t let myself think about it, because that feels like surrender.
“This is very surprising,” I say instead. “I was told you were very civilized. I didn’t realize they meant not only civilized for a vampire, but for the average Mob boss, too.”
“I’ve never cared much for Italian food.” Ariel drifts over, and for a creature who as far as I know can turn into a bat, suck my blood, andtransform into something horrible before my very eyes, he is remarkably ... physical. I try to tell myself that this response I’m having to him is false, that he’s doing it, that it’s part of that mesmerizing thing vampires like so much, but I can’t quite convince myself.
Because beautiful is beautiful. And believe me, these days, no one takes beautiful for granted.
“I don’t have any money,” I tell him flat out. “And any money I do have is already being extorted from me, so you’re going to have to get in line.”
I get the sense that he doesn’t like that much, but when I glance at him, his expression is unreadable. So I don’t know if he’s against the extortion part or the fact that I don’t have the thing he wants.
“Money would be easy,” he says. “This is not about money at all.”
I want to be relieved. I’m not.
“Your brother is in a precarious state,” he tells me. “I think perhaps I can help him. If you help me.”
I’ve vowed to myself a thousand times that I’m done with Augie, but who am I kidding? He’s my twin. Literally the other half of me. And if he’s addicted to vampire blood like so many people are these days, there’s a silver lining there. It means he’s off the other stuff. The human stuff. I don’t know what it takes to detox from blood, but maybe it’s different.
And maybe pigs will start flying around in Jacksonville.
Either way, this is still my only brother we’re talking about. I’ve never been able to convince him to save himself. But Ariel isn’t asking for that. He’s asking me to step in and do something that might save Augie whether Augie himself wants it or not.
And unlike well-meaning pastors and counselors over the years, Ariel has the power to compel Augie to do it.
