Page 43 of The Reveal
I gaped at him, absolutely certain that what had just happened between us was messing with my head. Making me loopy and strange. Because what he was saying couldn’t possibly make any sense.
So he said it again.The most powerful oracle on this continent lives right here.He spoke slowly. Deliberately.You know her. More than know her.
Stop it,I gritted out.
Sarah Jessup Brown,he said, and the second time wasn’t any better.
It was like it caused a short circuit inside me. I can still feel it now, as if something snapped. Or burned straight through. I can feel it fraying inside me.
He only stared at me, those silver eyes making that burning sensation inside of me worse.Your grandmother, Winter.
Like I don’t know my own grandmother’s name.
I still can’t believe it.
I start to get out of the truck in the same daze I’ve been in since he told me, but I catch myself. Slacking off on protocols is a great way to get eaten, and much as I might have wanted to be picked off on the way home, I’m here now. Might as well get some answers before I become someone’s midnight snack.
I remember what Maddox said about her presence here keeping the rest of us safe, but I decide it would be foolish to bank on that, monsters being monsters and all. I gather up all my weapons, tucking them back into place, and I let it become something like a meditation. The sound of each gun as I check the chamber, the safety. As I secure them into place and then slide my knives back in my boots.
These little rituals that save us, in the end, by becoming muscle memory when it matters most.
I’ve been sitting out here long enough for my eyes to fully adjust to the dark of the yard, and as I peer around, I see nothing but the watching, waiting trees and hints of life behind boarded-up windows. I ease the truck door open, close it behind me, and assess the yard once more—this time with my gun in one hand and my keys to the front door’s assortment of locks in the other.
I pause briefly there, but only to listen for any sounds in the thick dark around me. There’s that chanting sound that I’m beginning to associate with Savi and whatever meditation practice she has that goes along with her veganism and all the rest of it. Very Ashland, really. Other than that, I don’t hear anything but the wind through the trees.
I sprint, then. And I don’t look back.
Looking back is a great way to get eaten, because it’s a waste of time. Something is either on you or it’s not—there’s no point in worrying about which is which unless and until you have to. I tell myself that I’m verging on the profound as I hit the porch. I work the locks quickly, slide through the outer gate, and bolt up the door once I’m inside the house.
The lights are all off downstairs. I drift through the dining room to put my ear to the metal door separating me from the kitchen, butI already know that my tenants usually make more noise when they’re clattering around in there. I frown at the useless study with its useless TV, the memories of that horrible Tuesday a little too fresh tonight.
I accept that I was expecting an ambush. Probably because that’s what Ariel felt like.
It’s certainly how the revelation he dropped on mestillfeels.
I blow out a breath, then march myself over to Gran’s door. I let myself in and then lock us both inside.
I turn from the door and stop dead, because Gran isn’t asleep. She’s sitting up straight in her bed and staring right at me.
There are no lights on in the room, only the bright illumination of the waxing moon outside, pouring in through the slits between the bars and the boards.
And all the way here, it wasn’t that Idisbelievedwhat Ariel told me. It was more that Icouldn’tbelieve it, and maybe, somewhere inside, I was starting to convince myself that he was wrong. Or that there are some other Sarah Jessup Browns wandering around Jacksonville that I’ve somehow been unaware of all this time.
We stare at each other, Gran and me. I feel something big and ugly sit on me, and recognize it a moment later.Betrayed.I feelbetrayed, and heavy with it. It feels thick and gnarly in my lungs.
But somehow I know that coughing won’t dislodge it.
“I can sense an immortal all over you,” Gran says, her lips flattening as she gazes at me. “A vampire, if I’m not mistaken.”
I press myself hard against the door at my back. “What the hell do you know about immortals?” I ask her, though my voice barely sounds like mine. “Much lessvampires, Gran?”
“More than I want to,” she replies tartly. “And more than we can discuss in polite company, can we, Winter?”
I should feel ashamed. I’m sure that someday, I will. Because it’s clear to me that she somehow knows exactly what happened between Ariel and me on that rooftop, and I don’t have any way to process that,since I don’t know how to process anything that’s happened since I got in the truck to head to Medford tonight.
“Why are you even awake?” I ask instead. “Since when are you up in the middle of the night?”
“The things you don’t know about me, your own family, and your own gifts, not to mention what goes on in this house, are too numerous to list,” my grandmother tells me, and there’s absolutely no trace of the dotty old woman I’ve been taking care of for years.
