Page 48 of The Reveal
“You have to take the cards. They’re yours now.” I stare at her, but she doesn’t relent. “They won’t want to come back to me.”
“They arecards,” I grit out through my teeth. “They don’t have feelings.”
“If you say so.” She doesn’tquiteroll her eyes. “But I do. If the only gift you can accept tonight are these cards, I know that I can trust you, Winter, not to let your old grandmother down. After all, I’m not all here, am I?”
Maybe later I’ll sit back and admire how adroitly she locked me into that. I can either claim that she’s senile and all of this is false, in which case why wouldn’t I take a deck of cards she wants to give me? Or I can admit that all of it is true, tell her what I saw, and accept not only that she’s an oracle but I’m apparently one too. In which case I would also have to accept that the cards are mine now. And that they probably do have feelings. Or rather, whatever animates them does.
Just another list of things I don’t want to deal with tonight.
I take the easy way out. I go over, scoop up the damn cards I still don’t actually like touching, and make a show of tucking them into my shirt so they can rest against my heart.
She looks ... touched. As if I’ve done something deeply honorable.
Obviously, that makes me feel like shit.
“I see no one had to tell you to treat them with respect.” Gran sounds proud, and that doesn’t make me feel any better. “It’s like you know.”
“I like to keep my hands free, Gran.” I growl it out, feeling surly and mean. “My pockets are full of ammo.”
I don’t stick around for more middle-of-the-night chats and other opportunities to feel selfish and small. I go to the door, let myself out,and lock her back in. Assuming she doesn’t have secret keys to go with her secret life, that is.
Out in the hall, I feel like the house is breathing all around me, heavy and close. Not like it’s threatening me, but like it’s as out of breath as I am.
I climb the stairs, listening as I go, but everything is quiet. I must have been in Gran’s room for a long time because when I get to the windows on the second floor, I can see that all the lights are out in the cottages across the yard.
I only really start breathing once I unlock the door to the attic stairs, lock it again behind me, and start the steep climb. Once I’m finally safe in my own space, with no eyes on me from any direction, I find myself just ... standing there under the eaves. Working on breathing past the collection of overwhelming sensations, feelings, and images storming around inside of me.
I don’t know what to do with myself.
The whole night spirals through me, drip-feeding that cataclysmic heat everywhere—but it’s mixed up with all the rest of it. That ritual on a mountaintop that something in my bones tells me is close. The nightmares that might not be as simple as nightmares after all.Death goddesses.And the truth—or truths—about my grandmother that I’m finding hard to accept.
The fact that, like it or not, all these years have been a lie.
Not just the past three.
I stand in the shower and let it run hot enough to sting, but it doesn’t help. I let the water beat into me until I can’t tell if I’m flushed inside or out, and then, following an urge I can’t pretend to understand, I turn the water to cold.
Ice cold.
For a moment, or maybe for a lot of moments, I can feel the heat of my own body as it’s pelted with the sudden chill, and it feels like pressing up against Ariel all over again.
I brace myself against the wall, squeeze my thighs together, and come in a hot, shocking rush that nearly takes my knees out from under me. They’re so compromised that I lower myself down into the shallow tub and sit there, cold water pouring all over me, while my body reminds me of its various betrayals.
Over and over again.
And it’s like touching those cards rewired my brain, because now I’m remembering what happened on that rooftop in the same high-definition, surround-sound way. Complete with sensory input. Touch and taste and smell, and my god, am I fucked.
I’m out of breath again, shaking inside and out, when I finally climb into bed. I’m sure I’ll fall off a cliff into an exhausted sleep immediately, but I don’t.
Maybe the headache I already have is warning me that if I do, I’ll regret it. That terrible things wait for me there.
I lie there, wide awake with too many things on bright, intense replay, until it’s time to get up again.
I have an early shift at the coffee stand, so it’s still dark when I roll out of bed, rubbing at my gritty eyes.
I check out the yard the way I always do, dark or light, but not only are there no zombies out there now, there also appears to be no sign of them. It’s as if what Maddox said really is true. That this is actually protected land now.
But if Gran is supposed to be some big oracle, why wasn’t she protected already?
