Page 8 of The Reveal
How lucky for them that the weather here is either cloudy or smoky almost all year round.
I open the gate. Meaning, I throw the locks. Then do nothing else.
I step back, my guns in my hands because bullets slow anything down—at least enough for me to get the wooden stakes—and wait.
Understanding flashes in the woman’s gaze. She opens the gate and steps inside, no invitation required. Not a vampire. This doesn’t mean she’s not deadly, but she’s notthatkind of monster. These days, everything is a process of elimination.
Both of us glance back at the stocking-hat-headed girl. She sneers as the gate slams shut in front of her, then flings it open herself and walks on through.
“No bloodsucking dickheads, apparently.” She glares at both of us, but mostly the fancy woman beside her. “I would have lost that bet.”
The woman—who, now that she’s closer, also looks vaguely the same age as me, though she’s so well kempt that it’s impossible to tell—sighs again. “Not the first bet you’ve lost, I imagine.”
I want to laugh, but that seems unwise. I shoo them back outside again and let the gate slam shut behind us. Then I give them what I guess is now my landlady spiel. “I’ll be armed at all times,” I tell them. “You can only be visibly armed when I’m comfortable with you, and that will be unlikely. You are allowed in the back of the house, meaning the kitchen and the laundry room. If I catch you in any off-limits areas, immediate eviction. Whether you break curfew or not is your business, but if you think you can get around that by bringing unvetted guests back here, think again. You and they will be forcibly evicted. By me. In daylight.”
“That sounds eminently reasonable,” says the first woman, and her voice is so ... melodious that I wonder if it was really wind chimes I thought I’d heard before. Something in me even seems to shift at the sound of it, and that’s annoying. Also alarming. I grip my guns a little tighter.
“I’m Savi Wynn,” she says, and smiling graciously, she extends her hand.
“We don’t need to shake hands,” I tell her, because it’s never a good idea to touch something if you don’t know what it is. “Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Briar,” says the sneering girl. Still sneering. Then she pauses and we both look at her. “Briar Monroe.”
I don’t know that I believe that’s actually her name. Then again, the thing about life-altering events like the Reveal is that people end up different on the other side. Assuming this is the other side. Maybe it’snot the worst thing in the world to take on a new identity. Forge a new path. Do whatever you can with what little time you have left.
And anyway, there’s no court I can go complain to if it turns out they both made up their identities.
All I have is my gut, and it’s gotten me this far. I go with that as I take both of them out to the cottages and watch as they register the two that are left.
I expect them to get into a scrap over who gets which cottage, particularly because one of them is little more than a shed and held what I dearly hope was just old farming-type implements. If not, it’s highly likely that one of my ancestors had a taste for the odd serial killing. I don’t like to go in there, and not only because it’s tiny. But Briar seems drawn to the place. She goes inside and closes the door, and I can hear her clomping around like she’s measuring the space with her feet.
Savi and I are out in the yard, our backs against different trees, while the smoke dances between us. For some reason it makes me think about my latest nightmare, smoky and scary, but I shut that down fast.
“I like this one,” Briar says when she opens the door and peers out. She glares, but not at me. “If that’s all the same to you, Your Majesty.”
“I think this is a very happy place,” Savi says. This time directly to me.
I can’t help but laugh at that. “You don’t have to flatter me. There’s nothing happy about this place. There never was, even before the Reveal. But the cottages are yours if you can pay.”
Savi smiles in that way of hers that I find surprisingly mysterious. And possibly aristocratic. “Money is no problem. Safe accommodation, on the other hand, is of paramount importance.”
The way she says that makes me wonder who she’s running from if she wants to hide out from them on a hill in the woods. I don’t ask.
“About that,” I say as Briar drifts back out into the yard. “How do you feel about werewolves?”
Briar snorts. “Which side of their teeth am I on?”
I shrug. “She’s someone I went to high school with. Didn’t realize she was a werewolf then, of course, but she is. She took the other cottage. Says she wants a little distance from the pack.”
“And you believe her?” Savi asks.
It didn’t occur to menotto believe her, and that’s interesting. I file that away.
“I didn’t shoot her. Yet.”
Once again, Savi and Briar look at each other in a way that seems to spark with an energy I can’t quite understand. It doesn’t feel personal, or romantic. Just heavy and clearly obvious to them—and I decide that letting on that I notice it is a bad play, so I keep that to myself.
“I’m fine with it as long as she keeps her fangs to herself,” Briar mutters. “Theoretically. I don’t really like dogs.”
