I don’t like how spooky I find that.
She looks down at the cards and shuffles them absently. “I wanted to see if the cards had anything to say about the days we lost at Savi’s. Ariel had a lot to say about that.”
When she looks at me, her mouth curves at whatever expression I must be wearing on my face. “Ty was unimpressed,” I say.
“I received a history lesson on the kind of spells that can knock a person out for days and have them acting perfectly fine until, guess what, their entire body explodes or something equally exciting. Apparently there is no shortage of such spells.”
“Sure,” I say, with a shrug. “But why would Savi cast a spell like that on herself?”
“There were several challenges to my intelligence, which I found rude,” Winter says with that same curve to her mouth. “The major gist of which was that I, insensate for days, have no idea what Savi did or did not cast on herself.”
“I hear you,” I say. “Or I hear him, I guess. But that wasn’t really the vibe.”
“Ariel Skinner, ancient and immortal king of the vampires, does not findvibesa persuasive argument,” Winter tells me. “Ask me how I know.”
“Did the cards tell you what she actually did to us, then?”
“When I asked them what she did, I saw us bathed in light, protected, and stronger, somehow.” When I start to say something, probably something like,Maybe the men could calm down, then, she holds up a finger. “But when I asked them if we were safe now, I saw the three females instead. Hung up on crosses and flayed wide open.”
“Those are not the vibes we like at all.”
“No,” Winter agrees.
We sit there for a while, staring at the tree and the lights. I don’t have the images that Winter does in her head—I don’t want them—but it’s not like I can pretty up three crucifixions into anything palatable.
“The full moon is going to be pretty busy for you,” she says after a minute. “I have to figure that’s going to be her move.”
Fucking Vinca. “That’s my assumption. Everyone loves a full moon.”
“Do you think things will change a lot, Ty being the new high king and all that? And with everything that happened with his friend?”
“I think,” I say slowly—carefully, like I’m sounding it out as I go, because that’s what it feels like—“that everything has already changed. Connor was trying to hold on to a world that ceased to exist. Vinca is basically the same. The Reveal didn’t just send the Kind out of hiding. It made us ask ourselves why, on some level, we preferred to hide all along.”
We sit with that awhile, then decide that what we need tonight is hot cocoa. We move to the kitchen, and she’s making us thick mugs of the contraband chocolate when the back door flies open.
Briar, of course. With her usual delicate entry.
She looks typically surly and only nods at us as she comes in, then starts rummaging around in the refrigerator.
“Do you want hot cocoa?” Winter asks her.
Next to her at the counter, I look at her and widen my eyes.
I feel sorry for her,Winter mouths at me.
Briar takes her time straightening up from the fridge. “What?”
“Hot cocoa,” Winter says. “Literally chocolate in a mug that’s drinkable.”
“It’s tooth-ruiningly sweet,” I add. “You’ll love it.”
“I know what hot cocoa is.” Briar looks from Winter to me and back. “Why are you guys so weird all the time?”
Pot, kettle, but I just smile. “I’m a werewolf. Not entirely house-trained.”
Briar looks like she’s trying not to smile.
“I lived through the Reveal as a human,” Winter replies. “Now I’m the oracle. I don’t think there’s much weirder than that.”
