I figure that feeling that absence is probably one of the reasons why Winter has seemed so distant over the past month. But there are any number of other possibilities. The horrendous skull-splitting visions she had, courtesy of Vinca. Then becoming the oracle herself. She also found out that her twin brother was not just a regular vampire blood addict but was being held down in the vampire dungeons—not a place with many happy endings.
Winter rounded out her eventful fall by becoming the consort of the vampire king, the infamous Ariel Skinner himself, known for his personal vampire warrior army, the fact that he was once an actual Spartan, and his brand of hard but consistent justice for the Kind who get into trouble on the valley floor.
Vampires rule the floor, werewolves rule the hills, and the sorceress keeps all of us safely tucked away from the notice of other passing threats—whether that’s the sun that vampires need to avoid or the odd murmuration of the flying gargoyles. This is how it’s always been here. The Reveal just made it obvious to humans, too.
Now Winter wears the vampire king’s mark, a stern warning to anyone who dares go near her that the consequences will be swift and deadly if they so much as breathe on her wrong. She also plies her cards and the odd beverage at the coffee stand out on Stage Road rather than here at the house, because Ariel thinks it’s safer. I’m sure it is.
Mostly what that means these days is that she’s not around. I miss when she was.
Or maybe what I miss is that living here felt a bit like college again. And the truth is, if I could have, I would have stayed in college forever. Taking finals and writing exam papers was significantly less complicated than life here, neck-deep in duty, pack, and expectations.
Sometimes I almost think it’s easier to miss Ty than to live with him, though that’s something I’d never dare say out loud. Especially nottohim.
I shove my hands in the pockets of the slouchy overalls I tossed on, and I wander around the far side of the house so I can access the kitchenfrom the back. When Winter let us move onto her land, she kept the house—and her grandmother—as safe from us monsters as she could.
Now she’s one of us. Fate is a bitch.
When I push my way through the back door into the kitchen with its covered windows to keep out creatures who wouldn’t dare attack anyone here, I find Briar already sitting at the kitchen table. I feel that same prickle around her I always do.
She’s not right. I can’t really tell what she is with any certainty, first of all, and that’s a problem. Identity isn’t muddy. Not among the Kind. Even monsters mixed with each other in strange combinations smell like the things that they’re made of, because everyone likes to fuck, and the resulting young leave a scent trail to announce who fucked who.
Briar smells like confusion.
What I can’t tell is whether she’s made that way or just ... acting that way. But hey, people are weird no matter what they’re made of, and the Reveal only amped that up. All that matters to me is that while everything was going down with the death goddess and her minions, Briar was nowhere to be found. Not involved at all—and I looked.
I half expected to scent her up there in the middle of a bloody mountain ritual. Or hidden behind a mask and a cloak at Crater Lake on Halloween, but I didn’t. Being a little confused doesn’t make a person dangerous. Maybe she’s as misunderstood as a wolfling girl destined for domestic den life who decided to go off to NYU instead.
I smile at her as I sweep inside, registering the way her eyes widen in something like shock before she drops them. So much for bonding.
I act as if I don’t notice any of that and glide around the kitchen, collecting ingredients for a good breakfast. Meat. Eggs. More meat. A little bit of cheese to be fancy.
Briar, as far as I’ve been able to tell, would drop dead without that wool beanie she’s always wearing, pulled down over her presumably fae-pointed ears. Though perhaps that’s just a Pacific Northwest thing. I can handle that. It’s the endless bowls of sugary breakfast cereal sheconsumes, which I know she can only get on the black market, that weird me out more.
“You grew up here, didn’t you?” she asks.
Standing at the stove, I have to order myself not to act too surprised that she actually started up a conversation with me. Or that it sounds ... vaguely social. I tell myself I should be nicer. I know all about not fitting in. “I did.”
“You and Winter went to high school together.”
“It’s a small valley,” I tell her. “Winter and I knew each other. Not well.”
“Was it hard to have to hide?” Briar asks, with a certain intensity that makes me blink. When I turn around to look at her, she ducks her head. I’m sure I see pink on her cheeks. That makes me think she’s awkward, and I can’t help but soften. She’s like a cub. “It—ah—it just seems like it would be hard.”
“Everyone goes through adolescence thinking that they have to hide their true face,” I say as I turn back to my little fry-up. “Figuring out how to go along to get along. Making sure that what makes them different, though it might also make them feel disfigured to do it, is tucked away where no one can ever find it.” I flip over my meat before it gets too well done. Which is to say at all well done. “Then we all grow up and realize that being an adolescent sucks. For everyone. The end.”
When I look back over Briar, she’s frowning, still staring down at her cereal bowl. When she feels me looking at her, she jerks. Her head comes up and she locks eyes with me—how have I never noticed that she has rain-colored eyes—and she blows out a breath.
“I have to go,” she says, but she’s blushing again, and I watch her as she stands up abruptly and marches out of the kitchen. The back door slams behind her, loud enough to make the glasses in the cabinet sing a little.Awkward,I think.
But awkward seems kind of cute to me in the wake of a death goddess and a full moon and before all the wolves in North Americadescend on the Rogue Valley. I decide I’m going to make her my pet project. Something else to think about that isn’t my always-on-fire life.
I’m still staring at the door she ran out of when the interior door behind me opens, all steel plates and dead bolts, and Winter appears.
“No vampire king?” I ask brightly, because the idea of Ariel Skinner himself shuffling in for communal coffee is never not hilarious to me.
Winter only smiles, like she’s trying to be mysterious when I can smell him all over her.
Some in the valley like to mutter about how the new oracle might know her way around a vision but is a strange choice for an immortal vampire who has had lovers renowned the world over for their beauty. Some people in this valley will talk shit no matter what.
