16. Alaric
ALARIC
The mug her lips were around still sits by the windowsill where she set it, a brown ring drying at the bottom.
This house has been clean, ordered, undisturbed for many years.
Now, it has a woman in it. One of her boots lies by the cold hearth and the other halfway across the room, as if she'd been pulled out of it.
A thread of chestnut hair clings to the back of a chair.
I find I have no wish to move any of it.
Hannah comes down the stairs, working her arm into a sleeve.
"You let me sleep," she says.
"You needed it."
"What I need is to be home before Lily wakes up and starts building a case." She lifts the mug, sees the ring beneath it, and winces. "I'll clean that."
"Leave it."
She pauses with the mug in her hand. "I've seen your shelves. Every spine lined up like soldiers."
"They prefer it that way."
"They're scared of you." She sets it back down, deliberately off-center, and watches to see if I'll flinch. "Huh."
"What?"
"Nothing." She says it like she's memorizing something.
I walk her to the door. The morning is wet with mist tangling through the pines between my land and hers.
"Come for dinner," she says. "Tomorrow. Lily's threatening to cook."
"That sounds scary."
"It is." She rises onto her toes, kisses the corner of my mouth, and is gone down the path.
The house behind me is quiet, and I feel her absence immediately.
On the mantel, the empty space beside the clock looks suddenly obvious.
Last night she noticed it and asked what used to stand there.
I told her nothing. That was not true. Renee's portrait had stood there for decades, face turned toward a room I never let change.
This afternoon, the absence feels less like loyalty and more like a question.
I think of Hannah's head tilted, decorating my bottom floor with a warmer color. My mind flutters to the table in hers with three chairs and one of them mine. I admire the thought of being invited instead of watching. It should all frighten me. Instead, I hold onto it like it might still break.
The wind turns, and I catch it. Bloodroot. Crushed, fresh, carried down off the ridge. I dress fast, and speed out the door into the trees before the scent fades.
Two days after spending the night with Hannah, the marks become visible. The first, on the old chapel, where the congregation stopped meeting before I ever came here. A symbol into the warped door and packed the grooves with red paste. Bloodroot sap, thick as a wound. It's another hunter's mark.
I follow the ridge down to the creek crossing.
Another, scored into the underside of the footbridge where no casual walker would look.
At the cemetery I find a third, low on the stone gatepost, half-hidden by moss someone scraped away to make room.
Each one fresh. Each one fed with that sap like poison.
The last is the worst. Elspeth's old schoolhouse.
The mark there is not cut but painted—large, deliberate, spanning the boards beside the door.
They aren't hiding, they're done with that.
The marks must be a warning to other hunters that vampires are here, or they've checked each place for the archives.
Knowing which one is something I can't answer.
My phone buzzes against my chest. Elias. I answer without speaking.
"You felt them," he says.
"They've marked four sites. Bloodroot."
"It's gotten worse. Movement's tripled this week—and not only hunters.
The old families are interested now." His voice drops.
"Draycott's name is moving through the private channels.
Quietly, which is worse. If Lucien has heard Elspeth's archive is real, he won't send negotiators.
He'll send silence. You know what that means for the woman. "
"I know."
"Do you? The last time you understood, you came to me with ashes." The line goes quiet a moment. "Get clear of it. Or get her clear. There's no third door."
He ends the call. Boots crunch the frost behind me. I turn, and Ben is coming up the lane with a flashlight he doesn't need now that the sky has gone pale, his cruiser idling at the bend.
"Blackwood." He stops a few feet off, studying the painted boards. "You're out early."
"Couldn't sleep."
"Yeah." He rubs his jaw. "Third one of these somebody's phoned in this week. Chapel, the bridge, now here." He crouches, touches the red with a gloved finger, frowns at how it smears. "County's calling it kids. Some club. Spray paint and nothing better to do."
"You don't believe that."
"I think kids don't drive this far for a shut-up schoolhouse nobody remembers." He straightens. "We've had people through town. Quiet ones. Renting the old motel by the highway, paying cash. That historian and a few friends of his." His eyes cut to me. "You seen anybody around the Marlowe place?"
The question is careful. So is my answer. "Hannah keeps her doors locked."
"Good." He means it. "Elspeth was a friend. I'd hate for her granddaughter to inherit her trouble along with the house."
"What trouble?"
Ben shrugs, slow. "Old woman kept odd company. Visitors at strange hours, right to the end. People I never met. I figured it was her secret." He nods at the mark. "Starting to wonder if it's becoming mine."
"It might be everyone's," I say, even though I knew her secret.
He studies me, then clicks off the flashlight. "If you see those quiet men near her, you call me."
"I will."
He believes me. It's strange that a sheriff this practical decided I'm worth trusting, and he has no notion of what he's trusting. I watch his taillights shrink toward town and the morning goes colder than the weather accounts for. Elspeth was clever. She carried more than the town ever guessed.
I'm supposed to be glad of that. I'm not.
Keeping Hannah ignorant is keeping her protected.
That's the bargain I struck when I met her, but now, I see that's a cage.
Hannah is walking this blind. She's no idea what she could find out or what hunts her along the way.
She needs to know what surrounds her. She needs to know what I am.
Not tonight, with Elias' warning still cold in my ear and my own fear whispering that there will be a better moment, a softer one. There won't be. But I cannot turn her world upside down. Soon, though. Before the old families move.