19. Hannah
HANNAH
The front door hangs from one hinge, swinging with the wind, and the rain comes through it in a thin gray sheet across the entry corridor.
I make myself move.
"Lily." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "Lily. Look at me. Are you hurt?"
She's wedged into the corner behind me, knees pulled up. When I say her name, she lifts her head. A red line runs along her forearm where she caught the edge of something, and her eyes are too wide.
"I'm okay," she says. "I'm okay. Are you—are you—"
"Don't move yet. There's glass everywhere."
The room is wrecked. The side table, on its back, the lamp shattered, and a dark smear streaks the windowsill—the same bitter, scorched residue. I pick a path through the wreckage and take her arm, turning it toward the light. The cut is shallow, and I inhale slowly.
"Up," I tell her. "Watch where you step. Come on."
I run her arm under the tap, press a clean towel to it, and hold it there with both hands like that's the only thing in the world I have to do. My hands are shaking.
"Mom." Lily watches my face. "Mom, you saw it too."
"I saw a lot of things."
"He moved—" She stops. Starts again, quieter. "Nobody moves like that. And his teeth. Mom, did you see them?"
I don't answer. I lift the towel, check the cut, fold it to a clean side, press it down again. If I keep my hands busy, I won't have to put words to the thing buried inside me.
"He saved us," Lily says. It isn't a defense. It comes out more like a question she needs me to solve. "Those men were going to take you, and he stopped them. So what is he?"
"Lily."
"You know. A little.You must do."
"I don't, Lil."
I leave her holding the towel and return to the mess, because I need to occupy myself.
I set the side table upright. I gather the larger pieces of the lamp into the wastebasket.
I drag the runner away from the spreading wet, and I'm reaching to pull the broken door closed against the rain when I see him.
Sat with his hands on his head. He hasn't gone anywhere.
I stop with my hand on the splintered frame.
"You need to leave," I say.
"I know." The rain runs off him, and he doesn't seem to feel it. "I'll go. I wanted to be sure no one came back first."
Behind me I hear Lily in the kitchen doorway. I don't turn. I keep my eyes on him, on the man I've spent weeks learning to trust, standing in the dark like something I dreamed.
"Are you a—" I can't get the word out.
I expect him to lie, instead he says, "A vampire. Yes."
His admission sits there, ridiculous and certain at once. Parts of me want to laugh, but it doesn't quite come out because I saw what I saw. The speed. The strength. The burns on his hands closing while Lily and I gawped.
"The men tonight were hunters," he goes on, steady, careful with every word. "They've been watching this house. They believe there's something here that leads to what they want. I've been trying to keep it away from you. From both of you."
"By what? Watching us?" My mouth is dry. "The staircase. The locks. You were in the trees that first night. That was you."
"Yes."
"You let me—" I stop. The festival. His hands.
The night I told myself I'd earned the right to feel something again.
All of it rearranges. I promised myself I'd notice a man like this next time.
"Every conversation. You let me bring you into my house.
Near my daughter. And you decided what I got to understand and what I didn't."
"I should have told you sooner." No excuse follows it. He just stands there in the rain and lets it be true.
My phone buzzes against the counter. I almost ignore it, but Lily hands it to me and Nathan's name appears on screen. I answer the way you grab a railing on a falling staircase.
"Hannah." Nathan's voice is too quiet. "Don't say my name if he's still there."
My hand closes harder around the phone. "What?"
"Is Lily bleeding?"
The kitchen seems to tip. I look at Lily in the doorway, towel pressed to her arm. "And you know that, how?"
"Because this is what they do. They leave humans hurt, grateful, and confused about who caused the damage.
" His pause is careful. "Do not let Blackwood back inside.
Do not let him touch your daughter. He was close to hear you scream tonight, wasn't he?
To arrive before help. Ask yourself how many nights he has been that close. "
Rain spits through the broken door. Alaric stands beyond it, silent.
"I have to go," I tell Nathan, and end the call before he can wind it any tighter.
He's using this. I know he is, but knowing it doesn't unmake the part of me that's afraid. I turn to Alaric.
"You don't come inside," I say. "Not tonight. Not ever again. You don't watch this house. And you don't speak to Lily alone—not one word."
Alaric inclines his head, but doesn't promise me anything, doesn't tell me what I mean to him.
"Ok."
He steps back off the porch, and I haul the broken door shut as far as it will go.