20. Alaric
ALARIC
The storm has disintegrated, but the eaves keep weeping long after the sky goes quiet.
My forearms have stopped smoking, but the marks remain—welts where the bloodroot rope lay against me, slow to close because the poison settles into the tissue and mocks whatever I am.
A human would have scarred. I will heal by morning; that is the easy part.
Harder is the memory of Hannah in the doorway, putting her body between me and Lily as though I were the thing that almost harmed them.
She was not wrong in a sense, but I would never.
I hear Lily before I see her. The mud betrays her: the wet suck of sneakers crossing the dead garden, the careful breath of a girl who has decided to be braver than she feels.
"You shouldn't be here," I declare, without turning. "Your mother asked that I not speak with you alone. Go home, Lily."
"And." Her voice is thin in the cold, but it does not waver. "She's asleep. And I needed answers."
"This is not something she would appreciate."
"Yeah, well," She stops a few feet off, arms crossed, chin lifted. "There's a lot she doesn't appreciate right now."
I turn. She flinches—a small wince she hates herself for—and I look away first, so she knows I noticed and won't press it.
"You're hurt," she says.
"I'm healing."
"Yeah, slowly."
Sharp girl. Always has been. "It will pass."
She studies the burns.
"Those men who came. Were they trying to kill me, her or you?"
"They want something your great-grandmother left behind. They believe your mother knows where it is." I keep my voice plain. "They would not have been gentle about asking."
"Hunters." She says the word like she's testing a stair that might not hold. "That's what you called them."
"Yes. Of me. Of what I am."
She nods. "The blood thing. Is that real, or the part everyone made up?"
"It's real."
"Did you ever—"
"No." I don't make her finish. "Not from you. Your mother. Or anyone here. There are ways to live that don't require it. I chose that life."
"Could you hurt us? If you wanted."
"Yes." I give her the ugly truth. "I could. I won't."
Something loosens—not trust, not yet, but the first slack in a rope pulled too tight.
"Then why lie? You let us think you were just some rich grump who hated company. You let Mom—" Her voice splinters, and she swallows it down. "She started to like you."
"More than a hundred years ago, before there were vehicles on these roads, I was made into what I am. I won't dress it up; it was no gift. After, I lived among my own kind a while. I loved a woman. The world I belonged to destroyed her life, and she did not survive it."
Lily doesn't speak. She lets a terrible thing keep its full size instead of shrinking it with a joke.
"After that, it seemed simpler to want nothing.
Wanting is how they find the people you love.
Then your mother appeared with you trying to convert a house back to a liveable state.
She frightened me, Lily. Not for what she is—for what she made me want.
A future. And every future I imagine had a door in it that men like the ones tonight could walk through. "
She is quiet a moment. Then: "That's such a coward's way to love somebody."
Her words sting because they're true.
"You decided," she goes on, the fear in her catching fire, "all by yourself, that we couldn't handle it.
That lying was safer. You're doing it right now—being noble so you don't face her.
" She steps closer, her chin trembling. "My dad decided things for us too.
What we needed. What we could take. I'm sick of people like that. "
I have no answer that isn't an excuse, so I keep silent.
"She has every right to be furious. You lied—that's hers to be angry about.
But that man on the phone, Nathan, isn't protecting her.
He's using how scared she is. He wants her too frightened of you to confirm what you are.
" She drags a sleeve across her face, livid at her own tears.
"I've watched you. Every time you could've taken the easy way, you didn't. That's the only reason I'm here. So don't make me wrong about you."
Something settles in me—not relief. Resolve, maybe, with the bark still on it.
"You're right."
"So stop."
"I will."
I take from my coat a small folded paper and begin writing, then I pass it to Lily.
"This is for your mother. Only if she wants it.
" I hold it out, so the taking is hers. "It isn't a letter.
Nothing about me, or feelings, or anything she has to answer.
It's how to make the house harder to enter.
Window locks, the gap in the cellar, which boards give a person away.
If she'd rather burn it, that's hers to do. "
Lily looks at the paper, then at me. "You're not even going to ask me to put in a good word."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because a good word from you would be mine, not hers. Only she can decide whether I'm good for her." I press the paper into her cold hand and fold her fingers over it.
She holds it as though it might bite. For a breath she's just a child who has been afraid for hours and wants someone to make the world simple again. I can't. The kindest thing I have is refusing to pretend otherwise.
"Go home, Lily," I say, gentler now. "Lock the cellar window. If she asks, tell her I'm sorry—only that. Not why. The why is hers to hear from me, when she's ready. Or never."
She turns and crosses the ruined garden, the note pressed to her chest. I hold the boundary until the dark takes her, until I hear the click of a lock, and then I stay where I am, listening to the house I am no longer allowed to guard.