Chapter 22 #3
“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 find vibes a 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 Vin?a. “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. Vin?a 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.”
Except whatever Briar is, which, yes, dark fae. But there are a lot of different kinds of dark fae. In my experience, small as it is, they are never alone. Why is she?
I’ve got a lot of questions for Briar, actually. It just never seems like the right time to ask them.
We all sit down around the kitchen table, and Briar takes a sip of the thick, creamy concoction that Winter puts before her. “That is good,” she says, sounding surprised. “I’ve only ever had the instant stuff.”
“That’s actual heresy in this house,” Winter tells her. “Just so you’re aware.”
I would describe the silence that descends after that as companionable. Sweet, even.
That feels like progress, so I jump in. “What exactly do you do all the time?” I ask Briar. “Winter has a job. So do I.”
“You do?” Winter interjects, looking shocked.
“I do.” I shake my head at her. “Did you think I was a lady of leisure? Biker bitch–style?”
“Yes,” they both say, at the same time.
“I will take that up with Ty immediately. I should have been treated better this entire time.”
When they both continue to stare at me, I relent. “I do office stuff. The pack has certain business ventures, and I oversee them.”
Briar looks bored by that, which is how I like it. Winter doesn’t look convinced, but then, she knows me better.
“Why do you keep working at the coffee place if you’re the whole big-deal oracle now?” Briar asks Winter. “If people don’t want to pay for you to see their future, you don’t have to tell them, do you? Is it like . . . a calling?”
“It is a calling.” Winter wrinkles up her nose. “Not one you can choose not to take, either. And it pays as well as I want it to pay. But I like coffee.”
She says that so adamantly that I don’t have the heart to point out that I think what she really likes is something that makes her feel like whoever the fuck she was before the Reveal.
I’m betting she probably knows that already.
Or is choosing not to know it. Either way, who am I to force a confrontation with oneself?
“I have a knitting shop,” Briar says.
I do not look at Winter. I do everything in my power not to look at Winter, but I can feel her stiffen beside me with the same astonishment.
Briar looks from her to me, then smirks. “Of course I don’t have a fucking knitting shop.” She takes a swig of her hot chocolate. “There’s a bar down by the old factories. On the railroad tracks, pretty much. I’m a bartender.”
“Gold Rush,” I say. “Is that still around? Didn’t it used to be called something else?”
“I always thought that was a weird place to have a bar,” Winter says. “Maybe if they hadn’t taken so long building all those apartments there it would have made more sense. Instead it’s all factories and logging paraphernalia and that weird McAndrews overpass and then—oh. A bar.”
“It’s still a bar,” Briar tells us. “The menus are a little bit different. Caters to the Kind. And that’s how I have rent money.”
“I’m always looking for a good watering hole.” I laugh when they both look at me. “I am. All the ones I know of are overrun with wolves.”
Winter frowns at me. “Surely a feature, not a bug.”
“I love my pack. I love being a wolf and everything wolf-related.” I lift my mug and mock-toast them with it. “And sometimes, I like to keep my skin on and stop thinking about pack dynamics for five seconds.”
“There’s a strict no-bullshit rule,” Briar tells us. “The owner, Mac, is part river snake. He takes that shit seriously.”
“Nobody likes to go to a bar and end up dead,” I say. “It ruins the vibe.”
Winter’s eyes gleam as she drinks from her cup.
Briar looks at me seriously. “There’s no point worrying about death. You have to think about the fact that it’s part of life. Whether you’re immortal and therefore exist in opposition to death, or mortal and are therefore dying from the moment you’re born, none of us escape it.”
When we both stare back at her, she shrugs and looks down at her mug. “I don’t know. I find that soothing.”
After Briar’s gone off somewhere—presumably to her bartending gig—Winter and I lie on the living room floor, staring up into the branches of the tree, as if we can take on all that sparkle by osmosis.
Strangely enough, I find Briar’s take on death soothing too.
Though not enough to take away the very real sense that everything around us is getting worse.
That Vin?a is getting closer than she should.
That those goblin females who Winter thought were us are only the beginning, and far more terrible things are coming.
That there are worse things than death—and one of them is, almost certainly, dying horribly at the hands of a vengeful goddess.