12. Birdie
BIRDIE
For the first time in years, I wake up without the taste of my own pulse in my mouth.
It feels... wrong. That's the word for it.
Suspicious, like the world has rounded a sharp corner and I'm the only idiot who didn't see the dead end coming.
I roll into consciousness with a knot in my neck, a hundred invisible hands dragging me upward.
Sunlight squints through thin curtains, the color of lemon rind against the wall's flaked paint.
A bookcase sinks under the weight of battered paperbacks, spines splitting like tired lips.
Something in the air smells faintly of sage, and outside, a bird wails like a horror movie violin.
If there are monsters pacing the roof, they're at least being polite about it.
I flex my toes, testing for movement or, you know, broken bones. A dull ache lumbers through my body, but the thousand pinpricks of adrenaline and terror have burned away, replaced by a cottony exhaustion that makes my bones feel less like Birdie and more like marshmallow.
I'm in a bed. A real one, tastefully swaddled in a wool blanket that I immediately suspect is older than me.
I reach up to flatten my hair and meet, unexpectedly, something strange.
A braid.
Not my usual lazy plait, but a neat rope that bisects the back of my head and then, somewhere behind my right ear, takes a hard left turn into absolute chaos.
I rub the line of it between my fingers, feeling the little bumps and knots, and for one illustrious moment I'm consumed by embarrassment for whoever left this atrocity on my scalp.
It shouldn't make me smile.
It absolutely does.
Which is concerning, because somewhere between almost being murdered and waking up looking like I'd lost a fight with a craft store, I've apparently become the sort of woman who gets sentimental over terrible braids.
Then the embarrassment gives way to curiosity, and the curiosity gives way to a kind of giddy horror, like realizing you've been walking around all day with spinach in your teeth.
I sit up.
Immediately regret it, because my whole spine lodges an official complaint. But the room obliges by not spinning or collapsing; this safe house is built from sterner stuff than I am.
The last twenty-four hours come crowding back.
Phantom Ridge.
Mason Weir.
The wolves.
The slash of branches.
The muddy taste of fear in my mouth.
And Alaric Grimhaven.
His arms around me.
His voice cut from midnight and expensive liquor.
The steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek as he carried me through the woods.
I remember drifting in and out, warm despite the rain, every time he adjusted his grip cradling the back of my head like I was something worth protecting.
My stomach performs an alarming little somersault.
There is a glass of water on the nightstand, already sweating its way toward a ring on the wood. There is also a note, which I recognize as T's handwriting, mainly because he adds a little ghost after every exclamation point.
YOU'RE SAFE!
I snort.
Why yes, Al, I am. Unless my ex-fiancé is hiding under this bed waiting to cut out my liver, which—statistically—feels unlikely, but you never know.
I sip the water. It tastes like minerals and the numinous calm of old pipes. Nobody is screaming or bleeding or arguing on the other side of the door, which I decide to take as a sign of progress.
I swing my feet onto the carpet and shuffle to the mirror over the dresser, mostly because I want to verify the carnage I already feel on my face.
The braid is worse than I'd feared.
There are twigs woven in, and a single black feather that I can't trace to any specific bird.
My skin is not quite my skin, more a riot of purples and ochres, and there's a scratch on my collarbone the size of a latitude line.
But I am alive.
Softly.
Safely.
Boringly alive.
I'm not sure I trust it.
I'm about to dismantle the braid when voices drift up from downstairs, echoing off the sloped ceilings.
Theo's is unmistakable, a chipper buzzsaw of interruptions.
Then Trent, his vowels wide as a barn door.
Someone else who sounds like they gargle thumbtacks for breakfast.
...
No Alaric.
My stomach sinks before I can explain why.
Well.
That's new.
I finger the feather.
It is soft and slightly iridescent, and I think about the way he'd looked at me as we picked our way down the ridge.
Like a man cataloging possibilities but not yet choosing.
Like a man who doesn't braid hair...
...but might, if it meant keeping someone calm.
For reasons I can't explain, that makes my stomach fizz all over again.
I head for the door and catch a thread of conversation floating up the staircase.
"...literally carried her the whole way," Theo is saying.
"He wouldn't let anybody else touch her."
A beat.
"Cradled the back of her head the entire trip down the mountain like she was made of glass."
I freeze on the stairs.
Trent snorts.
"Bit melodramatic, isn't he?"
"That's Alaric for you." Theo laughs. "All drama, zero chill. Honestly, it was disgustingly romantic."
Heat floods my face.
"And I think," Theo continues with obvious delight, "our fearless detective's got it bad for his client."
There is a brief silence, followed by the shriek of a kettle.
I remain rooted to the step for another heartbeat, trying very hard to convince my pulse that it can calm down now.
It completely ignores me.
I step lightly down the stairs, a skill acquired during the years when you didn't want to alert your mother to a midnight snack raid.
Alaric spots me first.
Of course he does.
He looks tired.
Not sleepy.
Used up.
There are fresh bruises shadowing one cheek, and his shirt hangs differently over one shoulder where the bandages pull beneath the fabric. The kind of exhaustion that settles into someone after they've spent the night making impossible decisions.
Guilt pinches somewhere behind my ribs.
Despite that, he crosses the room carrying a mug of something fragrant and caffeinated.
"Sleeping Beauty arises!" he says, like I haven't just been mauled by half the forest.
I pocket the comment and accept the mug.
"That's her, all right," I say. "Beauty, emphasis on the bruising."
“Glad to see you’re vertical, Birdie. You gave us a scare.”
“Sorry,” I say, and actually mean it. “I had other plans, but the Ridge disagreed.”
Theo leans in. “Are you hungry? We can send Trent out for rabbits—”
“Nobody is sending me out for rabbits,” Alaric rumbles, and Theo shoots me a look that says, See what I have to endure?
I shake my head. “Just coffee. And... is there an actual bathroom in this place?”
Alaric points down the hall. “Second on the right. Avoid the one with the green door unless you wanna meet the resident spider.”
“I appreciate the warning.”
“I appreciated the spider first.”
Theo snorts into his coffee.
I find the bathroom easily and laugh out loud when I catch my reflection again.
I look like a raccoon who lost a knife fight in a beauty salon.
The braid is beginning to unravel, and it is one hundred percent Alaric's handiwork. I know, in the way you know who's been eating your leftovers, that he did this without a single witness and would absolutely perish before admitting it.
A flicker of movement catches the mirror.
Alaric.
His arms brace casually against the doorframe, face carefully neutral, but his eyes are doing a whole novella's worth of subtext.
There are fresh bruises shadowing one cheek and a tear in his shirt near the shoulder where the bandages peek through. He looks exhausted.
Not sleepy.
Used up.
The kind of tired that settles into someone after they've spent the night making impossible decisions.
Guilt pinches somewhere behind my ribs.
His gaze travels from my face to the crooked braid before politely bypassing the rest of me.
I suddenly become painfully aware of my own existence.
Like I'm auditioning for a part I didn't realize I wanted.
“Morning,” I say, trying not to sound like I'm already planning to interrogate him about the braid.
He nods once.
“How's the head?”
“I'll survive.”
I touch the braid.
“Thanks to my... impromptu hairdresser.”
One corner of his mouth twitches upward.
The mind boggles at the years of practice it must have taken to achieve that level of composure.
“You could've had a concussion,” he says. “I needed to keep your head steady.”
His eyes drift back to the braid.
“And the braid seemed... practical.”
I fold my arms.
“Practical.”
“I needed something to do with my hands while you slept.”
“Oh, sure,” I deadpan. “Very practical. Especially the feather.”
For one impossibly small moment, something soft slips through the cracks in his expression.
“You were shivering.”
His voice drops almost too low to hear.
“I couldn't warm you up.”
A beat.
“So... I did the only thing I could think of.”
My heart quietly forgets how it's supposed to work.
He clears his throat.
“I thought...” Another tiny pause. “...I thought it might make you laugh when you woke up.”
It did.
More than that.
It made me feel...
...looked after.
He doesn't say anything else.
He simply lingers in the doorway one heartbeat longer before tipping his head and disappearing down the hall.
The silence he leaves behind feels oddly warm.
I stare at the empty doorway.
It's not that I didn't know men could be gentle.
It's that I didn't know someone who'd spent his life hunting monsters could choose gentleness so instinctively.
Not with people like me.
Runaway bird-girls with more bite than sense.
I run my fingers over the braid again.
It shouldn't make me feel safer.
It absolutely does.
A few minutes later I've cleaned the scratch on my collarbone and washed the dried blood from my earlobe.
My eyes still look enormous in the mirror—bruised and slightly feral—but I decide to leave the feather where it is.
Just for today.
It's ridiculous.
Which somehow makes me love it even more.
When I wander back into the kitchen, Theo is telling a story about a haunted trampoline while Trent listens with the patience of a saint supervising kindergarten.
Alaric is gone.
Waiting for me on the counter is a plate of toast drizzled with honey.
One perfect blueberry sits proudly in the middle.
I stare at it.
Honey.
One blueberry.
I don't know how I know...
...but I'm absolutely certain this was Alaric.
Nobody else would think one blueberry counts as decoration.
I smile before I can stop myself.
This is becoming a problem.
After breakfast the house settles into the lazy hush of late morning.
I curl into one end of the sofa with another mug of coffee, watching dust drift through the sunlight like tiny wandering ghosts.
Trent is reading a paperback upside down, which I'm ninety percent sure is just showing off.
Theo is furiously arguing with someone online about whether ghosts can legally own property.
I decide not to ask.
Alaric returns just before noon wearing a black T-shirt that's a size too small and bandages that someone else clearly applied.
Judging by the aggressively crooked tape...
Theo.
He pauses in the doorway.
His eyes find me almost immediately.
Something about that realization makes my stomach flutter.
“So,” I say, folding my arms over my ribs like a shield, “do I have you to thank for the rescue, or were you hoping to collect the reward?”
He steps into the sunlight.
“Depends who's paying.”
I should leave it there.
Instead...
“Come sit.”
I pat the sofa beside me.
“I can change your bandages.”
One eyebrow lifts.
“Do you have experience with traumatic wounds?”
“Nothing but.”
A small smile escapes before he can stop it.
He sits.
Closer than necessary.
Not close enough.
I peel away the ruined bandages.
Up close the injuries are worse than I'd realized—deep gouges, angry bruising, dried blood along the edges.
I wince.
He doesn't.
He simply watches me with an intensity that makes it difficult to remember how breathing works.
“Theo said...”
I smooth fresh gauze over his shoulder.
“...you carried me all the way down the mountain.”
He shrugs.
“You were tired.”
That's it.
That's his explanation.
Like carrying a grown woman through the woods while people tried to kill both of us was simply the most efficient solution available.
My heart chooses that exact moment to become profoundly uncooperative.
“I heard you wouldn't let anyone else touch me.”
He looks away.
“I didn't trust anyone else.”
Something inside me melts into an embarrassing little puddle.
I finish wrapping the bandage.
Without thinking, I smooth the loose edge against his skin.
My fingers drift to his wrist.
Warm.
Steady.
His pulse beats just a little faster than before.
Neither of us moves.
Not for one impossible second.
Then he looks up.
Our eyes meet.
It's no longer about protection.
Or obligation.
Or contracts.
It's possibility.
“You keep ruining my first impression of you,” I blurt.
His grin appears slowly.
“That so?”
“First you braid my hair.”
“Allegedly.”
“Then you carry me through the woods.”
“Also allegedly.”
“Now you're pretending none of it was a big deal.”
His smile softens.
“That part isn't pretending.”
I laugh despite myself.
“Pity.”
“Why?”
“I was hoping to be exceptional.”
“You already are.”
He says it so quietly I'm not entirely sure anyone else hears it.
Unfortunately...
I do.
His expression changes.
The warmth between us cools.
“Mason knows this area,” he says. “We have maybe two days before he narrows it down.”
“So... we run again.”
“We move.”
He shakes his head.
“There's a difference.”
Outside, the forest presses against the windows, patient as ever.
Watching.
Waiting.
Keeping score.
I've been running for three years.
Maybe I'll be running thirty more.
“Maybe I should just go back.”
The words surprise even me.
“To Thistlebrook.”
“To Leland.”
Alaric goes completely still.
Not thoughtful.
Not angry.
Dangerous.
“No.”
“It would end this.”
“No.”
The word lands between us like a locked door.
“Absolutely not.”
I look at him.
“Then what?”
He studies me for a long moment.
“You're forgetting what I was before I became a detective.”
“What's that?”
His voice is calm.
Almost gentle.
Which somehow makes it far more frightening.
“I'm a vampire, Birdie.”
A beat.
“Before I started taking contracts from people like Leland...”
Another.
“I used to eliminate people like him.”
The room goes silent.
Theo stops scrolling.
Even Trent lowers his book.
Alaric never takes his eyes off mine.
“He thinks he's the worst monster in this story.”
Another heartbeat passes.
“He hasn't met me yet.”
Oddly...
That doesn't frighten me.
Maybe it should.
Instead...
For the first time in years...
I feel completely safe.