Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The last thing I need right now is silence.
Silence leaves too much room for replaying things, and my brain has latched onto last night like it’s a terrier that’s got a personal vendetta and a trouser leg. Nick on my porch. Nick in his sitting room. Nick with dark on his mouth and excuses lined up behind his fangs, waiting for their cue.
I lasted exactly forty-three minutes alone in my house before deciding I’d done enough character building for one day.
Willow Creek has woken up and is already putting itself back together.
I cut past the playground on my way to The Knit and Kettle and catch just enough to register how much progress has been made.
The fencing’s upright again. The slide has been persuaded to resemble a slide.
The merry-go-round is no longer trying to reinvent itself as modern art.
A cluster of volunteers is still at it, wrapped in scarves and grim determination as they negotiate with the aftermath of several hundred reindeer who clearly did not believe in civic planning.
The south fence will need checking later.
Preferably by someone who isn’t me and is enthusiastic about fences.
There are a dozen things still broken in this town.
My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing all night.
I’ve signed permits. Ordered lumber. Created groups and appointed team leaders.
There are still a million things to be done.
Coffee comes first.
I push through the door of The Knit and Kettle, trailing cold air and a mood that could curdle dairy, with the bell above the door giving its usual cheerful little jingle as if I am not one frayed nerve away from strangling a decorative garland.
The place is warm, crowded, and smells aggressively of cinnamon.
Someone has draped knitted snowflakes across the chalkboard menu.
The big armchair in the corner is wearing a festive cushion cover, this one featuring a robin with the haunted expression of a bird that has seen too much.
At the back, the espresso machine hisses—even the appliances are judging my choices.
Marcy is already here, of course. She is tucked into our usual table by the window with a mug the size of a soup tureen and the expression of a woman who knows she is about to receive an emotional unburdening disguised as gossip.
“Oh no,” she says. “That’s not your regular festival crisis face. That’s your ‘I have seen something deeply troubling and possibly extremely handsome’ face.”
I sink into the seat opposite her and peel off my gloves one finger at a time.
“You’re deeply annoying.”
“You don’t believe that,” she says, sliding a mug toward me. “You’re friends with me because I’m right and because I keep emergency cinnamon buns on hand for personal disasters. Start talking.”
I wrap both hands around the mug, more for the anchoring than the heat.
“I think I might have made a terrible mistake.”
Marcy brightens like someone’s announced an ice-skating accident and a scandal in the same sentence.
“Excellent,” she says. “Those are always the best stories.”
“They’re not,” I say. “They’re stressful, humiliating, and usually involve me wanting to move to another country and change my name.”
“Mm,” Marcy says, entirely unbothered. “Still entertaining for me. Go on.”
I stare into my drink like it might rearrange itself into answers if I give it enough time.
It doesn’t.
Rude.
“I went to his house last night,” I say finally.
“Oh, really?” She purrs and leans forward.
“Not like that. He didn’t know I was there.”
Marcy doesn’t react immediately, which is suspicious. Marcy always reacts immediately.
Then, very carefully, she says, “And when you say ‘So this was less of a socially acceptable visit, and more of a creeping-around-outside-his-window kind of thing?’”
“…I don’t like your tone.”
“That’s because my tone is accurate.”
“I wasn’t creeping,” I say. “I was…observing.”
“From outside the window.”
“Yes.”
“In the dark.”
“It’s winter,” I snap. “It’s dark at four in the afternoon. That’s not my fault.”
Marcy hums into her mug. “Mm. Continue your completely normal and not at all concerning behavior.”
I take a sip of my gingerbread latte, mostly so I don’t have to look at her.
“I saw him,” I say. “Feeding.”
Marcy stills.
Not dramatically or a gasp or a clutch at her chest. Just…still, like a thought has decided to sit down and take its hiking boots off.
“Okay,” she says after a moment. “Define feeding.”
“I don’t think that needs defining.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
“He had a rogue elf,” I say. “And he was—” I gesture vaguely now that my vocabulary has packed up and left “—doing the vampire thing.”
“Drinking blood.”
“Yes.”
“Right.” She nods slowly. “And this is upsetting because…?”
“Because—Marcy—he was drinking someone’s blood.”
“Yes,” she says patiently. “He is a vampire. That is very much their whole thing. It’s in the brochure.”
“That’s not—” I stop, aware I sound ridiculous, even to myself. “It’s not that simple.”
“It might be,” she says. “Walk me through it.”
I exhale, long and slow, and try again.
“He promised,” I say. “To Frank. To the town. To me. That they wouldn’t feed on anyone except in Hemoglow and only with consent.”
Marcy nods. “Okay.”
“And then I see him. Feeding,” I say. “He said it was for information. That vampires can sometimes pull memories when they feed. He was trying to find out what Santa’s doing with the tree.”
“That tracks,” Marcy says.
“That’s not helpful.”
“I’m not trying to be helpful yet,” she says. “I’m trying to understand why you look like you’re about to either cry or commit a small but meaningful crime.”
I give her the sort of look that ought to come with weather warnings.
“I am not going to cry,” I say.
“That’s good,” she says. “Means we’re in the crime zone. Are we talking felonies or misdemeanors?”
“I’m serious, Marcy.”
“So am I.” She leans forward slightly. “You saw him do something vampires do, for a reason that—annoyingly—makes sense. The elf is fine. The town is still standing. So why are you this upset?”
“I just told you—”
“No,” she says, gently but firmly. “You told me what happened. That’s not the same thing.”
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
“I trusted him,” I say finally.
“There we go,” she says softly. “That’s the one.”
My attention drops to the latte foam, which has arranged itself into the sort of meaningless swirl people in expensive wellness retreats probably call an answer.
“I trusted him,” I repeat, quieter now. “He stood there and told me he wanted to help. That he wanted the vampires to be part of Willow Creek. That he understood the rules.”
“And then you saw him…bend them.”
“Break them.”
“Bend them. For you,” she says. “Important distinction.”
“It’s not,” I say. “He found a loophole.”
Marcy tilts her head. “And that’s the problem?”
“Yes.”
“No,” she says. “That’s not his problem. That’s your problem.”
I frown at her. “They’re the same thing.”
“They are absolutely not the same thing.” She takes a sip of her drink, entirely too calm about this. “The problem is that he made you feel safe enough to believe him. The thing you’re struggling with is that it’s made you think that maybe you shouldn’t have.”
“I don’t—” I start, then stop, because I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence.
“You don’t like that he made a choice you wouldn’t have made,” she says. “And then stood there and explained it like it was reasonable.”
“Yes,” I say, too quickly.
“And you don’t like that part of you understands why he did it.”
I hesitate.
Which is answer enough.
Marcy smiles, small and knowing. “There it is.”
“I don’t like any of this,” I mutter.
“No,” she agrees. “It’s messy. And you like things to be…” she gestures vaguely and then continues, “less messy. What a shock that professional event planners happen to be type A personalities.”
“I run events, Marcy. My entire job is making things not messy.”
“Shame your emotions disagree with you.”
A cinnamon bun comes apart under my fingers in sticky spirals, shedding onto the plate like evidence. Across from me, Marcy twirls one dark curl around her finger and waits with the patience of someone who already knows the ending and is enjoying my slower route to it.
“I just—” I stop, trying to get the shape of it right. “If he’d just…told me. If he’d said, ‘this is what I’m going to do, and you might not like it, but I think it’s necessary.’ I still wouldn’t have liked it, but at least it would have been honest.”
“Instead, he did it and then explained it afterwards.”
“Yes.”
“Like a man who thinks the explanation is the important part.”
“Exactly.”
Marcy leans back in her chair, considering me over a drift of milk foam dusted with nutmeg like it’s a particularly festive interrogation.
“So you’re not upset that he’s a vampire. It’s that he acted like one in a way that didn’t match what he’d told you he’d be.”
“Yes.”
“And then he tried to logic his way out of it.”
“Yes.”
She taps her spoon twice against the side of her mug, a small, decisive punctuation mark. “Okay. That’s fair.”
Something in me unclenches enough to be noticeable. “Thank you.”
“But,” she adds, pointing a piece of cinnamon bun at me with the grave authority of a woman about to ruin my afternoon, “you also need to decide what you actually want from him.”
The thought catches in my head like a scarf on a nail. “What?”
“You’re mad,” she says. “That part’s clear. But what do you want him to do? Do you want him to apologize? To never do it again? Or do you want him to be something that he isn’t?”
“I don’t—” I stop. “I want him to mean what he says.”
Marcy smiles, soft this time. “That’s a good answer.”
“See. It’s perfectly reasonable.”
“Yes,” she says slowly. “But it’s also a hard thing to ask because it requires him to never make a mistake and people are consistently bad at that.”
“He’s not people,” I say. “He’s—”
“A vampire,” she finishes. “Which, ironically, simply means he’s had longer to practice getting things wrong.”
I press my lips together hard enough to qualify as a decision.
“This is a disaster.”