Chapter 5 #3
She guided me to a parking lot that sat at the base of a hill and unlocked a sleek black vintage-looking BMW, the paint catching the afternoon light.
“Whoa, cool car.”
She shot me small smile that held a hint of sadness, eyes going glassy. “Molly gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday.”
I didn’t know how to feel about that because we clearly hadn’t proven Molly was my birth mother. And I was starting to wonder if maybe Celia was so grief-stricken about losing her friend that the first person she stumbled upon who looked remotely like her, she clung to.
I slipped into the car and clipped on my belt, and she reversed out of the lot, tires crunching softly against the gravel.
“You know, I could not be Molly’s daughter. I could just be some random lost-born. Or a human…”
She laughed, shaking her head. “You’re not human. If you were, you would have been enthralled with the rest of the humans at the club, and eating that wafer would have killed you. But you’re right, there’s a small chance Molly isn’t your mother.”
I felt relieved just hearing it, my shoulders easing a fraction. It was too much pressure, and I didn’t even know the woman. I didn’t want Celia to be heartbroken when she found out the truth.
“How big is Veil Haven?” I asked, watching the unfamiliar streets roll past the window.
“Good question. About the size of the UK. You can drive across it in twelve hours.”
Whoa. That was bigger than I thought. “And you have car dealerships here?” I indicated the BMW.
She laughed, and it was a bright sound that filled the space, chasing away some of the tension. Turning right, she took Stake Street, and then we pulled into a cute little neighborhood of modest two-story homes that were relatively close to each other.
“No. We get what we need from the mortal realm and portal it back here. We use money just like the mortals do, and we go in for big shopping trips. Costco for the win.”
I grinned, imagining a bunch of vampire hunters doing a weekly Costco run. She turned right on Moonlight Avenue and pulled into a cute light blue bungalow with a white porch and parked her car out front. It was a five-minute drive from the school.
“Did you buy this house? What’s your job?” Now I was fascinated to see how this new world worked.
“I’m a lead licensed hunter, specifically a slayer, but you’ll get into all that in your studies.
It’s kind of like the military. My husband, Derek, and I were assigned this house, and we get to live here for free so long as we’re working.
He works for Nightguard Academy, and I work for the Hunters Guild.
I get a monthly living stipend for other things, similar to a higher-ranking military member in the mortal world. ”
Very cool. And I respected that she was being so forthcoming.
“So the guild is like the military?” I asked.
She nodded. “Kind of. If you want to hunt vampires, you need to be licensed with the guild. They make sure only the best are sent into the field and they have centuries of intel to help know where to send teams.”
Crazy cool.
We stepped out of the car and up to the front door, and Celia held her fingerprint over a small black keypad, the screen lighting up beneath her thumb. It beeped and unlocked with a snapping noise.
“Wait, you keep saying mortal world. You guys are mortal too, right?”
She opened the door and peered back at me with a look I couldn’t quite interpret, something unreadable passing through her eyes. “Let’s talk about all that later. I want you to meet Harper, my daughter.”
My eyes widened. “No, I want to talk about it now.” My voice shook.
Why didn’t she answer me straightforwardly?
She sighed. “We don’t physically age past fifty. We live to about three hundred before we naturally die unless killed.”
My jaw unhinged. “Wait, are you serious?” I wasn’t mentally prepared to live for three hundred years!
Before I could voice that, Celia just nodded and opened the door into her home.
We stepped inside a cute, well-lit living room, and Celia called out into the house. “I’m home!”
I pushed the fact that I might actually look fifty years old for two hundred and fifty years to the back of my mind and focused on the space in front of me.
The room was warm and tidy, the kind of family room where the furniture all matched and everything had a place.
Soft gray couches framed a low wooden coffee table, and a stack of board games sat neatly on a shelf beside a wide picture window.
A framed photo collage hung above the mantel, each image showing smiling faces that looked relaxed and safe, the opposite of the world outside.
“Harps!” Celia’s voice carried down the hallway.
We passed a dining room with a long farmhouse table and six matching chairs pushed in perfectly, then moved past a bright kitchen that smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and something sweet baked earlier.
Pale cabinets lined the walls, and a bowl of fresh fruit sat on the counter beside a vase of daisies.
Harper popped out of an open door in the hallway.
“Oh, hey, Mom,” a girl about my age with light brown skin, long, dark straight hair, and blue eyes said. Then she looked at me. “Holy crap, she does look just like Molly.”
My pulse quickened at her comment, and I laughed nervously, heat creeping into my cheeks.
“This is Stella.” Celia gestured to me. “She’s a little overwhelmed with the Molly talk and all things vampire.” Celia widened her eyes, and Harper nodded as if getting the message.
“Gotcha. Hi, Stella. Do you want to come to my room while I finish my nails?” She held up a half-painted hand of lime green coffin-pointed nails, and I nodded.
Something normal.
Thank God.
“I’ll be out here,” Celia told me.
I stepped into Harper’s room, noticing the way it instantly felt like the kind of space an eighteen-year-old lived in.
A soft string of warm fairy lights ran along the ceiling, casting a golden glow over the room.
The walls were a pale sage green, mostly covered with posters of bands.
There were a few Polaroid photos clipped to twine and a corkboard crowded with notes and scribbled reminders.
A bed with a fluffy white comforter sat under the window, the blankets half rumpled like she had been sitting on them earlier. A pile of throw pillows in muted colors leaned against the headboard.
Her desk sat across from it, cluttered but lived in, littered with makeup brushes, a small mirror propped on textbooks, a half-finished iced coffee, and a bowl of nail polish bottles in the corner.
The coolest part of the room was the wall beside her closet.
A wooden rack held a few hunter weapons on display, all polished and arranged like trophies.
A pair of short blades crossed in an X shape, a curved dagger with a dark leather grip, and a small wooden stake with a carved handle hung beneath them.
It all looked strangely normal here, like most kids had weapons hanging above their laundry hamper.
A fuzzy green rug covered part of the hardwood floor, and there was a faint vanilla smell from a candle she must have blown out earlier. The whole space felt young and creative and safe. Like the way I might decorate when I actually got my own place.
“You can sit on my bed. I want the scoop on last night with Asher. Everyone is talking about it,” Harper said as she sat on the floor and proceeded to paint her other hand.
“Is he okay?” I asked. “He was injured last I saw him and worried about getting in trouble for missing the portal.”
She peered up at me, studying my face. “My dad’s a professor at Nightguard.
I overheard him talking to someone in admissions this morning.
Asher is still graduating because he didn’t break any rules, and protocol demands you stick with a lost-born, which he did.
But… He won’t be receiving his hunter marks. ” She winced.
I tensed, not realizing until now how worried I’d been about him, my hands curling into the blanket beneath me. I felt bad for how I had treated the guy who had saved my life.
“Is that pretty bad? To not get your marks?” I had no idea how this all worked.
Harper shrugged, blowing gently on her nails. “I mean, it’s happened before, and he’ll get a second chance with the rest of the students who failed, but it doesn’t happen to someone like Asher. He comes from a long line of high-ranking hunters.”
Crap. He was going to hate me.
“And his arm?”
She shrugged. “It’s Asher Voss. I’m sure he’s fine. He’s been through worse.”
Asher Voss. I tossed the name around in my head.
“So you know each other?” I wasn’t sure what “been through worse” meant, but now I wanted to know.
“Why? Do you like him?” She raised an eyebrow and looked up from painting her pinkie nail with a smirk. “He’s recently single.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t even know him, but he saved my life…I think. I’m still having a hard time believing this is all real.”
Harper frowned, setting down her nail polish, and came to sit next to me on the bed.
“So you grew up in the mortal world and had no idea this stuff even existed?”
I nodded, feeling a little sick thinking about it all. “Yeah, turned eighteen and bam. Vampires are real.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Hmm. Like the day you turned eighteen, you started to see them?”
I nodded. “My birthday was last night. Why?”
She ran over to her bookshelf and pulled down a large brown tome. The spine read Runes and Their Meanings .
“I was just studying for my final, and it reminds me of this one rune you can put on to conceal your abilities until a set time. Most hunters would use it for an extending stakeout in the mortal world if they didn’t want to attract the vampires, but what if…
” She held the book out to me, and the rune sent a bolt of shock right through me.
Voidlock Hallowbind.
It was one of the same ones from the photos of me as a baby in the hospital. I remembered the six spirals surrounding an X shape with dots all around it.
“Harper?”
“What?”