Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
The next day, the whole school was on high alert.
Everyone was talking about the vampire attack on Asher and me.
When I walked down the halls, I heard whispers ripple through the air, low and excited.
“Tyson.”
My official new nickname.
It was mortifying, but Harper and Luna puffed up with pride beside me every time they heard it.
At least I hadn’t freaked them out.
“Hey, do you have a car?” I asked Harper as we crossed the quad.
I didn’t have my license. Never needed it in Spokane when I couldn’t afford a car anyway.
“No, but I can borrow my mom’s. You want to go somewhere?”
“After-school practices were canceled after the attack, but I was hoping I could get special permission to check out my mom’s storage unit.” I hesitated, then added, “She left me the key.”
My mother’s note had been taking up permanent residence in my head lately.
Her big secret.
One I apparently had to figure out myself and one she’d warned me not to trust any fellow hunters with.
Maybe the storage unit held answers. Or at least breadcrumbs.
The letter itself was…eerie.
Paranoid even.
I’d tried to tell myself she might have been mentally unwell, but something about the way everything kept lining up made me hesitate to dismiss it so easily.
“Yeah, let me ask my mom. I’m sure she’d love to go with us if she’s not working,” Harper said.
I nodded. I’d overheard the night-shift hunters that morning. They worked all night in the mortal realm, then staggered home to guard the school on fractured day shifts with only a few hours of sleep.
They were exhausted.
I assumed her mom would be sleeping or working at the school, like most hunters coming off night duty.
A few hours, later classes were done, and Harper had gotten permission to borrow her mom’s car.
The storage unit was only ten minutes away.
As expected, her mother was asleep before her next night shift, but she’d asked Harper to save any pictures of her and Molly or memorabilia from their friendship so she could see it later.
It was strange not knowing the woman who gave birth to me.
She was a stranger, and yet I felt this deep, aching pull toward her.
Especially after her letter and the marks they’d found on me when I was a baby.
The more I learned, the more it all seemed to connect.
“So my mom was an arcanist?” I asked as Harper turned into the storage facility lot.
“Yep. Really powerful one. My mom said she was scary sometimes with what she could do.” She parked near the front office.
Scary?
I filed that away under interesting .
Inside the storage unit, the air smelled faintly of dust and industrial cleaner.
We were greeted by a woman named Rhonda, who informed us that my mother’s unit had been automatically paid for almost twenty years. She then directed us down a long, echoing hallway.
“Lock might be rusted shut. Let me know if you need help.”
Her heels clicked sharply as she walked away, and I noticed the hunter marks on her arms.
“So Rhonda was wearing hunter marks?” I asked quietly, trying to learn as much as I could about this new world.
Luna winced. “It means she got into Nightguard Academy but didn’t advance enough to become licensed with the guild.”
Great.
So if I didn’t make it, I could run a storage unit. And on the side, maybe I’d bake sourdough with Jane for Harper and Luna while listening to their badass vampire-hunting stories.
Focus, Stella.
I pulled the key from my pocket and slid it into the lock. Rhonda hadn’t been kidding; rust flecked the metal, and it took a solid twist of effort before it finally gave with a dull clunk.
Luna’s hand shot out and startled me. “I feel like I should warn you. If there is anything vintage in here in the color black, I’m going to find it and beg you to let me have it.”
I laughed. “It’s yours.”
I liked the leather jacket, sure, but I didn’t want a wardrobe full of my dead mom’s clothes. That felt…heavy.
Luna squealed, bouncing on her black Mary Janes.
Harper grabbed the left side of the roll-up door, and I took the right. We heaved together.
Dust rained down on us in a choking plume, and we both coughed, waving it away.
I peered inside and paused. I didn’t know what I’d expected. Maybe stacks of boxes, old paperwork, or forgotten junk.
But not this.
“Oh…” Harper breathed. “Was she…living in here?”
It looked like a tiny studio apartment frozen in time.
A narrow daybed sat against the far wall, neatly made. A teal area rug anchored the center of the unit like it belonged there. Against one wall was a dresser, and on top of it sat a microwave, a water kettle, and a few Earl Grey tea packets laid out carefully.
Everything was coated in a fine layer of dust.
If it weren’t for that, I’d have thought she’d been here that morning.
“ No way. She was rich, right?” Luna asked, opening a dresser drawer. “Score.” She pulled out a black miniskirt and turned to me with exaggerated puppy eyes.
“It’s yours,” I told her, and she squealed.
Harper drifted toward a filing cabinet and ran her finger along the top, coming away with a thick line of dust.
“My mom said she had her own house a few blocks from ours. They planned to raise their kids together… Why would she live in here?” Harper sounded as confused as I felt.
A stone settled in my gut.
I was wondering the same thing. There was even a camping toilet tucked into the corner.
“I don’t know.”
Harper moved to inspect the wall rack of weapons, and I beelined for the filing cabinet.
If my mom was hiding something, it would be here, and preferably I found it before the girls.
I opened the drawer slowly and peered inside at three stacks of photo albums. I lifted them out and set them on top of the cabinet, opening the first one. A smile tugged at my lips before I could stop it. It was filled with pictures of Celia and Molly from twelve to twenty-three-ish.
Always grinning.
Always holding on to each other.
“This is for your mom.” My voice caught.
Harper nodded and carried the album to the bed, sitting down carefully with it.
“Oh em gee, a black corset! Your mom was so cool,” Luna called from the dresser.
I chuckled and opened the second album. My stomach sank. It was of my mom and her fiancé.
Donovan.
The photos hurt in a quiet, aching way. Piggyback rides, fancy clothes at some formal event, my mom gazing at him like the world narrowed down to just his face. One picture nearly stopped my heart. My mom was asleep, and Donovan was taking a selfie, holding up an engagement ring with a cheeky grin.
Had he shown her the photo later? Was that how he’d proposed?
A loose paper slipped free from the last page, and I unfolded it. It was a poem.
Donnie,
Your love is the only thing that ever felt real.
Cast aside by the woman who bore me,
I learned safety in your arms.
The world hunts me, but you are my shield.
Where my childhood fractured me, you made me whole again.
I would follow you into a vampire den, even if it meant my own destruction.
Molly
The last line made my chest ache. It was tragic in hindsight considering he’d been turned. I set the album down and opened the third.
A gasp tore from my throat as Harper and Luna rushed to my side.
“What’s wrong?” they asked.
Harper leaned over my shoulder.
The photo showed my mother, sweaty and pale, tears streaking her face, smiling through exhaustion as she held a newborn.
Me.
I glanced over my shoulder at the small bed in the corner of the room. The pale pink bedspread and chipped paint over steel behind the bed were in the photo.
“Holy crap, you were born in this storage unit?” Luna placed a hand on my shoulder.
Harper frowned. “Why? Why wouldn’t she have gone to my mom? Were they fighting?”
I didn’t know, but the fact that my mother labored and birthed me alone in a storage unit in Veil Haven made me feel sad and a little sick. I flipped a few more pages to find they were blank.
“I think I’ve had enough for one visit.” I closed the photo album and tucked it under my arm along with the one of my mom’s fiancé in case I wanted to look at it again later.
“Yep. Let’s roll,” Harper agreed, turning off the light and grabbing the album I’d given her to give to her mom.
The car ride back to campus was awkwardly quiet.
“You guys freaked out that my mom had me in a storage unit?” I asked nervously, preparing my heart for the end of their friendship. Everyone always left when things got hard. That was my experience anyway.
Harper pulled into a spot near our dorm and faced me as Luna reached out from the back seat and grasped my shoulders.
“No way,” Harper said.
“I feel bad for you and for your mom. She must have felt scared and alone,” Luna told me while she squeezed my shoulders.
I nodded, feeling my throat tighten with emotion. “I mean, it’s weird, so it’s okay if you guys think I’m like…I dunno, a liability.” I didn’t even know what I was saying but I wanted to give them an out of the friendship if they were freaked out.
Harper scoffed. “Stop it, Stella. You can’t get rid of us.”
“Nope.” Luna popped the P in my ear from behind. “Especially not after you gave me this vintage corset.”
“Vintage is from 2001?” Harper laughed.
“Yeah, obvi. That’s, like, hella old,” Luna agreed.
“Oh, my mom is going to hate that you said that.” Harper moved to pull out her phone, and Luna snatched it from her hand.
“Don’t tell her I said that. She’ll think that I think she’s old!”
“She is old!” Harper launched into the back seat like a cat and tackled Luna as they both went down laughing and grappling for the cell phone.
I watched as Harper tickled Luna to get her to dislodge the phone, and they both cackled.
I felt incredibly grateful to have had these girls take me into their friendship.
But no matter how much I tried to tell myself I was a good friend and didn’t do anything wrong, I was still waiting for something bad to happen and for them to get sick of me and edge me out.