Grayson thought his stupid, flushed and grinning face was answer enough. “Did you?”
Daniel laughed. “You were the best surprise I’ve had in a long time.”
Grayson noticed the vampire’s eyes fluttering closed with the lazy satisfied look in them. “It’s close to sunrise, isn’t it?”
“You are a clever boy,” Daniel said. “But I’ve got enough in me to walk you home if you want.”
“No, it’s okay,” Grayson said. “I don’t live far from here.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Daniel said, his eyes closed. But the playful smile was still in place. “I’ve told you. You shouldn’t tell vampires where you live.”
Grayson couldn’t imagine having to be afraid of this guy.
“I’ll take my chances,” Grayson said and bent to kiss his lips again. They were soft and full. But that delirious passion had faded. Maybe vampires didn’t have their pheromones during the day. It seemed that way. Because while Daniel was still very attractive, it wasn’t driving Grayson out of his mind anymore.
He brushed the hair off Daniel’s face, regarding him one last time. “I’m going to head out. Thanks for everything.”
Daniel snorted. “Any time.”
Grayson stood and dressed as quietly as he could.
“Hey, Grayson?” Daniel called, rolling over in his bed to give Grayson one more gracious smile.
Grayson hesitated in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” Mirroring the smile, Grayson closed the bedroom door.
Grayson walked home in a delicious haze. The morning sun gave everything a dewy glow and warm shine. He felt exhausted but deliriously happy. Too happy. It was a borderline a crime to be this content with how his night had gone in the wake of his best friend’s death.
The pheromones, he realized, had also suppressed that sad part of him, the part that was grieving a terrible loss.
Now that the vampire was well out of reach, his reality pressed in on him again.
By the time he was at his front door, he was nearly in tears.
He slipped into the quiet house and mounted the stairs as slowly as possible to avoid creaks.
He took a shower—his third tonight—and changed out of his clothes. He noted the splash of blood on the collar of his t-shirt and tried to wash it out in the sink.
He found Abby asleep in his bed, curled up in his pillows.
Clean and dressed, he climbed into bed beside her. Abby stirred but didn’t wake. That was just as well. Grayson didn’t know what he could’ve possibly have said to her if she had.
He woke to a soft knock on his bedroom door. He opened his eyes and found his mother standing in the frame, one hand on the handle, another on the jamb.
If his mother had any thoughts about the way Abigail was wrapped around his shoulder, sleeping soundly on his chest, she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look directly at Abby.
And Grayson was too exhausted to care. He felt like his eyes were on fire. He couldn’t have slept more than two or three hours.
“Abigail’s mom is going to be here in twenty minutes. I thought she might want a bagel or coffee before she goes.”
“Abby.” He shook her gently. “Abby, wake up.”
At first, her hold tightened on him.
“Abby, your mom is on her way.”
She raised her head, auburn hair covering her face. She pushed it back with her hand.
“Morning,” his mother said from the doorway. She came to the side of the bed and put Abby’s clean clothes on a pile. “I washed your clothes. Or you can just wear those.” She seemed to read Abby’s hesitation. “I can get them back some other time.”
“Thank you,” Abby said, sitting up. “I appreciate that.”
“Would you like a bagel and coffee?
“Yes and yes.” She smoothed her abundant hair out of her face.
“Blueberry or Everything?”
“Everything. Do you have any of that garlic spread?”
His mother smiled, but Grayson saw how it didn’t reach her eyes. “I do.”
“I’ll take that, please. Thank you.”
His mother gave him a look.
“I’ll make mine,” Grayson told her before she shut the door with a nod.
“I love your mother,” Abby said, stretching her arms overhead.
“Do you need a washcloth or anything?” he asked. He knew Abby liked to wash her face in the morning.
“I still have one from yesterday.”
For a long time they both sat there, not moving, not speaking.
“It really happened, didn’t it? He’s really dead.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “There was a moment when I was just coming awake and I thought—”
“I know,” he said. The last twelve hours of his life seemed like a crazy blur.
She took her clothes and disappeared into the bathroom without saying anything else.
Grayson went downstairs and found the bagels by the toaster. The smell of coffee filled the kitchen. It was some sort of mocha blend. He could smell the chocolate.
He cut a blueberry bagel in half with a knife and forced it into the slots of the toaster. He stood there while the elements glowed red.
Landon.
God, Landon. Was he really dead? Could he really be gone?
His mind kept bucking against the idea with disbelief.
Before he considered what he was doing, he had his cell phone out of his pocket. He dialed Landon’s cell—he was the last one to call Grayson—and listened to the empty static on the line.
It went straight to voicemail.
“If you’re looking for Landon, you found him! What’s up?”
It beeped and Grayson considered leaving a message. His mouth was half open. The breath was there between his lips.
“Who are you calling?” his mom asked. She came through the swinging doors and crossed to the fridge. She pulled out a pitcher of OJ and stood there looking at him.
“No one,” Grayson said, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “I was checking my messages.”
It was a meaningless lie, but easier than opening himself up to have a conversation he wasn’t ready to have.
The toaster spit out his bagel and he took it into the dining room. He sat down at the table beside his father. That left a space between him and his mother for Abby, which already had a steaming cup of coffee and hot bagel waiting.
“What are you going to do today?” his father asked.
“I think you should stay home and rest,” his mother interjected. Her fierce blue eyes seemed to challenge his father to argue against her. “You clearly didn’t get enough sleep.”
His father seemed oblivious to any such challenge as he shoved the last bite of a bagel into his mouth and continued to scroll through his phone, catching up on the morning news.
“I’m supposed to be at work at two,” Grayson said. “But I could call in.”
“You should,” his mother said. “What will Tabitha do? Fire you?”
It was true that Grayson didn’t need his job at Curiosity Books. But he liked working there. There was something about the cramped rows and precariously perched stacks that comforted him. And it wasn’t like spending his afternoons in a used bookstore was a hard job. Usually he spent it reading behind the register and saying hello to the customers who meandered in.
Every hour or so, there might be a purchase or two, but overall it was quiet.
The most exciting part of the gig was the ghost upstairs who liked to move around Ms. Monroe’s dining room furniture when she was away. And sometimes, if the ghost was particularly restless, she would pull a book from the shelves just to hear it hit the dusty carpet.
“Are you guys going to be here?” Grayson asked, forcing down a bite of his bagel. Thinking of Landon was making his throat tight again, but if he didn’t eat his mother would only come down harder on him. She was militant about self-care.
“No, I have to go into the lab for a few hours, but I’ll be home in the afternoon,” his father said.
“And I have office hours and two meetings,” his mother said. “But I’d be happy to cancel those if you want me to stay with you.”
“No,” he said and hoped he didn’t sound too eager. “I want to be alone.”
“Okay,” his mother said, but her face was contradicting her. It was clear she didn’t really think it was okay. “There’s still Chinese in the fridge and I also made a salad.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ll let us know where you’re going to be though,” his mother said. It wasn’t a question, even if it did tilt up at the end. “Work or here?”
Grayson Choice 7
Go to work
Stay home
Reese: Go up the stairs
Reese transformed into her human form and pulled herself out of the water onto the steps. Her bare feet scraped across the rough stone.
The second she straightened, water dripping down her back, a horrible screeching thrummed to life behind her.
The sirens had awakened. They thrashed on their rocks, throwing themselves into the water. Their lithe forms were torpedoing through the water toward her.
“Shit.” She bounded up the stairs two and three at a time, careful not to slip on the wet surface. At the top of the stairs was a stone door.
“Please be unlocked, please be unlocked, please be unlocked.”
The door opened under the hard push of her hand despite the weight of the stone. Behind her the sirens had stopped advancing. They now crowded the lower steps, but seemed unwilling to come up the stairs after her.
They can’t get out of the water, she thought. At least not this far.
Heart still hammering in her chest, she breathed a sigh of relief and closed the door behind her.
She was greeted by a narrow passage. Light filtered through cracks in its crumbling walls, giving her a clear enough sense of where she was going. At the end of the passage, another set of stairs appeared. She mounted these as well.
Narrow passage, then stairs.
Another passage, then more stairs.
The labyrinth seemed to lead her higher and higher until her chest and legs were aching from the ascent.
“This is the last one,” she said aloud, when she pushed open yet another stone door to find only more stairs. “If there’s nothing here after this, I’m going back.”
But the end of this passage opened onto what could only be described as a courtyard. Light poured through a collapsed ceiling onto the flagstones below. The stones themselves were half-eaten with moss and determined vines had pushed themselves up through the cracks.
I’m in the castle, she realized, as she turned in its center, admiring the ruined splendor. The public wasn’t allowed to enter the castle ruins for fear that it would collapse and kill someone. Yet here she was, having found a secret passage inside.
A cacophony of beating wings tore a shriek from her throat. A cloud of pigeons coalesced atop a crumbling wall, cooing softly at her.
She followed the outline of the room to a small chamber. It had the air of an inner sanctum. But on the walls were ornate carvings of some kind. Clearly a stoneworker had license to embellish this stone either before or after it had been installed.
Reese crossed to the nearest carving and pressed her fingers to the etchings. A woman with long, flowing hair was extending her hand toward an enormous cobra that stood entranced before her. The next panel was the same exchange but the snake had changed. Now its form hunched over on itself. In the third and fourth panels, it was unfurling into a human form. If the woman was Vendetta, then it seemed her touch alone had transformed the snake into a human.
On the next wall, there was a small child crawling out of the sea and a woman there to welcome her with open arms.
This sparked a memory in Reese. Her first memory.
She was in the ocean—swimming? She had been following the slow, curious procession of a starfish when hands scooped her out of the water. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. The next she was in her aunt’s arms.
“Look at you!” her aunt cried. Her shocked face was full of bright sunlight. Her hazel eyes shone like amber. “Where did you come from?”
Reese couldn’t have been more than three or four years old at the time.
Could it be that Reese had simply come from the ocean? Transformed for the first time in her aunt’s own embrace?
Tell me again, Reese had begged over and over again. Tell me again about the day you found me.
You were on the beach, Constance said, all alone in the surf.
Reese had no memory of her parents or her life before she was here in Castle Cove. She remembered only those bright summers and endless waves, and then her aunt taking her home, caring for her as if she was her own. Her aunt had no true blood relation to her. Reese had asked on more than one occasion why she would bother taking in a child that wasn’t hers. A child with no history before her mysterious arrival in Castle Cove?
We aren’t kin, Reese had said.
Of course we are kin, Constance had said. With a kind smile, she’d gather the ink-dipped ends of Reese’s hair and run them through her fingers. She held it up to her own. Look at us.
Perhaps Ethan’s words had some truth to them—was it possible that Reese didn’t remember her life before Castle Cove because there had been only the ocean?
Had she been a shark first? A human second? Was this human life the dream life?
Reese fingered the stone reliefs and wondered. These were the only drawings with animals transforming under Vendetta’s watchful gaze, but Vendetta herself was everywhere. Reese must’ve found hundreds of reliefs of the woman with the wild, flowing hair in every weed-choked chamber she explored.
Another common theme was a tree, majestic with its gnarled limbs. Could it be The Crone Tree she’d heard of from the stories? She couldn’t be sure. The only question she had was whether or not these carvings existed first—validating the story—or if someone had seen the carvings later and made up the stories to match.
Perhaps she would never know.
Reese noticed a shift in the light. It was far more purple now than it had been when she’d set off this morning. And the rumble in her stomach seemed to confirm her suspicion. She’d lost track of time exploring the castle. If she didn’t leave now, she would have to swim back in the dark.
In all her searching, she didn’t find an exit out of the castle. How wonderful it would’ve been if she could’ve simply walked out of the ruins to her car. But she suspected that Ethan—or some other caretaker of the city—had been careful to seal the castle for the public’s protection.
Reese would have to return to the underground tunnel and swim back to the beach, or she could try to climb out of here. She saw enough grooves in the rockface to know that she could probably do it. But it might be a long drop from the top if there were no handholds on the outside of the castle.
Reese Choice 8
Try to climb the outer wall
Use the stairs
Reese: Try to climb the outer wall
Reese didn’t have it in her to descend all those stairs to the underground cavern, only to swim the miles back to shore. Not after spending the whole day exploring the castle and no snacks. She could eat on the way back. Nothing was stopping her from preying on any of the fish that crossed her path. But with her car so close, and only a wall between her and the parking lot, she had to give it a try.
She chose the lowest wall she could find. It was in the north corner of the courtyard, with a swath of blue sky beckoning to her.
She worked her way carefully up the side of the wall, testing each rock before putting her whole weight on it. The stone felt quite sturdy beneath her, the moist moss rubbing against her hand.
As she reached the top of this wall, she smiled. This is going to work, she thought.
Her hand reached out and grabbed th
e top of the wall eagerly, only to find wet, loose stone. The sudden lack of resistance surprised her. As the stone slid off the top of the wall, so did she. The shift in her weight unmoored the stones beneath her as well until all of it was crashing down.
Her body hit the stone floor with a crack, something snapping in her leg. Her head slammed against the stone floor. Ringing hollowed out her ears as pain shot through her skull.
She opened her eyes only a moment before a large stone collapsed on top of her, blotting out the bright expanse of sky.
Create New Story
Remake the last choice
Reese: Use the stairs
As much as Reese loathed the idea of walking all the way back to the underground cavern, she thought it was much safer than trying to climb out of the castle. If it had been sealed to protect the public from getting hurt, it stood to reason that the walls were not nearly as stable as they looked. The ruins were thousands of years old. They wouldn’t appreciate being climbed on.
Retracing her steps, she found the courtyard and the passage connecting it to the descending staircase. By the time she reached the underground cavern, her legs were shaking with fatigue.
Aqua waters shimmered on the stone steps, but there was no horde of sirens. Perhaps they’d gotten tired of waiting as she spent hours exploring the castle above. Or perhaps they were hoping she’d jump in so they could descend on her.
Regardless, the air had cooled, and she was still naked, tired, and hungry. She had to get back to shore with what energy she had left.
With a deep breath, she dove into the water, trying her best to transform in the air even if that meant a painful belly flop on the water’s surface.
She managed it, though pain ricocheted through her abdomen on impact. She sank beneath the water, seeing the sirens stir at the commotion. But unlike before they did not chase her.
It must only be human flesh, she thought, her body easing into a steady rhythm. Human flesh in the water is what draws them.
The swim back felt shorter despite her fatigue. She supposed it had to do with the fact that she knew where she was going this time and how far she must travel.
Night Tide Page 13