Page 27 of Slayer

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.”