Page 81 of Slayer

“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.