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I grabbed the dustpan, sweeping the dirt from the floor into it. “Yeah. Kyrie told me.”
“The one who ate at the café with us?” Valerie asked. The question seemed for my benefit, as if she had met any otherfriendsfrom school.
She hadn’t.
And when Kyrie joined us for breakfast that Saturday, Valerie had barely spoken before pretending she needed to start her shift early, instructing me to walk home. She could pretend to be pulled away that day but couldn’t pretend to be normal in front of my friend.
“Her dad’s a preacher. She gave me a brief history of the churches in town,” I said.
Valerie nodded, reaching for a dish towel. “The Deacon who lives on the hill came into the café not long after we moved here. He’s a nice man. He invited us to see his service sometime.”
I felt it then. A cold anger washed over me. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt the strange sensation, and it wouldn’t be the last. It would only get worse.
I dumped the dust in the waste bin, turning to Valerie. “Why would you want to do that? After what we left?”
Valerie crossed her arms and cleared her throat. “We mustn’t let what happened in California color our view of God. Markus was an evil man, but he’s dead now.”
“And we would have been dead if he got his way. BecauseVampire Jesustold him so.” I used air quotes and glared at her, my teenage petulance making me feel normal in a way. I never fought with my parents. I was too frightened of them.
“There are no such thing as vampires.”
“There’s no such thing asGod,” I seethed. “What benevolent being would allow someone to use his name and do what Markus did to them? To my mom?” I swallowed, and it hurt. “To me?”
I felt something like love for Valerie. It wasn’t family or friendship. Just the bond two people felt when they experienced immense trauma together. I didn’t understand it then; I would, as things got worse between us, as one fell and the other healed.
“I know, Nicholas. But if we’re going to start over, this is part of it.”
“I don’t want to go to church. You can’t fucking make me,” I said, voice deep. Beneath my ribcages, something rattled, and I felt a vibration around us. A warm line ignited from the base of my spine and sped up my back and into my throat.
What the fuck?
Valerie looked around, and I realized she felt it too. “What was that?” she asked.
“I …” My neck felt hot, and my body felt cold; I swayed a little with the exertion.
It was the first time my anger would move out of my body and be felt by others. But it wouldn’t be the last time.
Moving to Hart Hollow woke something inside of me—a beast, a dark shadow slithering between my bones. I was close to my other half, to my partner. I just didn’t know it.
I shoved my anger aside and leaned against the counter. I tried to make my voice even when I spoke again. “I’m … I’m not going to church.”
Valerie was rattled; I could see a quiver in her movement. She eyed me with suspicion, something like fear. “Okay. What about dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“The Deacon invited me to dinner, and I told him I had a nephew, and he said he would love to have you as well.”
“Is this a date?”
Valerie shook her head, but I saw the blush. Her lies sounded almost believable. “Deacons can’t date. It’s a Catholic church, Nicholas.”
In our travels, Valerie had turned to study, trying to understand religion and how it worked. I thought it was to know why Markus hurt others. To understand why whatever happened to us happened.
Markus had sex with all the women on the ranch.
All but Valerie. Lips weren’t as tight as you would think on the ranch. Put three people in a room, and two will whisper. One will devour secrets.
The whispers said she had a deformity. She was unclean, not fit to breed. And besides, she was an outsider.
