It feels good—he feels good—and I let myself sink in to him even as fear and frustration continue to circle inside me. “I have to push,” I tell him, cuddling closer. “How else do we figure out where Hudson is?”
The heat is on, but I’m still freezing—I guess spending four months as stone will do that to a girl—and I run my hands up and down my arms in an effort to warm them.
Uncle Finn watches me for a few seconds, then mutters something under his breath as he waves a hand in the air. Moments later, a warm blanket settles around Jaxon and me.
“Better?” he asks.
“So much better. Thank you.” I clutch it close.
He settles back against the corner of his desk. “To be honest, Grace, we were both terrified he was with you. And just as terrified he wasn’t.”
His last words hang in the air like a heavy weight for several minutes.
“Maybe he was with me.” Just thinking about being trapped with Hudson has a huge lump taking up residence in the middle of my throat. I pause, force myself to swallow it down, before asking, “If he was with me, do you think… Did I bring him back with me? Is he here now?”
I glance between my uncle and Jaxon, and they both stare at me with what has to be intentionally blank faces. The sight turns my veins, my heart, my very soul to ice. Because as long as Hudson is running around, Jaxon isn’t safe. And neither is anyone else.
My stomach churns sickly as I rack my brain. This isn’t happening. Please tell me this isn’t happening. I can’t be responsible for letting Hudson loose again, can’t be responsible for bringing him back where he can terrorize everyone and raise an army made of born vampires and their sympathizers.
“You wouldn’t do that,” Jaxon finally tells me. “I know you, Grace. You would never have come back if you thought Hudson was still a threat.”
“I agree,” my uncle eventually says. As he continues, I try to hold on to his words and not the silence that preceded them. “So let’s operate under that assumption for now. That you only came back because it was safe to do so. That means Hudson is most likely gone, and we don’t have to be worried.”
And yet he still looks worried. Of course he does. Because no matter how much we all want to believe that Hudson is gone, there’s one major flaw with their logic—mainly that they’re both talking about me being here like I decided to come back.
But what if I didn’t? If I didn’t make a conscious choice to become a gargoyle all those months ago, maybe I didn’t make a conscious choice to become human again now. And if that’s the case, where exactly is Hudson?
Dead?
Frozen in stone in some alternate reality?
Or hiding out somewhere here at Katmere, just waiting for his chance to exact revenge on Jaxon?
I don’t like the sound of any of the alternatives, but the last one is definitely the worst. In the end, I put it aside because freaking out won’t do me any good.
But we have to start somewhere, so I decide to go along with Uncle Finn’s assumption—mostly because I like it better than all the alternatives put together. “Okay. Let’s assume that, if I had control of Hudson, I wouldn’t have just let him go. Now what?”
“Now we chill out a little bit. We stop worrying about Hudson and start worrying about you.” My uncle smiles encouragingly. “Marise should be here any minute and if, after she checks you out, she decides you’re healthy, then I think we should let things ride for a while. See what you remember in a few days, after you’ve eaten and had some rest and gotten back to a normal routine.”
“Let things ride?” Jaxon asks, his voice dripping with the same incredulity I’m feeling inside.
“Yes.” For the first time, there’s a hint of steel in my uncle’s voice. “What Grace needs right now is for things to go back to normal.”
I think he’s forgetting that having a psychopathic vampire on my ass has pretty much been the norm for me since I got to this school. The fact that we have apparently switched Lia out for Hudson just feels like par for the course at this point. Which is depressing, to say the least, but also true.
I swear, if I were reading this story, I’d say the plot twists were getting ridiculous. But I’m not reading it. I’m living it, and that is so much worse.
“What Grace needs,” Jaxon corrects, “is to feel safe. Which she won’t be able to do until we make sure Hudson isn’t a threat.”
“No, what Grace needs,” my uncle continues, “is routine. There’s safety in knowing what’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen. She’ll be better off—”
“Grace will be better off,” I interrupt as annoyance bubbles to the surface, “if her uncle and her boyfriend start talking to her instead of about her. Since I have a semi-functioning brain and, you know, agency in my own life.”
To their credit, they both look shamefaced at the verbal slap down. As they should. I may not be a vampire or a warlock, but that doesn’t mean I’m just going to lie down and let “the menfolk” make decisions about my life for me. Especially not when both of them seem to be of the “wrap Grace in cotton and protect her” opinion. Which also really isn’t going to fly with me.
“You’re right,” my uncle agrees in a much more subdued tone. “What do you want to do, Grace?”
I think for a minute. “I want things to be normal—or at least as normal as they can get for a girl who lives with a witch and is dating a vampire. But I also want to figure out what happened with Hudson. I feel like we’ve got to find him if we have any chance at all of keeping everyone safe.”
“I’m not worried about keeping everyone safe,” Jaxon growls. “I’m just worried about keeping you safe.”
It’s a good line and, not going to lie, it melts me a little on the inside. But on the outside, I stay tough, because someone has to figure out this mess, and since I’m the only one with a front-row seat—even if I don’t remember what I saw from that seat—that someone is going to have to be me.
I clench my fists in frustration, ignoring the pain that shoots through my already abused fingertips as I do. This is important, really important. I have to remember what happened to Hudson.
Did I leave him chained up somewhere, a threat to no one?
Did he escape and that’s why my hands are so beaten up—because I tried to stop him?
Or—and I hate this idea the most—did he use his gift of persuasion on me and get me to just let him go? And if so, is that why my memory is shot to hell?
The not knowing is killing me, as is the fear that I’ve let everyone down.
Jaxon fought so hard to get rid of Hudson the first time. He sacrificed everything, including whatever love his mother had for him, in order to destroy his brother—and to keep Hudson from destroying the whole world.
How can I live with myself if we find out that I just let him walk away? That I gave him a chance to continue wreaking havoc on Katmere and the world?
That I gave him another chance to hurt the boy I love?
That thought more than any other feeds the fear inside me and has me croaking out, “We need to find him,” in a voice hoarse with concern. “We need to figure out where he went and make sure he can’t hurt anyone else.”
And we need to figure out why I’m certain I’m forgetting something very important that happened during those four months.
Before it’s too late.
7
What I Don’t Know
Will Hurt Me…
and Everyone Else
After Marise checks me over for what feels like hours, Uncle Finn finally lets Jaxon take me away. It’s obvious from the way both men and Marise fretted over me that no one was taking my health for granted, which was comforting. Marise even checked me for a brain injury because, well, hello, amnesia.
But I am unbelievably healthy, minus some scrapes and bruises on my hands, and deemed fit to reenter Katmere Academy. Apparently, being stone for four months could be the next big health craze.
As Jaxon and I walk casually back to my room, though, my mind can’t stop replaying a part of my conversation with Marise, when she was apologizing for not knowing more about gargoyle physiology.
“You’re the first gargoyle to exist in a thousand years.”
Fantastic. Because who doesn’t want to be a trendsetter when it comes to their basic physiology? Oh, right. Everyone.
Not going to lie, I have absolutely no idea how to process the information that I’m the first modern-day one of my kind, so I file it away in a folder marked: “Shit I Don’t Need to Deal with Today.” And another one titled “Thanks for the Heads-Up, Mom and Dad.”
Just then, I notice that Jaxon’s not leading me to my room but to his tower rooms. I tug on his hand to get his attention. “Hey, we can’t head to your rooms. I need to stop by mine for a few minutes; then I want to take a quick shower and grab a granola bar before heading to class.”
“Class?” He looks shocked. “Wouldn’t you rather rest today?”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve been ‘resting’ for the last four months. What I really want to do is get back to class and catch up on what I missed. I’m supposed to graduate in two and a half months, and I don’t even want to think about how many missing assignments I have.”
“We always knew you’d come back, Grace.” He smiles down at me and squeezes my hand. “So your uncle and teachers already have a plan in place. You just need to set up appointments to talk to them about it.”
“Oh, wow. That’s awesome.” I give him a tight hug. “Thank you for your help with everything.”
He hugs me back. “You don’t need to thank me. That’s what I’m here for.” He pivots, and we switch directions and head to my room. “Mrs. Haversham should have emailed your new schedule by now. It changed at the semester, even though…” His voice trails off.