Chapter 414
The plane descended in the West Virginia sky, and I prepared to get off, trying to assure myself that the feeling in the pit of my stomach was just anxiety. I hadn’t been on too many hunts away from home. Maybe I was just nervous. Or maybe it was the wedding. I was the maid of honor after all. There was just a lot going on, so I could explain away my emotions by telling myself it was something else. But the fact that I didn’t know where Holland was and hadn’t for months was a huge concern to me. At least her airplanes hadn’t moved.
We piled into twin black SUVs and headed to the bed and breakfast my mom had picked out for the team. It was nice to stay in a house instead of a hotel. The Queen Anne was one of the only places in town large enough for all of us, and my mom had made the owner an offer she couldn’t refuse to cancel her existing reservations and accommodate all of us instead. That way, we were also assured there wouldn’t be anyone else in the place. Mom said the owner was a little old lady who resided in the basement, so there was that. I just hoped she was hard of hearing if we accidentally brought a Vampire battle to her upstairs.
I only had one bag, but Brandon carried it in for me. My sister did all of the checking in while the rest of us congregated in the parlor. The lady was nice enough. I heard her say her name was Bertha, which is the quintessential old lady name. I think she was talking a little too much for Cadence because my sister kept saying, “Okay then. Thanks. I’m sure we’ll have a lovely time. Okay. Yep—got all the keys. Thanks.” Eventually, she managed to free herself and headed over to us to hand out keys. Except Cadence had no idea who was rooming with who, so she just set them all on the table.
“You’re with me,” she said, gesturing in my direction with the top of her head. I nodded and followed her toward the stairs, and everyone else came along as Aaron helped them sort out who should be where.
The room was nice. It had a large four-poster bed with a pink and green flowered bedspread. There was a dresser and matching nightstands in the same cherry wood as the bed. The curtains were all lacy, like they probably would’ve been back when the house was built. I had an idea the adjoining bathroom was new, and even the closet looked like it had been built after the room had already been here a while.
My sister dropped her suitcase on the floor, and I did the same, and she plunked herself down on the bed. I wasn’t planning on sticking around. Elliott and Brandon were talking in the hallway, so I went out to follow them to their room and saw Aaron going into ours. I figured he’d leave his stuff there since he doesn’t sleep and would be gone all night anyway.
Brandon and Elliott had a few comments about the girly state of their room, which was similar to ours but the bedspread was purple and blue. “Glad we don’t sleep because sharing a queen sized bed with you would be out of the question,” Elliott chided as he plopped down on a chair across from the television. Our room had a TV, too, but the chair wasn’t right in front of it.
“Our room is pink, so we could switch if you want,” I offered. Elliott laughed but was too busy scrolling through channels to say anything. I think basically all he does is hunt Vampires, eat Cheetos, and watch television.
“Do you want to go look around outside?” Brandon asked me. “There’s a garden out back.”
“How do you know that?” I said, taking his hand.
“Cause I looked out the window.”
I hadn’t noticed. Chalk it up to being distracted. We had a few hours before they’d have to start getting ready for the Eidolon Festival, so I figured we may as well go outside. Maybe we could even take a walk and get a glimpse of haunted Shepherdstown.
We walked around the garden for a little bit as Brandon tried to guess what kind of flowers we were looking at, and I checked my IAC to see if he was right. He got roses and tulips, and that’s it. He didn’t even know the chrysanthemums. That’s okay, though. He’s good at math; he doesn’t have to be good at flowers.
The neighborhood was quaint. There were plenty of old houses like the one we were staying in, but there were also smaller ranch-style houses every now and again or a newer contemporary build. We wandered around for a couple of hours, even explored the historic district and got a drink at a soda fountain downtown. When we finally made it back to the house, the sun was starting to go down, and we’d be having a meeting to go over Eidolon Festival protocol soon. Even though I wasn’t participating, I still had to be there.
Brandon sat down on the porch swing and took a swig of his pop. (Yes, even though it came from a soda fountain, I still call it pop.) Something was bothering him. I could tell the whole time but hadn’t asked him because I figured he’d bring it up when he was ready.
It took him a few moments of rocking the swing back and forth before he finally said, “I feel a little weird.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Admitting that to someone was a relief.
“I’m not sure what it is. I’m not scared or anything.”
“No, of course not.” I laughed because I really did know he wasn’t scared, though the fact that he felt like he needed to tell me that was a good reason to give him a hard time.
“Maybe it’s just because I’ve never been around that many Vampires before. Or maybe I have. There were a lot in Melbourne. But that was different. I was in a car. Anyway... I don’t know. I just feel odd.”
“I know what you mean. It’ll be fine, though. There are a lot of Guardians from nearby coming to help, right ? Like a hundred or something? And I heard Aaron say that he’d asked some Hunters to come and keep an eye on the three of us who will be staying here, just in case Holland is trying to distract all of you guys while we are left unattended. So... there’s probably nothing to worry about.”
His head rocked back and forth like he already knew all of that, but it didn’t ease the tension in his eyes. After a few more creaks of the swing, he turned to me and said, “Cass, if anything should happen....”
“Nothing is going to happen.” It scared me hearing him talk like that, especially since there was such a small chance that he could ever die. It would take a bullet from a Hunter, and there weren’t even going to be any of those at the Eidolon Festival. He shouldn’t be scared of dying at all, despite what had happened to his dad.
“I know that.” His tone didn’t convey that he did. “But if something should happen, you know how much I love you, right?”
I nodded. I did. I knew how much he loved me, and I hoped he knew how much I loved him. Just in case he’d forgotten, I said, “I love you, too. More than anything.” He leaned down and kissed me, and for a few moments, I felt like everything was fine, that there wasn’t anything wrong in the world. But when he pulled away from me, that agitation was back in the pit of my stomach, and I felt even more frightened that maybe he was right and something was going to go wrong.
He pulled me up by my hand, and we headed back inside to go get ready for the meeting. The sun was going down, and the moon was coming up. I could see it out the back window when we walked into the foyer of the Queen Anne. It was just starting to rise behind the garden, but it was there just the same. There was nothing unusual about it right now. It wasn’t red or scary or menacing in any way. I stared at it for a moment daring it to do anything unusual. For a split second, it looked to me as if the moon was moving. I paused, causing Brandon to snap back to my side.
“What is it?” he asked, not even having noticed the moon.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. Of course the moon wasn’t moving. It wasn’t twirling or spinning or vibrating. It was just hanging there like it always did. I managed to find a smile and followed Brandon up the stairs.
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