Epilogue

EPILOGUE

WINNIE

Gideon: I’m glad you’re back, Winifred Preston. Allie has been a miserable sod since you left, and now he won’t stop singing his little songs. You two are adorable. Sickening, but adorable.

I never thought he’d find someone who measures up to his lofty, artistic ideal of love. He refused to open his heart unless the angels trumpeted from heaven. Me? I try to fall in love at least fifty times a century. It gives the skin a healthy glow.

So let me know if you have any single friends…that Celeste has an intriguing scent…

“How come you never told anyone that you’re a vampire?” I ask Arabella as we wheel a trolley through the Argleton market. Celeste is out of town, so we’re in charge of providing snacks for the grand opening of Beth’s Zen and Tonic Pole Dancing studio.

(Officially, Beth is providing the snacks, but since no one else shares her love of mushroom-flavoured treats, we’re taking it upon ourselves to keep everyone energised so they don’t fall off the poles.)

“They never asked.” Arabella peruses a display of crisps. “Truthfully, I was trying to avoid an interrogation from one Isis Meriwether.”

“Fair.” The Nevermore Murder Club group chat has basically been one long episode of Vampire Who Wants to be a Millionaire since Arabella revealed she’s an Upyr. Isis wants to know everything . How old is Arabella? What historical events has she lived through? What’s it like to drink blood? Do the market automatic door sensors really not recognise undead kin, or are they simply faulty?

I’m curious about the automatic doors, which did malfunction when we entered the market, but I’m even more curious about Arabella. Of all the book club members, she’s the hardest to read, no pun intended. She acts as if she’s above everything and everyone, but she never misses a meeting and she offered to be our undercover agent at the Sanctus Estate. I suppose she figured that if we were looking closely at Sanctus, we’d find out her secret anyway, or maybe she was tired of hiding from her friends.

I know from Alaric that a vampire needs to tell their own story. Arabella will reveal all of her secrets when she’s ready. In the meantime, what she needs is to know that her friends have her back, no matter what.

She holds up two packets of Walkers crisps. “When I last ate a potato, many people still thought they caused leprosy. Do humans prefer salt-and-vinegar or bacon-flavoured crisps?”

“If we’re going to be making fools of ourselves swinging around poles, we’d better grab both.” I drop them into our trolley alongside some Jaffa Cakes and frozen packages of sausage rolls. “Reginald is bringing along a vat of hot chocolate, and Lilac says she’ll provide a bottle of blood for those who need it. Do you think anyone from the estate will come along?”

Arabella makes a face. “I sincerely hope not. I don’t want to see my clients writhing around in stripper heels.”

“If you’re writhing alongside them, maybe it will be like a team-building exercise.”

“Please,” she smirks. “The only writhing I’ll be doing is?—”

Her words cut off. She freezes in place, her long, red nails poised over a display of strawberries.

Her eyes stare off in the distance, hard as flint.

“Arabella, are you okay?”

“ Him, ” she whispers.

I follow her gaze across the fruit section. Gideon Blake is standing behind a pyramid of apples, juggling three Granny Smiths for a mother and her small child, who are both laughing. The mother leans in flirtatiously to whisper something in his ear, and Gideon’s hand roams seductively over her shoulder as he drops the apples into the kid’s basket.

“Typical Gideon, out on a Thrall-trawl. Can you believe that’s what he calls it?” When Arabella doesn’t reply, I ask, “You haven’t met Gideon yet? But you bought your house from his company. And he helped us to capture Baylor at the ball…”

Arabella continues to stare silently, as if the harsh halogen lights are making Gideon’s skin burst into sparkles.

I think about it. Arabella wasn’t at the castle when we first conceived the plan for the ball, and she worked in the kitchen that night. I realise now that she was trying to stay away from the vampires so they wouldn’t reveal her secret. Somehow, she’d never seen Gideon before…until now.

Arabella’s lip curls with hate. “It can’t be. It can’t be him .”

“Who? What’s wrong?”

“Two centuries ago, I fell in love,” she whispers. “And after he trampled my heart to dust and disappeared before I could torture him for the fun of it, I consoled myself with the thought that at least he was mortal and his bones would soon fertilise the earth while I lived forever out of spite. And now that human is standing across the fruit aisle without a care in the world.”

TO BE CONTINUED