I was stopped from leaving by Reya taking hold of my shoulders. I tried to shake her off. Instead I was pulled into a hold. Squirming madly, I tried to get free, but she would not let go of me.

Her hands pushed down on my shoulders and pulled me closer. Her arms wrapped around me, squeezing me tighter and tighter, forcing the breath out of my lungs.

We were indoors, with very little sunlight streaming in. I could fight back harder, so much harder. Breaking free should have been so easy. Once again I could not out of fear of hurting her.

Only when I stopped struggling did Reya loosen her grip. The hug? It was hard to tell what it had been. It had felt like a chokehold, but had tasted like warmth and embarrassment. Still holding on to my shoulders, Reya kneeled down to my height. To my infuriatingly short height. Then she looked up and past me, at Rafe. They shared a look.

“It’s as you thought then.” Rafe grimaced.

“Never would have believed it myself if Meg hadn’t told me,” Reya acknowledged.

A dark frown settled over Rafe’s face as he took several slow, painful breaths. Then he swore loudly.

“Don’t worry,” Reya stressed. “If I ever find the one that did this to her I’m skinning them alive.”

I studied Reya’s face, trying to figure out what was transpiring. All of this was abnormal. I could not understand any of it. No one in this town was reacting the way they were supposed to. And now even Reya was hugging me. She barely tolerated me, was supposed to be abrasive, aggressive, spiteful. It made no sense.

I changed my focus to Rafe. I had thought I had made progress in my understanding when Meg and Gery told me about Onar. But here was yet another undercurrent I did not get. Something was going on between Rafe, Reya, and Meg. Again there was an important piece of the social dynamic I was missing. Once more it revolved around me. Involving myself with people truly had been the absolute worst thing I had ever done. I really did not get them anywhere near as well as I thought I did.

Reya grabbed hold of my chin, forcing me to look at her once more. “There’s one thing I want to be very clear on Vale.” She tilted her head to follow my wavering eyes. “We are not your enemies in this. Please allow us to explain before you run away again.”

I stopped trying to look away and narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m tired of this Reya. So, so tired. Just let me grab my stuff and my horse and then I’ll be out of your hair for good.”

“Is that really what you want, Vale?”

“What I want is irrelevant.” I sneered and slapped her hand away.

“What if it isn’t?” Rafe took position next to Reya.

I scoffed and–

Why am I doing this?

Why am I acting like such a petulant little brat?

When did I become this much of a wreck?

Pushing Reya to the side I returned to my chair and sighed. “Let’s get this over with then.”

To my surprise, Reya took a seat as well. She clasped her hands together, looked up at the ceiling, then down again as her shoulders slumped. “Onar always asked us to keep his past a secret. Doing so was a mistake. I should have told you the second you entrusted to me you weren’t human.”

Eh… is that an apology?

So it was not just an oversight that people had not told me about Onar’s past. They had actively kept it from me. They had deliberately kept this vital fact hidden, even when the situation had long become untenable.

A lie of omission is every bit still a lie Reya. So who is the liar now?

“And Eryn and me should have told you the second you bunked here after you healed Uncle Tare.” Rafe took a seat and added to the apologies. “We should have told you again when you came back the day after. By then Reya here was… somewhat vehement about it even. Every single time I thought we could smooth things over with Onar first, get him to see you as more than just a threat.”

More apologies. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

“You can’t, can you?” I prompted. “He’ll never not see me as a threat, because his siblings told him things about Ostea that the Inquisition doesn’t want people to know.”

“I thought I could manage. After all, the dangerous, blood-sucking, man-eating monster turned out to be sensible,” Rafe admitted.

Reya snorted at the mention of sensible.

Rafe just continued talking right over it. “This friendly, considerate, caring, healing magic wielding, daylight-walking, monastery-sleeping child was making everyone else look bad.”

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He did not get it. He still did not get it. Every single one of those things was a potential reason for Onar to fear me. All of those were things Ostean vampires did. He had no idea how bad things had gotten, no idea how utterly hopeless the situation there was. And that was with my second-hand knowledge being way older than Onar’s.

There was a very simple reason a posting in Ostea was permanent. If Inquisitors could come back, they could come back turned. Nothing was worse than that. Nothing was feared more than it spreading to here.

I had no idea how Onar had gotten information about Ostea from his siblings. It should not have been possible. I was not even certain he had actually gotten that kind of information, but it was the only logical explanation. And I knew it was possible. My dad had gotten out. Where there was a way to smuggle people out of Ostea, there was always a way to smuggle out information as well.

I was thinking of ways I could rebuke Rafe, make him see that his intended course of action was hopeless, when there was a knock on the door.

Without waiting for permission a teenaged girl walked in. “Hey, I was wondering if…” the surprisingly broad-shouldered girl interrupted us. Then her eyes found me. “Oh, she is! Hey there, I’m–”

“Nebby!” Reya pushed herself between the girl and me.

I was certain I had heard that name before somewhere. I scowled, trying to recall where. Her Flint-lock-butterfly scent was entirely new to me, and her randomly popping in here, clearly looking for me was more than suspicious.

“Yep, that’s me.” the Nebby girl grinned a crooked smile.

“Who told you?” Rafe leaned forward, glaring at her.

“Ah, my dad, who got it from Gery, who got it from A–”

“Right.” Rafe shut her up with an outstretched palm, then turned to Reya.

“It’s doing the rounds then.” Reya shook her head. “I’ll go talk to Onar… hope he hasn’t gotten the news from someone else already.” Then she addressed the girl. “Nebby, we’re leaving these two to their thing.”

“Awww, but I just got here,” the girl protested, pouting.

“Nebby!” Reya cautioned. “I swear, with all this running around I’m losing half my harvest over this mess.”

“Fine.” Nebby relented. “You guys are no fun at all. The one week something interesting happens, and I spent most of it stuck on the road with some old fart.”

I had expected that Reya would have needed to drag the girl out, but she went along without any more protest.

“Reya,” Rafe cautioned the town healer, right when she was about to close the door behind her. “Gently, please, when you talk to Onar?”

“I’ll try not to slit his throat.” Reya grimaced and slammed the door shut.

“That was… a joke, right?” I asked Rafe, still eyeing the door Reya had just left through.

“It was.” Rafe scratched his chin. “Girl ran a­… it’s taken a lot of work to get her straight, and even more to convince her she’s not running this town. Don’t judge her too harshly. I convinced her you’d be fine and that she should take care of her stepmom that night. She’s furious she wasn’t there for you.”

Without much prompting at all Rafe had confirmed some of my suspicions about Reya. She really was not just some town healer. There was a story there, I was certain of it. I would pursue it later. Deviating too far from the intent of this conversation would only get Rafe suspicious. I could not resist one final question though.

“Who was the girl?” I asked.

“Nebby, daughter of Krav and Rue,” Rafe explained. “She’s the one that went to Rivenston to get the doctor.”

Ah, so that’s where.

Reya had told me they had sent someone to Rivenston. I had not made the connection because I had expected them to have sent someone older. This girl could not have been more than sixteen. That was technically adult, but sending her to Rivenston had still been a lot of responsibility for someone so young.

Daughter of Krav and Rue. Or Moldy-leather and Jagged-stone-sky. I did not know if I liked that association much. I had only spoken with those two briefly that one evening Onar had burst in with his pitchfork. Moldy-leather had not been all that appreciative of me back then.

“So, yes, Onar,” Rafe picked up where we had left off. “Shae actually made things way more difficult than I would have liked. She… I don’t know… she likes you a lot. She kept seeking you out, deliberately antagonizing her dad. I was with them the night Onar attacked you. I should have known what she was up to when she offered to go feed the pig. I didn’t and…” He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “I’m sorry, that attack on you was my fault as well.”

I was finally beginning to get an inkling of just how much trouble I had heaped on this man’s shoulders. I had told him my presence was tearing his town apart. Only now did I understand how true that statement was. Some here cared for me, like Meg and Gery, others like Onar hated my guts. Sometimes these people even lived in the same household, like Shae and Onar.

“Let me guess,” I extrapolated certain events. “While I was taking care of the ahuizotl, Onar assembled a lynch mob, and Gery came to ask me about Uncle Tare. Neither of those two bothered to tell you what they were doing until it was too late.”

I had pretty much asked Gery about this way back then, right after we had killed the fire, when we were heading back. He had deflected my question. I had not pressed, too preoccupied with the lynch mob I suspected would be waiting for us. How stupid of me. My real idiocy, I now saw, lay in all the little subtleties and interactions, all the little tells I had missed.

“Technically true,” Rafe confirmed my guess, scratched his chin. “Though more of the blame for that rests with you girl. You didn’t inform me either, and as far as I can tell that’s not exactly according to hunter practice.”

Ah… oops.

He was right. I should have informed him before I set out. As a hunter, you were supposed to inform whoever was in charge before doing an eradication this close to civilization. Wary of further confrontation I had neglected to, wrongfully assuming that at least one of the four people I had met at the waterside would spread the word.

“Sorry, you’re right. I should have.” I hung my head.

“Even then it should have been manageable for me, if it weren’t for the little present you’d left on Onar’s counter.” He frowned. “It was kind of hard to argue against that kind of evidence.”

“Sorry? What?”

What’s he talking about?

I didn’t leave any evidence. I even took the beet.

“A nice set of rents in the kitchen countertop, kind of similar to the ones you left in my table.”

Eh?

What?

No.

I had not torn up Onar’s counter. I had been super careful, especially because I had been without gloves. Right up until Shae had asked me… Then I had clutched that beet like my life depended on it, claws cutting deep…

All the way to the wood below?

All the way… to the wood below.

“Damn! I… Just… Damn.” I wanted to weep. “I didn’t even know.”