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