Reconcile

The library was all but empty the next afternoon when Evaine came to visit. It was Tuesday, so most of the students who would normally sit in and study were busy with after school sports and clubs. It was days like these that Evaine would normally savor having the library practically to herself, but now, more than ever before, she wished she had a friend to talk to.

She had meant to come to the library to read, or maybe work on her and Tayshia's project for a bit, but the moment she got settled in her favorite chair and set her mind to task, she was lost in thought. Her eyes drifted over to the window to look out over Jericho plaza, but she wasn't paying attention to the people out shopping or the early fall wind that whistled as it passed over the glass. Her mind was replaying the events of the night before, of the kiss which had consumed her thoughts the entire day.

She had been surprised by the coolness of him; although she'd touched his hands before, feeling him on her lips was something else altogether. She had been aware to some extent that his being a vampire would mean that he was, by certain standards, dead. But she hadn't realized precisely what that would entail until she felt that cold seeping into the very core of her being. She had laid her hand on his chest, yet she felt no heartbeat beneath her fingertips. When she felt his fangs, it hit her in equal parts fear and exhilaration that she was touching a creature of death.

"Cut it out with them googly eyes before I puke," Alec said, slumping heavily into the reading chair across from Evaine. He looked, if possible, worse than the night before. His clothes were wrinkled, and his shirt had been buttoned unevenly. His five o' clock shadow was well on its way to midnight, and dark circles had appeared on his already heavily-lidded eyes.

"You sure that's not the hangover talking?" Evaine asked with one accusatory eyebrow raised at him.

"Oh I see, get yourself a vampire boyfriend and suddenly your shit don't stink. I see how it is." He snorted to himself and grinned at the ingenuity of his humor, and Evaine couldn't help smiling back. He was her Alec again.

"He's not my boyfriend," was all she had to say in her defense. "We barely met on Friday."

"Yeah, and I only hunt bunnies and squirrels," he said sarcastically. He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a squashed plastic baggie of what loosely resembled a peanut butter sandwich.

"Do you still hunt?" Evaine asked, ready to start diving into her bottomless pool of questions. It was about the only thing capable of taking her mind off of Jesse Rayne.

"In a way. Just because I'm not...shall we say, an exterminator anymore, doesn't mean I'll let the pests build up around my own house." He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed for a long moment, probably deciding just how much to trust her. When he spoke, his voice was thick from the sticky peanut butter. "I keep 'em out of Jericho and the immediate area. I used to take cases in Redwood, too, but it's better to have a partner in bigger cities. They've got their own communities and underworld societies these days, and I just couldn't keep up by myself."

Evaine wondered if he knew about Logan's, or any of the creatures who frequently gathered there. The little ramshackle watering hole had been about forty-five minutes outside of Jericho, probably just outside of the territory that he was able to manage on his own. If she were to tell him about it, would he go busting down their door, guns blazing?

She resolved to keep that to herself.

"Why did you quit?" she asked. "Jesse made it seem like a big deal for you to give up the hunting life. How did you get from there to...here?"

She gestured around at the library, at Jericho, at the entirety of his quiet little life there.

"I fell in love with someone that I shouldn't have," he answered, giving Evaine a pointed look as if to say I know what I'm talking about. "I met her while I was on a hunt, as in, she was the hunt. I was s'posed to kill her, but fool I was, went and married her instead."

"You have a wife?" Evaine blanched, too shocked by the revelation to even be hurt by the discovery of yet another thing he'd hidden from her all this time.

Alec didn't say anything to answer her, but instead reached for the key ring at his belt. He must have had a key for just about every lock in the building on that one set, but Evaine had never questioned the little leather pouch nestled among all that metal, figuring it was just some sort of novelty piece, something to hold his breath mints when his pockets got too full. When he popped it open, however, he pulled from the interior a small ring of gold, a plain looking thing with signs of tarnish on the surface, but Alec held it with such care, and with such a look of naked sorrow in his eyes, that Evaine had no doubt he was telling her the truth now.

"Why were you hunting her?" Evaine asked, hearing her own voice go quiet in sympathy for him. "What was she?"

Alec got a little quiet, then, his fingers closing over the ring in a fist as the shadows of his face grew impossibly darker. "She was a witch, that wife of mine. Always messing in magics that a person's got no business messin' in. One day, she took it too far and poofed herself out of existence. I haven't seen her since, going on almost twenty years now. I spent a good long while trying to figure out what happened, maybe find some way to get her back, but there was nothing to be done about it. At the end of that road, I found myself in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where nobody knew my name, there were no monsters hiding in the dark, and this here library had a help wanted sign in the window. So, I stayed. Best decision of my life, because now I have a life. No more killing, no more death. It was nice...for a while."

Evaine was suddenly far more understanding toward his behavior last night. He hadn't just lost a cousin, he'd lost a precious sense of peace, one that he had sacrificed much to find.

"Trust me, E," he continued. "Nothing good can come from associating with their kind. Their ways are unnatural, and one way or another, someone gets hurt."

Evaine couldn't deny that truth, not when she had been thinking that same thought only a few minutes ago. Still, it did nothing to discourage her feelings for Jesse, no matter the danger. From the moment they'd met, he'd been like a guiding beacon to help her make sense of this insanity she had found herself in, but after last night...well, he was quickly becoming so much more.

"Would you do it again?" she asked him. "If you knew what would happen to her, where you would end up...would you be with her again, marry her again, if you could?"

Alec laughed once, shaking his head slowly. "Touché, little lady. I suppose I was a lot like yourself, back then, willing to risk it all for that once-in-a-lifetime love. Even still, I can't support what might end up with you seriously hurt, or worse. Now, I know well enough that the harder I fight to stop this thing from happening, the more I'll likely drive you two together. So, I'm going to pay the respect a smart girl like yourself is due and convince you to see reason."

Evaine didn't like being susceptible to flattery, but there went her ego, feeling just proud enough to trust his logic. She highly doubted that anything he had to say would actually convince her to change her mind about Jesse, so she saw no harm in hearing Alec out.

"I want you to come with me to Maggie's funeral," he said, holding out a hand to quell her immediate response until he had spoken his piece. "I think it would be good for you to see Jameson Ranch and understand the work they do there, get a look at the other side of things. There's a lot more to this situation than ol' vampire Jesse would have you believe, and I think you should understand the full picture before you go making decisions you can't take back."

"I suppose...that's fair," Evaine said a little slowly, dumbstruck by the idea of being invited into the home of a family of hunters, where there would presumably be real hunters. "Alec, are you sure that would be safe? We still don't know why Jensen Calloway attacked me, or what sort of curse I may have. I mean, you saw what I did last night, and I have no idea how to stop it from happening again."

"Look, I'm not saying we walk up in there telling everybody about all that's been going on," Alec said, his expression growing frustrated as though he had forgotten about that little detail. "As far as any of them are concerned, you've never met Calloway and you have no idea what happened to him. You were never at the Rayne place that night, capisce?"

"That's funny," Evaine said with a knowing smile. "Jesse said the same thing. You two think a lot alike."

"Yeah, and I'm liking him even less," Alec muttered with a little eye roll. "It's just safer for you if you were never there. As for this idea about curse magic, you won't have to worry about it happening again while you're there. The ranch is equipped with protections against that sort of thing; makes it a great refuge for victims of magic. It'll be safe to ask around and see who knows about breaking curses, or how to manage them. If there are answers anywhere, it's there."

"I guess...it would be nice to know what to do about this; make sure I don't accidentally hurt somebody," Evaine agreed, looking down at her own hands as if she could see the evidence of a curse written across her skin. She could still feel that strange sensation that had followed the incident last night, the same feeling she'd had after shaking Tayshia's hand. The same feeling that had followed her into her nightmare last night, and the night before that. She shook her head to clear it, unwilling to let that dark cloud distract her. "Still, how can you be sure it's safe? Jensen turned on me that night just because he touched my hands. What's to stop that from happening again when I'm surrounded by hunters?"

Rather than answer, Alec reached out and poked her on the shoulder, then ruffled her hair for good measure.

"Hey, quit it!" she said, swatting him away with a laugh. She touched her hair only to realize that it was now frizzed beyond fixing.

"See? I'm not attacking you," Alec pointed out. "Calloway is...well, he's a different sort of guy. When he's on a hunt, he has a mindset of 'kill first, ask questions later.' It could have been that his blood was already going when he set eyes on you, or that something about this curse magic was enough to confuse his senses. I really don't know. But most of the hunters there will be ordinary folk, like me, and just looking to pay their respects. You have my word, you would be absolutely safe with my family."

"Okay, I trust you," Evaine finally said, feeling a new wave of excitement at the idea of traveling once her immediate fears had been quieted. She'd never been on an airplane before, or left the state, or stayed in a home that didn't belong to her mom's family. It was a major step outside of her comfort zone, but so were most things these days. With Alec by her side, she knew this would be an easy step in the right direction to finding her footing in her strange new world.