Page 31 of Inception

9. REVELATIONS

The vast gray expanse was casting an abundance of misery all around us as the unrelenting rain hammered down onto the house, leaving no window untouched or ray of light obliterated. Mondays were painful—an unusual form of punishment where we were forced to pay restitution for all the horrible things we did on the weekend. Or so it goes. This particular one was already proving to be a colossal comedown before it even began.

My uncle sat in his usual chair reading the morning paper as I sloshed my cereal around feeling almost as disorderly on the inside as everything was outside. My mind was on spin-cycle.

Dominic never made it to All Saints last night, and even though there was a part of me that craved the very sight of him, I was relieved by his failure to show. I didn’t necessarily want him seeing me in all my post-blackout glory, but more than that, I needed time to process everything, time to figure things out, and more importantly, time to map out my plan.Operation-Tear-Off-The-Blinderswas in full effect, starting with my uncle dearest, and whatever the heck it was he was hiding.

I carried on with the rest of the morning like it was any other day, putting on an Oscar-worthy performance. I finished my breakfast, cleared the table, and got ready for school just as I normally would, though I made a special point to synchronize myself with my uncle so that we left the house at the same time.

He pulled away in his black sedan none the wiser, and I, as per usual, in the back of the town car. I waited for Henry to get us a safe distance from the house before crying out about a forgotten homework assignment that had to be turned in today.

We were back en route to the house in no time.

Once there, I told Henry that I would only be a couple of minutes and then took off straight for my uncle’s office.

The rain hammered hard against the windows, pouring its dreary shades of gray into the large, dank office. I had no idea what I was looking for as I (carefully) ransacked his desk and drawers, doing my best not to displace anything or disturb the general layout of his workspace.

It only took a few failed tries before I found a manila folder with my name on it, hiding inside one of the bottom drawers of his desk under a stack of filed documents and loose work sheets. I opened it briefly, noting what looked like hospital records, and then slipped it into my backpack.

I moved to the sprawling glass bookcases that circled the entirety of the room and began skimming the hundreds of titles at random, looking for any suspicious objects or secret compartments that I could excavate for clues. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for, or even what I was expecting to find. The expectation was there though, evidenced by the savage turn my eyes had taken as they drank in every item, every sight and every corner, desperate to find something. Anything.

He had the oddest collections of books, I noted. Rows and rows of Bibles, eclectic editions I’d never heard of, encyclopedia-thick books on demons andvampiresand other mythical creatures normal people didn’t build libraries on.

What a strange coincidence it was that my uncle had an unbelievable collection of books on the very subject I was recently committed for. On the very creature my father was killed by.

Coincidence my—and then I saw them.

On the other side of the glass partition, in a special meshed enclosure, a series of leather-bound books that looked older and more valuable than all the other books combined.

The Origins of the Revenant Vampyre.

The gilded title leaped out at me.

I slid open the mesh door and slipped my hand into the cool, dry book-pen, carefully separating it from its siblings before wrapping it up in my work shirt and slipping it into my backpack.

Something told me I would find all the answers I needed right here in this room, in these books. The answers to questions I had yet to even form, and in that moment, like a dog with a bone, I vowed to come back again and again until I uncovered every last one of them.

I stalked the halls of Weston with even more anxiety than I had on my first day of school. I felt as though I were carrying a precious gem in my backpack, and just knowing it was in there made me hyper-vigilant about every single body around me, with my stomach doing roller-coaster dives every time an arm or shoulder accidentally brushed up against my body.

At lunch, Taylor was already waiting for me at my locker when I arrived carrying two semester’s worth of catch-up homework. Her long blond hair was pulled to the side, and she was flirtatiously playing with one of her earrings while some tall, chestnut-haired, football-player-type wearing a lettered jersey hovered in the space beside her.

“Jemma,” she called out to me, her eyes widening with excitement. “I want you to meet someone.”

The football-player-type turned around at her announcement and drank me in with his desert-colored eyes.

“This is Caleb,” she said, twitching her brows in a way that let me know he was worth knowing. “Caleb, this is Jemma. She just transferred here last week.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said shifting the weight of my books. I tried not to appear too antsy.

“Same,” he said as he stepped forward and took the pile of books from my hands. “That’s amazing.”

“What is?” I asked, clearing a path to my locker. I twisted the dial on the lock back and forth until it clicked open.

“First time I’ve ever regretted missing school.”

Mm-kay. Was that a line?

I looked back at him unsure. His expression seemed genial. If it was a line, he was definitely serious about it.

---