Tayla snorted and kept walking. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
A hand closed on her elbow and jerked her around. “Fool!”
Tayla had Gem flat on her back and was straddling her waist in a flash. “What the hell is your problem?”
“My problem?”
The sound of approaching footsteps barely registered, but the low, controlled drawl drew a groan from them both.
“That is so hot. E, do you think we can talk them into getting naked, too?”
Eidolon stood next to Wraith and Shade, arms crossed, watching Gem and Tayla like a stern father, which was appropriate, because fighting with Gem seemed unnaturally . . . natural.
“She started it,” Gem said, and Tayla snorted.
“What’s your issue with me?”
Gem shrugged off Tayla’s grip on her upper arm, but didn’t try to dislodge her. “My issue is how you’ve wasted your life. You could have been so much more than an Aegis slayer.”
“Guardian,” Tay growled. “And how do you know what I’ve done with my life or what I could have been?”
“Because,” Gem said, “we’re sisters, and look what I became.”
Tayla narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “Sisters in what? Half-humanhood?”
“Blah, blah.” Wraith yawned. “Can you guys start fighting again?”
Gem shoved Tayla off her. They sat in the light from street lamps that streaked through a broken window, staring like rival cats. “I’m half Soulshredder. Just like you.”
Tayla’s breath left her in a rush. “We have the same father?”
Eidolon moved in, as if he knew she was going to need him, which was good, because she had a nasty feeling he was right.
Deep grooves furrowed Gem’s brow as she grasped Tayla’s hand. “We have the same father,” she confirmed. Her gaze locked with Tay’s. “And the same mother. We’re fraternal twins.”
The world fell away. “That . . . that’s impossible,” Tayla whispered. There was a pause. A long one in which she began to tremble. “My mom—”
“She didn’t know. I was born first. Delivered by demons right here on the warehouse floor while our mother was in a drugged stupor. The demons took me because they sensed demon in me. They didn’t sense it in the unborn baby. You.”
And suddenly, Tayla realized why Gem’s eyes had seemed so familiar. They were her mother’s eyes.
Eidolon was just as stunned by Gem’s news as Tayla was, and as they all headed back to his apartment, he wondered why he was so surprised. With the exception of the dyed hair and Goth-style makeup, Gem was very nearly the spitting image of Tayla.
And now, the reason he’d been so aggressive in the car with Gem became clear. He’d seen Tayla in her.
“I don’t understand this,” Tayla said, as they exited the Harrowgate in an alley near his building. Like all of the gates, it was invisible to human eyes and wouldn’t open if humans were within visual range, but Tayla lowered her voice anyway. “How long have you known?”
Gem picked up her pace, walking slightly ahead of the group. “My parents told me years ago so I would have the choice about whether I wanted to know you.”
“How special. And what, you just spied on me all this time?”
“I wanted to tell you.” Gem sighed, slowing. “I went to your apartment once, but you were leaving. I followed you, saw you meet up with some delinquent-looking friends. Figured you’d be drunk in an hour. Turned out you did your partying in the sewers.”
“You followed us down there?”
“Yep. I saw you hunting. Telling you who—and what—I was, didn’t seem like a great plan at that point.”
They arrived at Eidolon’s building, and inside the elevator, Tayla turned on Gem, though she kept her hand in his. “Your parents left me and my mom to die on the warehouse floor.”
“My mother called an ambulance, but she couldn’t risk being seen with me. Please, Tayla,” Gem said softly. “Stop fighting what you are. Who you are.”
“Easy for you to say.” Tayla’s voice was sharp, cutting, and he knew she wasn’t going to accept anything without drawing blood first. “You’ve known since you were born. You didn’t have a choice about what you are. I do.”
They exited the elevator on Eidolon’s floor, and as he unlocked his door, he said quietly, so as not to freak out any neighbors, “You are half-demon, Tayla. There’s no choice about that.”
“True.” She didn’t look at him, her eyes focused on the door. “But I don’t have to integrate that half.”
“You’d rather die? Because that’s your choice, slayer,” Shade said as they entered.
Wraith rubbed his hands together in cheesy horror-movie glee. “Join us or die.” He grinned. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
“Wraith’s demented,” Gem said, “but he’s right. Tayla, let us—”
Tayla whirled, stopping them all in the foyer. “No.”