“He doesn’t want to sex me up,” I said to Ryan. “And even if he did, you know you’re my one and only. You remember when we shattered my virginity? Well, I latched on to you like a barnacle after that. I’m slowly sucking the life out of you, because I’m never going to let you go.”
“Do you ever get the feeling like we failed as parents?” Dad asked Mom.
“Either that or we did something really right,” Mom said. “I don’t know which is worse.”
“I don’t trust this,” the King said to Morgan. “He did seem to have eyes for Sam.”
Morgan hesitated. Then, “Sam’s… notoriety is well-known throughout Verania. We don’t rightly know what has fallen upon gypsy ears.”
“I’m taking that as a good thing,” I told Gary. “They call me Notorious S.A.M.”
“Nobody calls you that.”
“Well maybe they should start.”
“Look at you with your head in the sand,” Gary said. “Nice.”
“We should hear what she has to say,” Mom said. “She never does anything without reason. The fact that she left the desert is enough to raise concern.”
The King nodded but said nothing.
“It always seems to center around you, doesn’t it?” Justin said to me, though he didn’t sound particularly spiteful. “Funny how that works.”
I blanched. “I didn’t ask for it.” Though, I couldn’t disagree with him. Somehow, it always did seem to concern me somehow. And that wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed.
“No, I suppose you don’t. Yet here we are. Again.”
“We’ll still be best friends even if it is about me, right?”
“We’re not best friends now.”
“He’s in denial,” I said to Gary.
“Eh, keep chipping away,” Gary said. “Pretty soon we’ll be inviting him to our hair-braiding parties where we have pillow fights in our underwear and gossip about boys.”
“I don’t do that,” I said.
“Yes, you do,” Gary said. “We did it just last week, remember? And you talked about how curved Ryan’s—”
“—knee is when he bends it,” I said quickly (and smartly, if I do say so myself; it was genius). “That’s all. Nothing else.”
“Says the guy who went to fan clubs about Ryan in disguise,” Justin said.
“Oooh,” everyone else said.
Including Ryan.
That bitch.
But whatever witty rejoinder I might have had was cut off when my grandmother, Vadoma Tshilaba, entered the throne room.
It was like the air around me stuttered, and I saw offshoots of green and gold skirting along the edges of my vision. There was a buzzing sensation racing along my arms and curling around my fingertips that almost itched for me to take action, though what type of action, I didn’t know. Morgan dropped a hand on my shoulder and Ryan crowded against me, and it was enough to stop me from taking a step forward.
The woman that entered was the same as the apparition that had disappeared after accosting me in the hallway. She held her head high as she walked, standing tall and proud. Her hair fell upon her shoulders, streaked with the lightest of gray. She wore a blue dress that left her thin shoulders exposed. Around her waist was tied a tan shawl, the fringes of which hung down her sides. She wore a crown of sorts, more a headband than anything else. It was thin and gold, with little trinkets hanging down onto her forehead. She was old, as evidenced by the lines and wrinkles around her face, but she moved with an economic grace, almost like a waltz, counted and measured, nary a step out of place.
And she was magic, that much I could tell.
It absolutely poured off her in waves, as if her aura was shedding magenta and fuchsia and crimson. It was intrusive but not invasive. If anything, I felt the need to allow it to push against mine, even as Morgan’s hand tightened on my shoulder, as Ryan gripped my forearm. And again it was familiar, like I’d known it before, and the only thing I could think of that made any sense was that it was familial, that my magic recognized hers because of the blood that ran through both of us. I was not a gypsy, but I’d come from them. Northern blood had diluted the pureness, but only by a generation. I knew her because I’d descended from her. It didn’t feel like Morgan’s. Or Randall’s. It felt earthy somehow.
She stopped in the same place Ruv had, a respectable distance and to make herself seem like a nonthreat. I had the idea, though, that it didn’t matter how close or far away she was. If she wanted something to happen, it would.
Ruv stood at her right, standing on one foot, stretching the other out behind him, curving it up toward his back. He reached his arms behind his head and grabbed on to his foot. The muscles in his stomach clenched. His eyes never left me.
“I don’t know if that’s creepy or erotic,” Gary whispered to Kevin.
“Can’t things be both?” Kevin rumbled. “I mean, I’m scared, but I could easily get an erection if called upon to do so.”
Vadoma didn’t even acknowledge me. No. Her eyes were on her daughter.
Mom clutched Dad’s hand but didn’t speak.
After what felt like an age, this great and powerful woman named Vadoma said, “Dika. You have aged poorly. All that processed meat you’re eating, I’m sure.”
That… was not what I expected. I stared at my grandmother with wide eyes.
Mom, however, said, “Daj, Mother. It’s a wonder you’re still alive. Tell me. How does the cold dead thing you call a heart still beat in your chest?”
My jaw dropped.
“Oh my gods,” Gary whispered. “This shit is gonna get cray-cray. Tonight, on Castle Lockes, watch as families reunite as a crazy old lady with awesome taste in jewelry sees her daughter again for the first time. Will eyes be scratched out? Find out… on Castle Lockes.”
“Bah,” Vadoma said, seemingly dropping all pretense. She slouched a little, her forehead wrinkling even more. “My heart will stop when it needs to stop, little kanny.”
“I am not your little chicken,” Mom snapped, dropping my father’s hand and pushing her shoulders back.
“I made you,” Vadoma said. “You took forty-seven hours to come out of me because I wasn’t ready to let you go yet. You are little kanny until I say so.”
“I want to be her when I grow up,” Gary said to Tiggy. “Forty-seven hours? My gods, the thigh control alone.”
“Gary gonna have babies?” Tiggy asked.
“Probably,” Gary said. “But most likely not.”
“I be Uncle Tiggy,” the half-giant decided.
Vadoma turned her disdainful gaze to my father. “Still here, I see. Dilo. You got fat. You like processed meats, fat man? Probably put them in your fat mouth.”
Dad sighed. “Hi, Vadoma. Lovely to see you again, Vadoma. Thanks for coming, Vadoma.”
“Your parents ate sass for breakfast,” Gary said.
I was still gaping. Because out of all the things that I thought could happen, this was certainly not it.
“You come to posta, fat man,” Vadoma said with a nod. “I feed you good food.”
My dad snorted. “It hasn’t been long enough for me to forget the first time you invited me to a posta. You forgot to tell me that it was a sacrificial ritual and that I was to be the sacrifice.”