“What the hell’s a second daughter?” I ask, a bit dizzy from all the dumb in the room.
Still no one seems to hear me. The girl on my left reaches out and touches my hair, picking up a strand between her fingers. “It’s like a troll chewed off her hair. Look at those split ends.”
“It’s weird,” the quieter girl behind the zit critic pipes up. “She looks totally human.”
“No,” Aelia says, “that’s the cloaking spell I put on her in the car on the way here. She’s freaking bursting with juice underneath it.”
“Ah,” the one examining my hair says in understanding. She stands straight again and points at my face. “So she’s not really that ugly.”
“Actually, she is,” Aelia says. “Isn’t it fascinating?”
And we’re back to them all frowning at me. Wow.
“Look,” I say, “while this brilliant debate over my mutant face is super entertaining, I’m feeling a little dehydrated.” I take a small step back from the group. “And claustrophobic.”
Aelia pinches my sleeve and pulls me to a table. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have to pee,” I say, jerking my arm out of her grip. My anger sparks, and I grit my teeth as heat begins to coil in my chest. The smell of smoke stings my nostrils. I clench my hands into fists, hoping I’m not about to accidentally set anything on fire. If I don’t get away from her and these other bitches, something very bad is going to happen. I can feel it. I need air. Now.
Breathe, Sage, just breathe.
“She’s sure spicy,” the zit critic says. She flips her curly brown hair. “But I’m tired of her already. Enough about the ugly girl. I think we should talk Diamond Ball. Which designer are we going with for the tiaras?”
“I can take the human to pee,” the hair groper says. “I’ll swat away the shades.”
Aelia rolls her eyes. “She’s not human, Freya. But whatever. Just bring her right back. She’s not supposed to be wandering around.”
They all nod like they’re agreeing, even though they don’t seem to get what Aelia’s talking about. I think my IQ just dropped a hundred points breathing the same air as these girls.
The hair groper, Freya, slips her arm through mine and grins at me before wrinkling her nose. “You sure do smell funny,” she says. “I had a human grandma who loved garlic—she smelled better than you.” She smiles like she just paid me a compliment.
Lovely.
I consider pushing her away and leaving unattended, but I’m thinking Aelia will just use some weird spell to keep me here. It’ll be easier to get away from this Freya girl. So I let her tug me along, out of the loft and down the steps.
FIFTEEN
FAELAN
After Marius leaves, I stay in the rose garden for a minute, trying to figure out how to go about getting Sage to trust us. There’s more at stake here than I realized, and I started on the wrong note with the demi. I should have considered that she’d be volatile and treated her more carefully. I knew she was a daughter of Brighid, and I should have known she’d have weaknesses from being left so long among the humans without her magic, without her own kind.
But it’s like I haven’t seen sense since I met the girl.
I’ll pull her aside tonight. Maybe I can go over some of the lore with her, cover some basics so she feels more grounded, more familiar with her new reality before the Introduction.
As I cross the yard, heading for the French doors at the back of the main house, I consider what needs to happen. I’ll have to get her to open up to me somehow. I’ll need to get her to feel a connection with me in some way that can dispel this tension between us and soften her to our kind. Maybe then she’ll feel less vulnerable. Settling into this new life is the only way she’ll be able to learn to control her gifts.
I step into the house and look around, searching the air for the sugary spice of her fire energy. The living room is empty, and I feel only simple souls. I do smell something baking, though—a fresh herbal scent. I move deeper into the house and see one of the human maids wiping down the kitchen counter. She glances up at me and her body tenses, the hand on the dishcloth turning into a fist.
“I’m looking for the redhead,” I say gently. It’s obvious my presence is spooking her. “Her name is Sage. Is she around?”
The maid shakes her head. I can’t tell if it’s a No, she’s not around or a I have no idea who or what you’re talking about. Marius’s service crew appears to be all human, so they may have had their memories wiped a few times, which would allow them to be more easily manipulated to keep secrets, but would also leave them a bit on the dim side. Over time, it can make them more skittish too. I nod at the woman. Something behind me catches her eye and she averts her gaze, moving quickly to leave the room.
“Oh, there you are,” says a sultry voice behind me. The wife. Gods’ bones.
I don’t want to turn around.
The scent of pungent licorice seeps off her skin, reaching for me—the smell of human excitement. I feel her hand press into my back and I try not to cringe visibly as it slides up, cupping my nape.
My muscles tense, and I step away before I turn to face her. “I need to speak with Sage. Where is she?”
The wife—I can’t remember her name—is tall and slender, her hair long and blond, and her features tight with artificial youth. Her breasts appear to be fake, as does her nose, and the pink tracksuit she’s wearing is tight enough to stop blood flow to her brain.
Why would Marius choose her for his new human breeder? Maybe the original version, before the knives and plastics were applied, was more enticing? Aelia is naturally beautiful, and she’s retained a class that her mother appears to lack. This modern woman doesn’t fit with the house’s décor at all—the mosaics that Roman leaders once walked on hanging on Marius’s walls, and the ancient vases that held the sacrificial blood of human kings set on pillars along the hallway. It all makes her seem small and insignificant. Marius hasn’t let go of much since his emigration to the American colonies, but it seems he’s lowered his standards in the department of procreation.
It’s a constant subject of debate why the great goddess Danu created her children and their descendants to be incapable of procreating with one another. A deity or a demi can only have offspring with humans. This was Danu’s fail-safe: all new births are less powerful than those that came before. No soul will ever be more powerful than our great mother goddess.
However, this means Otherborn have to mingle in the human world if they want their lineage to survive. That creates complications, such as human lovers who age when the demis don’t. This usually means the Otherborn parent won’t stick around, and most children are left to figure out their bloodline when a hunter like me comes to fetch them. Some Otherborn, like Marius, keep their breeder close for a time, but that’s rare.