Looking at Ryuki and Aoiki, I asked, “Can you hear it too?”
They both studiously averted their gazes. Even Sunny became far too interested in her cuticles.
“What the hell?” Vivien flopped her hands on the couch. “Am I the only one out of the club? I want in on it too.”
“Why?” I asked again.
Echo sipped her tea then set it down with a heavy sigh. “I’ve been alive a little longer than you.”
Aoiki snorted and Echo shot her a stern glare. Still, her daughter said, “try a couple thousand years older.”
Wait, what?
“Aoiki,” Echo snapped in reprimand.
“What?” Aoiki shrugged. “You are beating around the bush which totally isn’t like you.”
While I was still reeling from the new information, Ryuki reached over and squeezed his wife’s shoulder. “My love, she deserves to know.”
“Fine, fine,” Echo waved a hand, before it settled on her husband’s hand.
“Are you gods?” Vivien asked, her jaw having gone slack.
“No, but we have been here almost as long. We are what some would refer to as fae.”
“Fae as in fairy?” I asked in disbelief. I knew the term from some of the books I read to Jamal in kindergarten.
Echo nodded slowly while Ryuki smiled at me. Aoiki watched me as if my top might blow. Sunny averted her eyes as she sipped her cup of tea.Her too?
My brain hit a brick wall and went splat. I put my tea down and stood up, paced away then came back again.
That’s it. Too much for Miranda to handle in one day.
“Oh my god, you have to show me your wings,” Vivien said with a squeal.
ChapterNineteen
THE BADASS
“Fairies. You are telling me you are fairies?” A bit of hysteria had crept up into my voice. I fought it back down.
Ryuki grinned and blushed in a way that was far too adorable for an old man, while Aoiki watched me with a mischievous sparkle in her eye, as if waiting for me to blow a gasket so she could pull out the popcorn. Sunny seemed more apprehensive about me blowing my top. Echo simply studied me with her usual scowl, waiting for me to accept the truth.
“First vampires exist, then Egyptian gods, and now fairies.” Vivien clapped her hands. “There have to be werewolves, ooooh maybe mermaids?”
One of Echo’s eyes bulged grotesquely while the other narrowed in displeasure. “We prefer the term fae. And the supernatural has a way of hiding in plain sight, only the keenest can find them.”
The hungry look on Vivien’s face intensified. “That wasn’t a no,” she said in a sing-song voice.
I also couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t a no.
"Are you going to pop?” a hesitant Bob asked me.
After becoming a vampire, Vivien had embraced the supernatural lifestyle and most of its eccentricities. I’d been on the outskirts of a lot of the immortal battles and in a couple myself. While I learned to be highly adaptable in the Army, I still found this new world pushed my limits.
Focus on what’s important, Miranda.
“So the fae are immortal, like gods?” I pulled my shit together and throwing any would-be hysteria in a box and filing it away for either later, or never.
