AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sienna bit back a nervous laugh.Whoops.
Fenn slipped the glove back over his hand and calmly clicked the door closed, finally cutting off the bone-chilling early morning December air. “I apologize for all of that,” he said when he faced them again.
Before Sienna could reply, Maya found her voice. “I think we’re beyond the apology stage. Who are you, really? What thehellwas that? Was that some kind of … blood magic?” She asked the question with the faintest trace of hesitancy, but not near the incredulity such a question would demand from most people.
Sienna fought not to roll her eyes at herself. At no point in their lives had her family fit in withmost people. She angled herself to stand partially between them, facing her sister. “Um, can we talk about this over breakfast? I’m still starving.”
“Perfect timing,” Piper said from the foyer opening. “If we don’t sit down now it’ll all be cold and wasted, anyway.”
Sienna latched onto Maya’s nearest arm, seeing the resistance on Maya’s face. “Seriously, let’s eat. It’s fine. Don’t freak out.” She felt a small twinge of guilt as those words escaped her. Her sisters considered themselves more aware than most, despite that they had no real connections of the preternatural sort. But Sienna doubted they were even cumulatively as enlightened as she had become, in no small part thanks to her undesirable visions. Seeing everything she had seen had helped her accept the strange world they lived in, and her bizarre place in it.
She feared it would prove unfortunately fair to say her sisters were less than open-minded, at least in this instance. Or was it unfair to ask someone to be chill about inviting Death for Christmas?Yeah, let’s not phrase it that way out loud.
Piper sighed heavily even as Maya allowed Sienna to guide her from the foyer. “Sienna,” Piper said, “every time you tell us not to freak out, something happens that would send most people to a psych ward.”
Sienna opened her mouth to defend herself against that—accurate—criticism, but cut herself off at the sensation of tightness gathering rapidly behind her neck. Already her hand itched to reach up in an always vain attempt to massage the spot.Probably should’ve seen this coming.Instead she reached out, knowing she had mere seconds before she became incapable of standing upright. “Fenn…” His name left her on a gasp and she barely felt his arm curl around her before her focus was ripped elsewhere.
He couldn’t help but wonder how she had survived to adulthood, being plagued with visions that incapacitated her so thoroughly. It was no wonder her sisters hovered. But there wasn’t anything Fenn could do about that particular problem, so he scooped Sienna into his arms and pretended like he was listening when her eldest sister ordered him to take her to the living room. It was the nearest room with space enough to lay her down, so he’d already been aimed that way. Though the temptation to position himself so that Sienna’s head remained resting in his lap was alarmingly strong.
“Willoneof you tell me what happened back there?” Piper demanded once Sienna was settled. “I heard arguing at the door and then all of a sudden some weird black energy washed over the house. It raised the hairs on my arms.”
Fenn kept his back to them for a moment longer, his gaze trained on Sienna. Her eyes were closed and dancing behind her eyelids. He remembered that from the last time, too.
“Some crazy woman dressed like she was going to a nightclub showed up demanding she be let in to see Fenn,” Maya said. “She tried to attack Sienna and I—” She cut herself off and sighed, as if only then realizing what she’d done.
“She didwhat?”
Fenn turned, adjusting so that he could keep an eye on Sienna as well. Just in case. “Florence never laid a hand on Sienna,” he said for Piper’s benefit. “After her failed attack, Maya used some form of mental manipulation in an attempt to force Florence to leave.”
Maya looked away, lips pursed in a thin line, as if she were ashamed of her behavior.
“Maya!” Piper let out an aggravated sigh and dropped into the chair nearest her. “You’re as bad as Sienna sometimes.” Her brow furrowed and she shifted her focus to Fenn. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘attempt’?”
“He means I failed,” Maya said. She crossed her arms. “And Sienna’s probably already told him about us, anyway.”
Fenn was careful not to let the grin show. At least they knew their sister.
Maya narrowed her eyes at Fenn. “Explain the rest. How did my hypnosis fail? It’s only ever failed on Piper. And then that … thing you did. Tell us the truth about you. Have you been lying to Sienna? Are you using her for something?”
Piper looked between them, clearly realizing there was more she didn’t understand, and settled her frown on Fenn as well. Waiting.
Fenn swallowed his sigh and hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets for lack of anything more satisfying to do with his hands. “Sienna knows my truth.” He let those words linger for a moment, though it was up to the women in front of him whether or not to believe them. “As for Florence, your hypnosis failed because she was born with a natural healing ability on par with the gods, and she has honed that skill to keep herself alive and unscathed. As a result, she’s developed what you might call automatic self-healing, on a subconscious level.”
Maya gaped at him.
Piper scoffed. “You expect us to believe that? That this woman who showed up at our door this morning—I would like an answer to that, also, by the way—just miraculously has some divine healing power?”
This time Fenn did sigh, quietly, as his gaze slid to Sienna’s unchanged face. “Florence has made herself immortal,” he said. He looked between the two obviously skeptical sisters. “I actually have no idea how old she should be. She’s learned to use her unmatched healing ability to cheat death. She could be traveling the world as a living Saint, saving lives by the hundreds every single day. Instead she lives purely for her own pleasure and she’s developed an ironic obsession with the one thing she cannot have.”
“And that’s supposed to be you?” Piper asked, one brow high on her forehead.
Maya moved her hands to her hips. “What’s so great about you? Thetruththis time.”
His lips twitched before dropping into a familiar frown. “Nothing,” he said. His arms fell to his sides and his hands curled into fists. “I am a monster, both outside and in.”
Sienna’s hand dropped heavily against his arm, her grip a little uncoordinated but obviously intentional, and she let out a groan. “I pass out for five seconds and you get all morose on me.”
Fenn pulled her hand into his and squeezed. “Four minutes and twenty-seven seconds, actually.”
