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A sad smile tipped Sienna’s lips after a brief moment. “That doesn’t sound like a monster to me.”
Piper took hold of her arm and jerked her back. “I’m very sorry for whatever you might have been through, Fenn,” she said as Sienna launched a protest. “However, I think I’m uncomfortable continuing to have you in my home or my sister’s life. I have to ask you to—ow!” She released Sienna as Sienna’s foot came off her own.
“When did you get sojudgey?” Sienna snapped as she moved away from Piper.
Maya projected her voice over whatever Piper might have tried to say in response, her frown aimed straight at Fenn. “I thought you had some kind of poisonous touch. So you have two abilities? Or is the poison in your blood and it seeps through your pores, and that’s how you did the other thing earlier?”
Fenn had to give her credit, she was trying valiantly to make sense of a situation she’d had no way to prepare for. That theory was much more reasonable than most, from her perspective.
Sienna adjusted to face both of her sisters, effectively putting her back to Fenn. “I feel like we hashed all this out last night, this is ridiculous.”
“That was before he admitted to killing people,” Piper said.
“And before the blood magic thing,” Maya said.
Piper slid a side-long look toward the sister standing beside her. “I still don’t know anything about that.”
Sienna made an inarticulate sound of frustration.
Fenn laid his fingers over her nearest shoulder and spoke to her sisters. There was no reason to continue the circular argument, even if it jeopardized his plans. “What I told you last night was an old truth that no longer applies. What I did in the foyer was … not quite the same as the usual concept of blood magic.” Although it did require blood and was rooted in magic, so at that point the differences were debatable.
Both sisters snapped suspicious stares back to him.
“When I was young, and still alive, the story I told you last night was effectively true,” Fenn said. He watched fresh horror build in their expressions. “I am no longer either.”
Sienna groaned. “Let’s not get overdramatic,” she said. “You’re way more alive than plenty of people. Probably even Piper.” The last was said with a grin he could hear in her voice.
Piper startled at the jibe and Fenn guessed it had landed about how Sienna had intended.
“The black energy you saw earlier is my signature now,” Fenn continued, summoning up a visual of the energy in question until it undulated around his shins. “For I have become Death.”
Maya paled and Piper stared in wide-eyed, speechless shock.
Sienna clapped her hands together. “Okay! So now that everything’s out in the open, can wepleaseeat? I haven’t been fed yet and it’s starting to make me grumpy.” She scooped Fenn’s hand into hers, leaving no doubts that he was to be included. “I’m really not in the mood for cold eggs, and you kinda owe someone an apology, Piper, so could you do us a Christmas favor and make breakfast warm again? Pretty please with I-promise-everything’s-fine on top?”
They made it entirely out of the living room before the sisters broke into a flurry of questions and criticisms all rolled together. Yet somehow Fenn found himself seated at the table as he’d once been anticipating, staring in the most amount of shock he’d felt since … well, before Sienna, at plates of freshly cooked food and steaming mugs of coffee. Because somewhere in the onslaught of interrogation Piper had begrudgingly revealed her own ability—acquiescing to her sister, perhaps—and rewound the progression of time around their meals with little more effort than an outstretched hand.
He understood now why Sienna felt her sisters had more functional powers than she did. It was hard to take action against an enemy with a vision she couldn’t summon, let alone aim.
“Hey, Fenn,” Sienna said as she swallowed a bite of her breakfast, “I wanted to ask. Do you know a guy who’s kinda lanky, a little taller than me, with curly brown hair and brown eyes?” She tilted her head, as if attempting to remember more. “And grumpy, maybe…”
Fenn lowered his coffee carefully. “Why?”
She shrugged and looked away. “That vision I had,” she said, quieter. “He was there. With Florence.” Her face scrunched up with adorable irritation at the name, but the distraction was brief.
Fenn sat back in his seat. “I do, actually.”
Old Wounds
“Let’strythisagain,”Piper said as she lowered her emptied coffee mug. “Everyone’s cards are on the table now.” She gestured between each of her sisters in turn. “Clairvoyance, mind control, chronokinesis. And you are Death, of the Four Horsemen. Can we talk openly from this point forward?”
Sienna stared at her sister in surprise. They’d barely finished breakfast, but already her straightforward sibling seemed to have made some respectable progress processing the news Sienna had honestly expected would overwhelm her. Maybe she’d underestimated Piper.
Across the table from Sienna, Maya grumbled, “You know I prefer the term hypnosis.”
Sienna grinned. “At least you’ve stopped calling itseduction.”
Maya glowered at her.
