We chatted a bit more, flirting here and there, being open and vulnerable. Eventually, the conversation did drift a little more toward our experiences with our own kind. I really did feel as if I had a kindred spirit next to me, and I wasn’t looking forward to leaving her and crawling into my coffin.
“Another penny for your thoughts?” she said after a bit, when I’d withdrawn into my own head about it for a moment.
“Just wondering how the whole nocturnal, diurnal thing will work out.”
“I figure it’s the same as it is now, maybe with a little extra adjustment. I have my free time during the day where I work and do my own thing, we have a large overlap where we’re both up, and then you have the deepest parts of the night to do your work. You don’t want me hovering over your shoulder while you’re trying to fine tune a harpsichord or something.”
Huh, it really could be that simple, couldn’t it?
“I dunno, I’m beginning to think I’d like you close to me no matterwhatI’m doing.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I affirmed.
I loved how her blush spread up her face to her hairline and then down to her breasts. A troubled expression disrupted her blissful expression.
“Penny returned for your thoughts?”
“Huh? Oh. Just a silly question. It’s not actually important.”
“What is it?” I murmured, curious and a little worried.
“It’s just… uh, you know when you wore all that makeup and wig?”
“Yeah?”
“This is kinda personal, but I couldn’t help but wonder…” Her hemming and hawing made me nervous. I thought we were past that, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure. “Why did you paint yourself white?”
…what?
“Um, I am white.”
“No, I don’t mean literally,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m talking about Caucasian.”
I frowned. “Naomi, IamCaucasian.”
Now she fully turned to face me, and her expression was just so serious that I couldn’t help but be as amused as I was bewildered. “Rowan, you mentioned growing up in a desert, you just told me your original name wasSuleman,and you don’tlookwhite!”
I laughed. I had to. “Surely you’ve heard about judging a book by its cover.”
“I’m being serious.”
“I know you are. My parents were from Greece. My father was a merchant who used to trade all across the Black Sea. But my mother fled back to her family a while after I was born, saying I was a curse and proof that God didn’t approve of their marriage.”
I couldn’t recall a single person in my coven who had asked about my history. And even though Naomi hadn’t technically asked, the rapt attention on her face spurred me onward.
“My father’s caravan was attacked, and we wound up stranded in the desert with nothing. I can’t say why the raiders chose not to kill us, but my father did his best to protect me and get to civilization.
“We were out there for days, hiding during the day and traveling only at night”—huh, there were some interesting parallels to my current life there—“catching scorpions and other insects, using what little vegetation there was to hydrate me. It was brutal, from what I was told, and eventually he collapsed. But that allowed us to be found right before death by a rural farm couple returning from a festival with their far cousins. Suleman and Palwasha Rajput.
“They took us in, got us both to proper health, and gave us a home while my father sent word to his associates. We became family. And once my father was reconnected to his wealth, he essentially sponsored them for whatever they needed. Their barely functional farm became enough to support them, and then me too, because I ended up staying with them, being raised by them, while my father went along his trade routes.”
I smiled, remembering those simple times.
“It was an unusual arrangement then—two fathers and a mother—but it was perfect for me. I still miss them.”
What I didn’t tell her was that my biological father had died with his sinking ship when I was eleven, or how Suleman and Palwasha had never moved closer to any town or village, as I was always greeted by far too much trouble in those places.
