Selene and Achilles’s eyes. How was she related to Alex? Was her grandma his mom?
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I told her, going straight for the sink to wash my hands. “I’m Gracie. What’s your name?”
“Asami,” she answered. “I like your boobies.”
I was in the middle of rubbing soap between my fingers when I snorted so hard my head hurt. “Thank you. Me too.”
“My mommy doesn’t really have boobies. I hope I do,” she let me know.
Thrusting my hands under the water, I couldn’t help but grin as I said, “Well, I hope you do because you want them, but if you don’t, they are still boobies, just smaller ones.”
“Uncle Leon calls them jubblies.”
Did she just sayjubblies?
I started cracking up again and could barely say, “I like the word boobies more.” And if Leon was her uncle, Alex had to be too.
“Me too,” the little girl agreed. “Can we go find my grandma now?”
I reached for a towel and stalled just as I saw there weren’tpapertowels but cloth ones. That was the epitome of rich. I dried off, taking in the soft texture as I said, “Sure. My friend might come with us though.”
“Okay,” she agreed, reaching for my hand, threading her tiny fingers through mine.
It made me smile.
We marched forward, and I felt something in my chest at her easy friendship and soft little hand in mine. Like she knew I was thinking about her, she beamed up at me.
Oh, I knew that smile.
It was a no-good one.
And it looked awful, awful familiar.
There was a tiny zip of energy coming through her palm too, I noticed.
Oh boy.
I opened the door for her and let her go out first. Part of me expected to find Alex right outside, but he wasn’t there, and the little girl started tugging on my hand, heading in the opposite direction of the ballroom. “She’s over here,” she said. “Come on.”
So she knew where her grandma was?
Well, Alex could sniff around to find me, I figured.
“You wanna playTroublewith us?” she asked, leading me in the direction of a big, ornate door on the left.
“I need to find my friend first,” I told her, pleased by her invitation and that deceivingly sweet smile she kept shooting at me.
“Uncle Lexi?” she asked, confirming exactly what I’d already put together, before pulling me straight for the cracked door she pushed open. “Grandma?” Asami called out. “Grandmaaaaa?”
“You were gone too long,” a dry, almost raspy feminine voice said.
“I found my friend,” the little girl replied, pulling me into a space that resembled a really grand living room. There were two couches, a rug that might have been Persian, and two walls of bookshelves. A big TV was mounted front and center. There was even a fireplace with two spacious chairs in front of it.
But it was at a table with four seats around it that I found a woman sitting. Her hair was pure silver-white, her skin the same deep gold as The Primordial’s. She had to be in her… I had no idea. Seventies? Eighties? Nineties maybe?
“Hello,” the woman said, the slightest accent to her words.
