I smiled down at the short fae, whom I considered my grandmother and not my nanny, the same way I considered Pappy’s wife my grandmother, even though I shared no blood with her. I’d never known Nima’s real mother. She’d died long before I was born. Apparently, Gwenelda had siphoned her soul by mistake. Sometimes when Nima watched Giya’s aunt, her wistfulness was so strong it felt almost solid.
I dropped a kiss on top of Nana Vee’s graying hair, which she always kept pinned into a poufy bun. “I’ll warm it up.”
She pivoted, leading the way back across the short bridge and around the deck girdling my bungalow.
Giya fell into step beside me and whispered, “Did you find out what the dinner was about?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I flicked my gaze toward thelucionagahovering in their firefly form. “Later.”
She trailed me through my open sash windows and into the bedroom, which had once belonged to her mother but became mine the day I turned twelve. Like my parents’ home, it was fashioned from glass and gossamer-white, but instead of stone, my bungalow was made of lacquered wood and shiny copper.
I plunged my hand into the bath scented with crushed beetle shells and honeysuckle. The water beaded around my fingers and knuckles as it warmed, and my submerged skin began to glisten with tiny copper scales, courtesy of my Daneelie heritage.
I had a love-hate relationship with my reptilian skin—love because it tied me to Nima and allowed me to swim underwater for hours without needing to come up for air, and hate because it had landed me agajoï.Although my engagement to the devil’s spawn sucked, having to repay Joshua Locklear sucked harder.
As though he’d felt me thinking of him, my wristband beamed a message.
JOSHUA:So?
Sneaking a glance at my cousin, who stood in front of a mirror, smoothing the brown hair Nana Vee had turned into lustrous waves, I touched the chip implanted in the bone behind the back of my ear, and my sentence appeared beneath Josh’s.Something came up. Won’t get to it until a few hours from now.
JOSHUA:Don’t forget.
ME:I’m sure you’d remind me if I did.
JOSHUA:You know me well.
I straightened and pressed on my wristband to make all my clothes blink out of existence.
Giya turned toward me. “At least tell me if it’s good or bad.”
I sank into the bath, releasing a little hiss of pleasure. “It’s not good.”
“Shit . . .”
“Giya Geemiwa, your mouth is much too pretty for such an ugly word,” Nana Vee chided her, bustling around the bathroom for the soap. “And what’s not good?”
Giya rolled her eyes at me the second Veroli’s head was turned, and I smiled.
“My love life, Nana Vee.” I leaned my head back against the mint-green quartz and shut my eyes.
“You have a boyfriend?” Nana Vee exclaimed.
I almost snorted at her shock. Almost, because the fact that my having a boyfriend surprised her so much painted a pitiful picture of my amorous life. “Would I keep it from you if I had one, Nana Vee?”
“You better not, dearie. Because I’ll need to investigate the man you set your heart upon.”
I smiled. “You and Iba both.”
Although I was plenty capable of washing my own hair, Veroli loved the task, so I let her untangle my long locks and rub an oily soap made of the same musk-scented beetle shells and aromatic white blooms that fragranced my bath.
As Giya told me about Sook’s most recent business venture—her twin was always inventing something . . . most recently,volitorsurfboards—I scrubbed my scaly skin quickly, then rose, the fire in my veins lifting the water from my body like mist. I was dry before I even set foot on the bathmat, but my skin still glimmered and would continue to do so for an hour or so. The scales would smooth in a matter of minutes, though.
“Here.” Veroli swiped her finger over her Infinity and beamed over the dress I was to wear. “Your aunt sent it over this afternoon.”
