It was time, but I still felt nervous.
“My father just visited,” I explained as I forced my hands to unclench at my sides. I was dry now, but no less shaken from the experience. Oh, what I would give to travel back to a simpler time when my father was absent from my life completely. Then again, that also meant a time when Hudson wasn’t in my life and that was no longer acceptable.
Aunt Liz leaned toward me from her spot on the sofa between Aunt Dayna and Aunt Sophia. “Your father was here?” she checked.
I nodded.
Aunt Sophia paused in her crochet project, another scarf perhaps. This time with the rainbow wool she’d made Dave wind up for her. “Please tell me you aren’t the spawn of Satan,” she said.
I guess the only way was up from that statement. Dave tilted his head like he was enjoying the hell out of my uncomfortableness. Maybe I could get Aunt Liz to swear off meat for a month, that would annoy him.
“Cora, focus,” Sebastian said from his place on the kitchen counter which held him, Maggie, and Rebecca.
“No, Lucifer isn’t my father, he’s my uncle.”
And Liz jerked back in her seat like I’d slapped her. “Who is your father?”
Hudson gave me an encouraging smile. “Abaddon,” I whispered, as soon the word was out I wanted to stuff it back inside my mouth.
“TheAngel of Death?” Aunt Dayna checked.
I nodded once. “That’s right.”
“That’s why you can see the dead and have access to their final moments,” Aunt Sophia declared. “It all makes sense now.”
“You are a Nephilim,” Aunt Liz said carefully, like she was tiptoeing through a minefield.
“A what?” Maggie asked.
“Half angel, and in Cora’s case, half elemental,” Aunt Liz explained.
“Wow,” Maggie whispered.
“They are normally slaughtered while still in the womb,” Aunt Sophia added. You could always count on her to give it straight and cut through the shit. “For some reason your father has let you live.”
Aunt Liz scowled at her, clearly unimpressed at Sophia’s lack of tact.
I shrugged because if I was being honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how I was still alive—but I’d decided not to look too closely at it. My life was a gift, and I would use it for good.
“Is that why you monstered out in Egypt?” Maggie asked.
“Shush,” Rebecca said. “This is her big secret reveal and you are spoiling it.”
“Apparently, the internet has already spoiled it,” I muttered as I eyeballed my bedroom door and contemplated if I could chicken out and make my escape.
Hudson shook his head subtly. Damn cat knew everything I was thinking.
“Rockhard sent me the video, but we were giving you space to tell us in your own time,” Rebecca explained.
“Actually, we had given that space a time limit,” Dave added.
“Show us then,” Aunt Sophia said with a wave of her hand. “The suspense is killing me.”
“Didn’t you watch the video?”
She huffed. “No, I don’t like the web, it seems unsavory.”
“Time to shine,”I told Indigo.“Everyone here I love, so no eating of any souls.”
