“I need nourishment,”she declared.
I rolled my eyes.“Later. I’m sure whatever my grandmother is planning will send many evil souls our way.”
“I want Michael.”
Of course she did. “If you see an opportunity, take it.”I reasoned.
“What’s happening?” Rebecca said.
“She’s speaking with Indigo,” Hudson told them.
Rebecca and Maggie looked around the room. “Who?” Rebecca asked.
Hudson tapped his temple with a finger. “Up here. She’s probably reasoning with her, telling her she can’t devour any of your souls.”
Maggie shrank back and her mouth popped open while Aunt Sophia continued her rapid crocheting.
I’d worn a strappy sundress that crisscrossed down my back, saving any more clothing from being shredded. My back arched and my wings tore free from my spine as Indigo’s form took over mine. I rose taller, my teeth sharpened and claws extended from my hands.
“Holy mother, Jesus Christ, God Almighty, and anyone else who is listening,” Aunt Liz murmured.
Coming from her, that was a curse worthy of twenty dollars in the jar.
“I am Indigo.” Her voice vibrated with power and rattled our chest.
“You live inside her?” Aunt Sophia asked. “Like a possession?”
Indigo bristled and her wings shot out, knocking over my vase. Hudson reached out and caught it, his cat reflexes coming in handy. “I am not a virus, I do not possess, Cora is me and I am her.”
This all sounded so familiar, but she was right. The fact that I had the lion’s share of control didn’t make Indigo lesser, or even a stowaway in my body. We were one, and this was the first step in the acceptance she had been missing. The fact that she was lacking social skills and empathy for humankind was my doing—I’d locked her up tight and now I had the mammoth task of introducing her to the world, while hoping the world survived the transition.
“I’ve always been with Cora, from the time she first walked, to the torture that boy subjected her to.”
Everyone in the room froze. Indigo caught Sebastian’s eyes as we shared the memory of my pain and his rescue of me that solidified a lifelong friendship.
“I was there when her grandmother taught her fortitude and stole her childhood under the guise of making her stronger, when the truth is, she’s always known Cora could be a weapon she needed to wield.”
Indigo snapped her wings beneath our flesh as she moved closer to Hudson then dropped into his lap and hissed at Bella. Sensing the bigger predator, Bella shot off the chair and wound around Dave’s legs. Hudson smirked at her show of possession.
“You mean she’s always known that you exist?” Aunt Liz said with a frown.
“Specifically? No, but there are times I’ve shielded Cora from Eloise’s cruelty, that’s when she knew something other than elemental blood ran through our veins.”
And the revelations kept on coming. “You protected me?” I asked.
“I will always protect you, and just for the record, if I eat Eloise, it will be one less scourge on the earth. The things you remember at her hands are simply the tip of the iceberg.”
“You mean eat her soul?” I clarified, ignoring the fact I had missing memories, so horrible my chained alter ego had emerged to protect me, and all of it was by the hand of my own flesh and blood.
A trickle of amusement filtered through my mind as Indigo left me with that disturbing image.
“What does Cora think about this?” Aunt Sophia asked as Bella decided to give up on her hussy ways with the men in the room and took to eyeballing the ball of wool at my aunt’s feet with the focused gaze of a lion sighting a gazelle.
“Cora is in agreement that Eloise needs to be stopped at all costs.”
“Umm, yeah. Stopped, not eaten.” No amount of therapy would get rid of that nightmare.
“If I ate her, she would be stopped.”
