“Well, tonight might have to be the night you indulge him, since an unexpected girls’ night has popped up.” I hand Luna my credit card as I prepare to leave. Motioning to her case of croissants, I ask her to bag up a chocolate one for my sweet tooth later. “Luna’s coming, but I’m sure Celine will want to join, which means Zav will try to crash our fun time, and I need you to keep him occupied to leave us alone.”
He grumbles some more but agrees. He hangs up abruptly when he must accidentally end the call, which makes me smile.
“Are you sure you don’t want to dye your hair, Celine? You’d rock the deep red color, and it would add some depth,” I coax, trying to convince her to join our hair dyeing adventure. Luna showed up with a smorgasbord of colors to choose from since she didn’t know what she wanted.
Celine sits on my bed, flipping through amagazine as I coat my strands in pink. Luna sits next to me with strands of her hair already saturated and processing.
“No, thank you.” She examines the ends of her ponytail. “I don’t want to deal with the maintenance, plus it would probably throw my dad off. With his loss of familiarity, I don’t want to make anything more stressful for him.” She perks up and closes the magazine. “Speaking of, you saw your family recently, didn’t you? How’d that go?”
I forgot I mentioned to Celine that I was going and haven’t filled her in. Things are different between us, what with her having Zavier and me with Valen. We just don’t have the same amount of time to catch up as we used to.
“Yeah.” I make sure to fully saturate the pieces I’m working on before moving onto the next. “My mom found the name of the adoption agency. Obviously, I didn’t tell her anything about being a witch, but it might be a new lead.” I finish with the back section of hair and lay it down on the ratty T-shirt I wear.
I don’t want to admit I don’t have much hope of anything working out, but at this point, any sort of lead is better than nothing.
“I hear Valen went with you.” She quirks a brow at me for leaving that part out, and I flush.
“Valen is so hot,” Luna pipes in. “He stops in for blood and is always such a gentleman. I can’t say the same for Zavier.” She side-eyes Celine.
Celine throws her hands up in surrender. “You think I have any control over Zav? That man does whatever he wants, whenever he wants.”
“Are you trying to steal my man, Luna?” I give her a look charged with fake insult, but part of me bristles at her comment. I know it’s my natural reaction with him being my mate, but I hate how out of control I feel sometimes when it comes to him.
“As if.” She scrunches her nose at the smell of the hair dye. The stench of the dye is bad enough for me, so I can’t imagine what it must be like for her with vampire senses heightening everything. “Whenever I find my person, I kind of hope he isn’t a vampire.”
“How’s that going to work?” I ask, twisting my hair up with a clip. “Don’t you want to have the same lifespan?” I’ve asked Celine something similar before, and she said she wasn’t ready to change yet, but that she fully plans to have Zav turn her into a vampire at some point.
I grab my basket of nail supplies, and the three of us make our way out to the living room to paint our nails at the coffee table. We sit in a row, Celine, me, and Luna on the end. I turn the TV on to a station that only plays music, then set the volume low so it’s merely background noise.
Celine tries to play it cool with a straight face, but she’s squirming at my question meant for Luna. I realize belatedly that it’s something that affects her as well. I haven’t talked to her recently about her thoughts on turning, but I know while Zav is understanding, he’s also antsy to change her. The longer she goes being human, the more risk there is.
Luna purses her lips as she pulls out some of the bottles of polish and assesses the colors. “There are plenty of other supernatural species out there, and many of them are immortal as well.”
I gape in surprise. I feel so dumb when it comes to this supernatural world. Despite learning I’m awitch, I feel entirely separate from these things. I fear it’ll take me an eternity to learn all the things I should know.
“You want a hairy werewolf? Maybe a scaly dragon?” Celine laughs, breaking the awkward air.
“Who knows?” She shrugs, eyeing a sparkly lime green polish before she shakes her head and puts it backin the basket. “I hear shifters are packing heat, if you know what I mean.”
“How much?” I ask curiously.
Luna holds up her hands a ridiculous distance apart. I gape in shock. “You’re kidding.” It’s a statement, not a question, because there’s no way.
“That’s what I’ve heard.” She shrugs, letting her hands fall back to her lap.
“Wouldn’t you break in half?” I ask, selecting an emerald green color for my nails.
Laughing, Luna finally settles on a pastel purple. I slide the basket closer to Celine so she can make her choice. “According to my friend, no.”
Celine chooses a nude shade and sets the basket on the floor so it’s out of the way and gives us more space on the coffee table.
Thankfully, there isn’t anyone to interrupt us, since Zav and Valen are next door with their respective familiars. Hopefully Valen is doing okay. He was a bit sulky about having to spend time with Zav, since the vampire overwhelms him, but when he saw I was about to give in and let him stay, he said he would go and that he wanted me to enjoy my night with the girls.
“Celine,” I try to broach the topic carefully. “Have you given it any more thought to whether you want to turn?” I know it’s a sensitive topic for her. I’ve only brought it up once before, when I first found out about all of this, and she was still too traumatized from what she’d been through to give me more than a quiet “I don’t know.”
She sighs and paints her pinkie finger with perfect precision before examining it closely. I know she’s stalling, but it’s a difficult question, so I stay quiet and give her time.
“It’s such a big decision. I mean I literally have todie.” Hervoice cracks, and I get the feeling this has been a topic of discussion between her and Zav. “I know what you’re thinking, and no, Zavier doesn’t pressure me. He’d be fucking ecstatic if I marched over and told him to turn me right now, but he’s being patient. I do want to turn and spend the rest of my life with him, but I can’t pinpoint a specific timeline. It’s scary deciding to give up my humanity.” She rubs her lips together in concentration as she paints another nail.
