“I can come too,” Cheryl suggests. “It’ll be like the good old days when we used to travel to gigs together.”
“The only person missing is Vaughn.” I smile, getting all nostalgic.
“You were so good,” Manu says, surprising me. “I hope you can play again.”
Karl tilts his head. “You’ve seen us play? When?”
“A few times. Even though I had to keep my distance from you, I wasn’t always strong enough to do so.”
Karl throws his arm around her shoulder and kisses her cheek. “I had no idea. I never felt you were close by.”
“I took precautions.”
“How about you, Ronan? Did you ever see us play?” I ask.
I can’t help my amusement when his face turns bright red.
“Oh my God. You have!” Cheryl exclaims.
“Yes, whenever I was free.”
I sit down at the table with my bowl of cereal, and Ollie’s eyes turn bigger. “What are you eating?”
“Chocolate cereal.”
“Can I try?”
“Oh, it would probably make you sick, sweetie,” Ronan replies.
“Did you guys ever want to try human food when you were her age?” I ask Ronan and Manu.
“Not that I recall,” she says.
Ronan shakes his head. “No, human food never appealed to me.”
I stare at Ollie, trying to see if she’s really 100 percent vampire. “Is it possible that Ollie might have Nightingale blood?”
Cheryl and Ronan exchange a loaded glance, and then she says, “It is possible. Her mother was involved with Castiel’s brother.”
“If that’s true, it would mean your baby won’t be the first half-vampire, half-Nightingale child,” Karl adds.
“Yes, and that would ease some of my worries,” I confess.
I haven’t told anyone that I fear my child won’t survive on account of being of mixed blood. But if Ollie is a hybrid child, and she looks perfectly healthy, it removes part of my stress.
“Is she immune to the sun?” Karl asks.
“We don’t know, and it’s not something we want to test.” Ronan grows serious.
“There must be a safer way to know if she has Nightingale blood without risking her getting ill or hurt,” I muse. “Solomon might know a spell.”
I finish eating my cereal as fast as I can so I can visit Adrian. The longer I wait, the more the feeling that I must see him immediately grows.
Sixty-One
VIVIENNE
Because I’m not a rude person, I called ahead to check if Adrian was already awake. He’s human, but I have no idea if he’s adhered to a vampire schedule yet. Mauricio said he’d been up since noon, and that he looked a little lost, so it’d be good for him to have company while King Raphael slept.
