Page 38 of Out of Sight

“Of course, but there is a flame under it, so watch your fingers.”

He grinned. “Of course.” Mimicking her own words back.

He glided over to the samovar, and she and Ted sat down with Anya. When the family got the nerve, they came in to talk, one by one.

It was a strange thing to be seen when you were used to being invisible. The chair gave Lucia something hard at her back, and she needed it. This was the scariest thing to happen to her in the last fifteen years.

Chapter Seven

Ted watched the cousins come and touch them, hug them, and then leave. When Lucia’s parents stood there, her mother’s hand was reaching and dropping.

The sentence Lucia’s father said was heartbreaking. “We forgot you.”

Lucia smiled. “I know. I was never a beloved son, a promised alpha, and I was in the way, so I got out of the way, and then I was gone.”

Her mother was crying silently. “We have gotten better with our daughters-in-law and our grandchildren. We understand what we did to you.”

“I know. You did for them what you couldn’t for me. It’s good. It shows growth.”

Her mother whispered, “May I hug you?”

Lucia stood up and looked down at both her parents. The hug from her mother paused when her mother said, “You are cold.”

“I am stone, Mom. My body is long gone. This is just a housing for my soul and all the power that rose inside me. A sculptor made this body for me so that I would not have to make my own body from scrap materials around me. I have no blemishes, no scars, no freckles. None of the things that you remember are on this form. I am made out of marble.”

She looked at her father. “Wanna arm wrestle?”

He blinked and smiled slowly. “Sure.”

Ted watched as they settled at a table, and Sabin watched their form before saying, “Go!”

Lucia’s arm lazily pinned her father’s hand to the table. She let him go and smiled. “Two out of three?”

He looked at her. “No, Lucia. You win.”

“Thank you. Back to my cozy chair.”

He caught her in a hug, and she hugged him back. “I missed you, Cici. Thirteen years of loss just hit us all at once. All the missing moments, the laughter in the house, the quiet fixing of our computers, the tutoring of your younger brothers. The face you made when you got dragged off to make dumplings.”

She smiled and looked at him. “Those words still put a chill down my spine.”

He chuckled. “You didn’t even eat them.”

“I smelled them in my skin, my hair, my clothing. I was wearing them. I couldn’t eat something I had been consuming via my other senses for hours.”

He blinked. “Oh. Less of a cute story now.”

“Don’t worry about it. That happens a lot in my past. Only looks cute from a distance.”

“What happened to you?”

“I graduated, was getting ready to start a company, and I was leaving a coffee shop when I was grabbed, drugged, and hauled off. Three guys were there, and they used magic to bind me in addition to the cuffs and the collar that attached me to the wall.”

Her father was tense. “Did they...”

“Nope. They shackled me to the wall and fed me most of the time. I tried to get away, but it took me a while before I was successful.”

“You got away?”