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Zach’s expression was so shocked and had so much unease in it, that it actually hurt to see it. “Why now?” he asked.
“Zach…” I frowned, wondering where to begin. “A lot of things have happened. I…” I shook my head and then asked, “Did we move after Grandma died because you think it was Seraphus that killed her?”
My brother fainted.
Don’t worry, it wasn’t for long. I probably shouldn’t have started there, but I felt his reaction did speak volumes.
I watched Ryan as he was getting Zach to come to, looking at him like I’d never seen him before, because he looked way too calm.
“Did Zach tell you?”
Ryan frowned. “What? About the cult you grew up in? That he had to start the fire that ended up killing your parents and several other cult members so he could sneak you out of the building before you could be sacrificed? That there’s always been a psychopath dogging your trail? Yes.”
My mouth fell open. “Well, I didn’t know!” I said, not liking his blame-laden tone.
“How can you not remember anything? You were eight, Zazie! You didn’t have a name until your grandma named you after. Until then, your parents called you Seraphina after your real father.”
I blinked, and somehow I knew that he wasn’t lying. That name sounded familiar.
He watched my reaction and sighed. “Nothing? Zazie, you didn’t go to school. You didn’t have a birth certificate. Zach delivered you to your grandmother because she was trying to free your dad from the cult he got himself into. She took you guys and ran.”
All I could remember from my childhood was playing games with Zach and watching a lot of TV… “Are you sure?” I asked, despite knowing all I knew.
Ryan looked up at the ceiling. “Yes. That’s why Zach’s always babied you! Because you’re broken!”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
I finally realized Zach had woken up because he took my hand. “Because you’re my baby sister, and I love you. I wanted you to have a normal life.”
He made me want to cry. I squeezed his hand and settled back down next to him. “Zach… you should have told me. There’s a lot going on right now.”
Zach patted my hand. “Tell me about all about it,” he invited.
I sighed and raised an eyebrow. “Gonna pass out if I do?”
Zach smirked. “No promises.”
Ryan sat down, settled in. He looked so peaceful, seeming too certain that I wasn’t going to give him an existential crisis.
Poor guy.
Because it turned out to be a three-faint night.
One of those times was Ryan.
I had to explain dragons. And then demons and witches and the fact that we were half djinn. He had to have been too; he was my mother’s son, and my mother had to have been a high concentration of Seraphus herself.
I didn’t know if they completely believed me. It didn’t really matter; I just had to tell him. I had to throw things at the wall. I didn’t know what Zach knew, and I felt like I had to pull details out of him.
He did know that we weren’t completely human, or at least when he was a kid, he was sure of it and had really been trying to talk himself out of it ever since. Our mother was supposedly also strangely gifted, and inquisitive, attracted to gold and metals.
He cried a lot, we talked a lot, we surprisingly laughed a lot, we finally got our past out in the open, and I think we made some headway in our relationship over pizza.
“So… two men, huh?” Zach said, finally rounding back to the bit about the dragons, that they seemed to feel that there was something about me that was so alluring they couldn’t get it anywhere else, something about the way I smelled.
“Two men. Sort of. They’ve been acting crazy since the first night, so who knows?”
“Why didn’t you bring them by?” Zach asked, pointing outside the apartment, as if this whole thing should be done over the dinner table like it was Thanksgiving.
