SOMETHING WAS WRONG with me, and I didn’t know what it was. I needed my mom in a way I’d never needed her before, and I was prepared to run the whole way if need be. When I saw the familiar gold sedan pull up to the curb, I nearly sobbed in relief. I wasn’t sure if the school had called her after my hasty departure or if Nate did, and I honestly didn’t care. I collapsed into the passenger seat and buckled in, hugging my knees to my chest. I almost wanted my mom to yell at me for having my feet on the seat. I think I just needed something normal to put the whole mess into perspective. She stared ahead in silence as we drove through the lightly populated streets toward home. I began to shiver, so cold I didn’t think I would ever get warm again. She reached out, placed a hand on my knee, and turned the heat up. Her smile was meant to be reassuring as we pulled into the driveway, but it couldn’t penetrate the haze.
I felt like a little girl again as she helped me change into dry clothes and gently dried and combed my hair. She did all the right things in the way only a mom knows how. Before I knew it I was telling her all of it: the police at school, the symbol and its strange effect on me, even trying to tear Nate’s shirt off so I could touch his skin. By the time I ran out of things to tell her, we were curled up in my bed with my head pressed to her chest so I could hear her heartbeat, her arms wrapped tightly around me. After I stopped talking, we lay there for a time in silence listening to the rain on the roof.
“There’s a lot you need to know, Lia. Stuff about you and our whole family. It’s been coming for a while, but I’ve been trying to put it off as long as possible. I think it’s time you knew. Let me call your father and get him home.” With that she stood and walked out of my room, leaving me alone with the rain on the roof and a growing sense of dread.
When Dad got home about twenty minutes later, he came into my room and sat at the foot of my bed the way he had since I was a little girl. He held my eyes with his own moss green ones, and I felt safe. Nothing bad could happen to me when daddy was with me. We sat in silence, his hand on my knee until Mom came back with a glass of Coke for me. Dad gave me a weak smile as Mom settled next to him, her grey eyes lingering on me for a long moment. My heart dropped when I recognized the sadness and regret churning there.
“Before I say anything, I want to make sure you understand all three of you are my children, and I love you,” Mom reached out and took Dad’s hand. My mind flashed back to that overheard argument between my parents, and I had a nagging suspicion where this conversation was going. Mom took a deep breath and seemed to flounder for how to continue.
“I think the blunt approach might be best, love,” Dad said, his expression unreadable. “We’re not human, Lia, none of us are.”
I tried to swallow but found my mouth too dry. I had no idea what to say. I know it might seem naïve, but it never occurred to me that we were anything other than a painfully normal family. How could I not know something this huge? I didn’t have time to linger on it because Mom had a few more whoppers to drop on me.
“Before any of you were born, your father and I had a little boy named Jonathon. He was killed because of what we are,” Mom said, reaching out to take my hand. “We come from a long line of Gaia, a type of nature spirit.”
“Nature spirits?” I asked, my brow furrowing in confusion. “What like dryads and nymphs?”
“Not exactly,” my mother said shaking her head, “though they are kin to us. Like apes are to humans, I guess.” I cocked my head at her in confusion but remained silent. After a prolonged moment of heavy silence, she continued. “Every race has a name for nature spirits. The Algonquin referred to us as the Earth-Mother, the Incans as Pachamama. The easiest way to think of it is like Mother Nature. It is from the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth that we take our name. We are Gaia.”
My eyes widened as my brain tried to process this information, but it made no sense. How could I go through my entire life and not know I wasn’t what I thought I was? I looked at my father, but his face was still hard and unreadable.
“Nature spirits aren’t the only supernatural creatures in this world. There're many powerful beings on this earth that aren’t human. Over the years, we've used many different names for ourselves, but currently we call ourselves Otherworlders. And the Otherworld is locked in a heated conflict that has spawned so much hatred and tragedy.” She paused, her voice wavering. “I was terrified that any other children we had would become a victim of the conflict like Jon. When your father and I found out we were pregnant, we decided we should find a stronger Otherworlder to help protect our baby. We decided to look for a child to raise along with our own who would be strong and able to protect you until you were old enough to protect yourself. We contacted an agency that specializes in Otherworld children. The agent returned with two young candidates, one boy and one girl.” I could see the nostalgia in her eyes as she remembered that long ago day. “Since we wanted to give you the best protection possible, we decided to take them both. Xander, a two-year-old djinn and Sariah, a one year old succubus.”
“What exactly does that mean, Mom?” I asked, my voice thick. “I mean I’ve heard of them both, but …” I trailed off, unable to articulate what I wanted to know. How could my siblings be anything other than what I’d always known them to be?
“They belong to a class of Otherworlder known as demons. A djinn traditionally is rather monstrous, but Xander is only half djinn. His mother was human. He’s known what he is for a very long time because his powers began to manifest before he came to us. His mother abandoned him to fend for himself when she realized her son wasn’t human.”
I thought of my brother and all he’d done for me over the years. I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through, alone and scared. Did he know the things he did weren’t normal, or did he just think of it as learning to do something else like walking and talking? Or did he even remember a time before he was part of this family. “What exactly can he do?”
“A lot of it has to do with fire. He can bend it to his will. He can sometimes turn invisible, but only when he’s emotional so far. Eventually, he should be able to shapeshift and possibly walk through walls, though, as far as I know, he’s never done either. And he doesn’t have a lot of control yet, except over the fire.”
I had a mental image of my brother as the star of the Pixar short Jack-Jack Attack and could understand his mother freaking out, but how could she abandon her own son? Shaking my head, I forced myself on. “And Sariah?”
Mom scrunched her lips to one side, looking uncertain for the first time during this entire conversation. “A succubus is, for lack of a better way to say it, a sex demon.”
“You’re kidding me? Seriously? Tell me she doesn’t need…” I looked around, unsure how to say this around my parents. When no one offered any suggestions, I squirmed but plowed on—red cheeked and miserable. “You know, his… stuff,” I awkwardly finished, emphasizing the word with a rolling hand gesture.
My mom’s lips twitched, but thank God she kept her face smooth and went on in a normal tone. “No, Lia. She feeds off his arousal and the energy they generate together. It works a bit like a vampire, only it’s not blood she craves. He doesn’t even notice because all that energy is consumed by the sex itself.”
“So aside from sleeping with half the male population in town for the equivalent of a psychic cheeseburger, what does she do?” Dad’s eyes narrowed at me, and Mom’s eyes widened. “Mom, she’s had boobs since she was eight! I know about the ongoing parade of sweaty mouth-breathers going all the way with my sister in the back seat of their cars.” Sometimes my folks really didn’t have a clue about the world we lived in. “She’s been carrying on like a cat in heat since she was thirteen. I couldn’t help but notice! The whole school has.”
Horror and anger warred in my mom’s stormy grey eyes. Tears sparkled, but she held them back. “We really haven’t done a very good job with this, have we,” she said sadly. “I thought we taught her the importance of discretion.” My father
placed his hand on her shoulder, and she leaned her cheek against it.
“She has to have the sexual energy to power her abilities,” my father said quietly. “Mostly, she has incredible strength and the ability to make any human trust her. She can instantly arouse any man. And she can change her physical appearance at will. But her strongest ability is empathy—she knows what other people are feeling. That’s why she tends to be aloof. She feels every pang of jealousy, every shard of anger, no matter how quickly it's squelched. So she keeps her distance from everyone. The only person I know of that she can’t sense is Xander, which is why he drives her so nutty.”
“Does she need the energy to survive or just to power her abilities?” I asked. I was shocked at how calmly I was taking this. Shouldn’t I be freaking out about now?
“She needs energy to live more as she gets older. It won’t be too much longer before she no longer requires actual food. Xander already can’t live on food alone.”
Before I could say another word, we heard the door slam and Xander heading straight for the kitchen. My parents looked at each other, and somehow I knew this conversation was over. Mom squeezed my hand, as if to promise more later, then got up and left my room. Dad started to follow her, but he stopped at my door. The sadness and fear on his face when he turned to look at me scared me more than any psychopath killing teenage girls ever could. It was only after he left I realized that though they explained what I was, I still had no clue what that meant.