“To check on Violet. Would you please tell me how she fucking is?” Arion asks loudly. “Demetria is somewhere in the neighborhood, according to one of the mouths attached to one of the heads we took off.”
“Just what we need. Idun’s unnaturally powerful gypsy freak beta, who has been impossibly hard to capture for the past thousand years, popping up right now. I was hoping someone had exterminated her,” Marta grinds out.
“Why is Marta Portocale listening to this conversation?” Arion asks with a somewhat chilling tone.
“Because she’s going to tell us more about Violet if we include her in on conversations such as these,” Damien states with a shove-it-up-your-ass grin in Marta’s direction.
Marta outright laughs, before walking in the opposite direction from the house, apparently heading back to her makeshift home now that she’s seen enough.
Damien continues talking to Arion like he expected no less, though they both lower their voices to near whispers, as I jog down to Marta.
“You’re leaving Violet on her own right now?” I ask like I don’t believe it.
“I’ll just agitate them if they see me while Nadine is still vulnerable,” she says dismissively.
“But Violet is—”
“Violet just left Zuela Van Helsing in a fit of giggles because of how ridiculous he found her to be. She’s perfectly safe for the time being. He won’t hurt anyone who has snagged his eldest, much stronger son’s attention, especially while Idun is free. Certainly not my daughter, who he now knows has more protection than any other omega. Congratulations, you’ve all made enduring this disgusting situation slightly more bearable. For this moment, at least.”
She keeps walking as I stop, and I stare after her for a second. She’s still taking this too easily, and it hasn’t settled well with me. I keep waiting on the inevitable fall-out, and the suspense is killing me.
“Why did you let her grow up without telling her anything about who she is? Even if just to let her know she wasn’t completely alone? We all have nests, packs, covens, dens…among other things. There’s a reason for that. Gypsies drift together, Marta. It’s in our blood.”
She exhales harshly, her steps slowing, as she turns around to face me.
I expect a self-righteous tirade that tells me nothing, but she gives me a tight smile, as she opens her bag and starts walking back toward me.
“When Violet was born, she was born without a heartbeat,” she tells me quietly, while she pulls out some sort of magazine. “I knew immediately what she was just by her mannerisms. At least, I did once I’d researched Tom’s tree. It took me a solid year to find ties, but I found them. A bastard son of a bastard’s son started a new thread of Neoprys straight from the original line. Though, clearly not from any of the immortal branches.”
“But how did she end up immortal if—”
“The perfect storm happened,” she carries on, grimacing. “Tom Carmine and the other Marta Portocale were in the throes of passion, because he was the first man she grabbed at a bar on a bad night. Drugs had been unkind to her heart, and it went out just as they…”
She lets the words trail off, rolling her eyes and clearing her throat.
“I gypsy-hopped into her body and absorbed all her memories, just as the final beat sent an ER machine into a buzzing frenzy I’ll never forget. On paper, it seemed to be a miracle that my heart started beating all on its own. Poor Tom was traumatized. It was his first one-night-stand. He thought he’d been the luckiest guy ever, even though he was just her random pick of the evening. He was waiting with roses and Get Well balloons when I came out.”
Her jaw grinds like she doesn’t want to share this, and I have no idea why she is.
“The honest truth?” she asks.
“If you’re capable of it,” I counter.
“I’ve gotten good at giving honest answers,” she states with a shrug. “The other Marta had conceived before I took over,” she carries on, her look immediately softening. “It came as a shock, to say the least, when I discovered I had a child inside of me. She had no heartbeat inside a womb that started dying and deteriorating the moment I took over, but she continued to grow. I had to find some very outrageous, somewhat alarmingly open-minded physicians. After she was born, her heart began to beat slowly, as she became aware of her surroundings.”
She clears her throat and tugs at her collar.
“Understandably, I was baffled by the whole ordeal, but felt too blessed to look a gift horse in the eye too closely. I was a mother again,” she says, her voice lowering to a rasp that forces her to clear her throat again before continuing.
“I took over Marta’s life—the parts I wanted, anyway. While I studied her, assessing who and what she was—along with what she was capable of—I lived as that version of Marta Portocale, and prepared my daughter for her future, without ruining her entire childhood with the daunting reality that awaited her.”
Her eyes find mine and turn darker as she hands me the magazine. I take it, but warily keep my eyes on her.
“Not too terribly long ago, her head came off, and I knew what it meant when she woke up with it sewn back on. She was officially immortal. It only made sense. Because immediately after, her obsession with old, black-and-white monster films tripled. She started visiting ‘haunted’ towns and watching independently made monster films in parks, cemeteries, and anywhere else they’d have public screenings.”