Page 90 of Act of Brotherhood
“Am I the only person who is not a total freak?” As the words left her mouth, she remembered Clara’s words.
They’d been made in a lab and they weren’t human.
Nicolette stared down at her hands. There was nothing supernatural about her. She wasn’t special. She was just her. Just a boring girl making her way through life.
She closed her eyes, doing her best to make sense of it all. People who could turn into animals were supposedly real.
So were vampires and apparently, Uncle Landros was one of those. But that couldn’t be. She’d seen her uncle go outside during the daytime before. Vampires couldn’t do that. Could they? And he ate. Vampires didn’t eat, did they?
She had no clue. Her knowledge of vampire mythos wasn’t up-to-date. And the knowledge she did have came from movies Clara had forced her to sit through. Another thought hit Nicolette.
Did her uncle sparkle?
She sure in the hell hoped not.
“Stop overthinking this. You need facts. Not guesses,” she said, talking to herself while the shower continued to run.
She recapped her week. She’d collided with a hot guy, smashed her cupcakes to bits, took said hot guy home with her, banged his brains out, only to have him run off naked and into the night. Then, as if that couldn’t get any weirder, his evil twin showed up and turned out to be anything but human. Then again, neither was she, evidently.
Nicolette had far more questions than she had answers. Clara had been tight-lipped as they’d run from the house, made their way to the coffee shop they loved, and then stole a car.
Normally, Clara couldn’t shut up.
Nicolette wasn’t sure what freaked her out more: finding out supernaturals are real, or the fact her friend could stay quiet that long.
Both were far-fetched.
The shower cut off and Nicolette made a mental list of all the questions she had.
As the bathroom door opened, Clara appeared, dressed in the same clothing she’d been in earlier. She ran her fingers through her long wet hair. “There isn’t any conditioner.”
Nicolette stared at her friend, waiting for answers she knew Clara had.
With a sigh, Clara covered the distance between them and sat next to her on the bed. “Still trying to process everything?”
Nicolette snorted. “I haven’t been told everything to process, have I?”
“I need you to listen with both ears,” said Clara, using a phrase her mother often used.
“I’m listening. I’m all ears. What in the hell is going on? I stabbed a guy in the eye with a spoon. I’m not a violent person, yet I went all spoon ninja on a guy. Not to mention we can leap over six-foot fences with no real effort. Shifters? Vampires? And what do you mean we were cooked up in a lab? I’m a preschool teacher! I don’t change into an animal or suck people’s blood. There is nothing remarkable about me. I’m boring. You tell me that all the time.”
“Sweetie, you’re not going to listen with both ears if you’re freaking out,” stated Clara, seeming astonishingly calm considering the circumstances.
No amount of deep-breathing techniques or sounds of the ocean were going to help Nicolette at the moment. She was as calm as she was going to get. She wanted answers and she wanted them now. “You’re a stranger to me.”
“No. I’m not. I’m the same person you’ve always known,” said Clara, taking ahold of Nicolette’s hands. “I only learned the truth about us and everything else about a year ago.”
Nicolette watched her. “You were promoted a year ago.”
“Right. With that promotion, or should I say recruitment, since I was pulled from a normal office to one that was anything but normal came access to information I wasn’t supposed to find. I stumbled upon it by accident. And when I did, I lost my shit big time. Had Cody not been meeting me that day for lunch, I’m not sure what I’d have done. He helped me process it all.”
“Cody knows about all of this?” asked Nicolette.
“Yes. He’s like us to some degree. He’s the one who told me to keep what I know a secret, even from my employer. I listened.”
Nicolette glanced to the side. “You didn’t fly to Colorado for your work trip, did you?”
“No,” answered Clara. “I was in the Middle East.”
