Page 32 of Falling in Love with A Tiny Bat

Standing in the produce aisle of Costco, I purse my lips and scan a bag of potatoes for bruises. They smell fine. Cool. Taters for dinner.

I plop them in the cart and continue on toward the fruit.

“Mommy is insane, isn’t she?” Alexios whispers tomybaby, filling hissweet little headwithpropaganda.

“I’m extremely offended that you believe that,” I mutter at my rottensoulmate.

“I phrased it as a question. I’m not certain whether I believe it or not. Insanity is, perhaps, among my favorite traits, so if I do, it isn’t exactly an insult at least.”

“Perhaps, huh?”

Alexios’s lips pull into a frown. “It’s the literal thinking, snowflake. We tend to make ample allowance for absolute correctness when we can. To feel comfortable speaking suchthings with certainty, I’d need several business days and my friend Sephin’s help creating a spreadsheet that can rank every known trait to see if insanity does truly fall among my favorites.”

Blowing out a breath, I look through a bag of peaches and mumble, “Sometimes you say things thatreallymake me glad I’ve got human blood… Existence is exhausting enough without all that.” When I’ve found a decent bag, I lift it toward him. “You like peaches?”

“Fruit is an inconsistent nightmare. Pray tell, how do you tolerate it?”

“Reminds me of my childhood.” I pop the peaches in the cart. “Come on, Xios. We’reshopping, and we have the whimsical entiretrunkof a shiny new car to fill. You’re my live-in babysitter for the foreseeable future. After the way you glared at my french toast this morning, I’m going to need you to pick out food you like. Kass won’t be happy with me if I let her adopted kid starve.”

Disgust. It pours over Alexios’s face with a violence that rivals the look he gave my egg and cinnamon mixture earlier. “Despite popular belief,Kassandrais of no relation to me. Whatsoever.”

I sense tea. It’s brewing. And it’s about my boss. Mom always told me that gossip waswrong, moments before she’d insult what the pastor’s wife was wearing at church. Hypocrisy is such a poor shade on most people…which is why I have never once claimed to be above such things. I blurt, “You don’t like your stepmother?”

“She isnotmy stepmother.”

“She married your father. That’s how it works.”

“Once again, Pollux isalsonot my father.”

I arch a brow, skip the apples, and pick up a bag of cutie oranges. “The fae can lie if their beliefs are wrong and they have no proof to change them. I wonder how I can prove you’re indenial…” Blinking at the tiny oranges in the bag, I say, “Wait a second. Why wouldn’t you want Kass to be your stepmother? What’s not to like about Kass? Kass is great. She hired me even though I’m but a wee mongrel. You should respect your fantastic stepmother luck.”

He releases a heavy breath and adjusts Ash’s blanket beneath his sweet baby chin. “You’re confused. I don’t dislike Kass. I simply will not be claiming familial relationships with her.”

Like a nosy little muskrat, I chirp, “Why?”

He goes red in the cheeks, pouring all his attention into Ash. “Because. There’s a minor plausibility that I may, potentially, at some point in the history of my existence…” He deflates, muttering, “…have flirted with her…and asked for her soul.”

I let my mouth absolutelygape. “Alexios, youanimal.”

“I was younger! It didn’t mean anything. I was only trying to get on Pollux’s nerves a little. I’m sorry.”

I literally, from a romantic interest standpoint, could not care less. “Are you in your rebel teen years, already?” I muse. “Flirting with your stepmother to get back at your father…” I tut, shake my head. “Sounds like the start of a smutty book blurb.”

“Must you poke at such an irreverent topic?”

I smirk. “Is it making you uncomfortable?”

“Would it not make anyone uncomfortable?”

Humming, I catch sight of someone I know across the main aisle of the store, in the deli section. “I don’t know. Want me to ask that guy?”

Alexios bristles, but before he can open his mouth, I’m wheeling my cart toward the open refrigerators.

“Sal! Hey, it’s been a while.”

Sal, an old neighbor from when I first moved up here to Virginia with nothing but what I could pack in the side car of my first motorcycle, looks up, squints his aging eyes, glances both directions over me, then seems to focus on my face. “Oh!Zahra. Have you been here the whole time?” Dumping a wedge of Asiago in his cart, he smiles. “I must’ve missed you somehow.”

Thesomehowwould be on account of faerie glamour. Alexios, for unknown reasons, seems to like laying the magic that congeals around the fae to hide them from human perception onthick. In all honesty, I’ve noticed several people I know during this trip, but beside Alexios and Ash, I am invisible.

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