Page 60 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

“Our parents taught us different,” Abel said in a quiet, sad voice.

I cocked my head to the side and studied Abel. He’d turned his head so his eyes were no longer staring at me but instead on his brother. He’d shifted around so that one of his legs was wedged between my legs and the couch and his other leg was stretched out in front of him, covering my feet. Both of his arms were wrapped around my legs and his head lay on top of my thighs.

I reached out with my hand and ran my fingers through his soft black hair. He let out a contented sigh at my touch and a smile crossed my face at hearing it.

“How did your parents teach you differently?” I asked him. I wanted to hear more about their parents. They didn’t talk about them unless asked first. I didn’t like asking because I didn’t want to cause them any pain talking about their parents might bring them. When you loved your family very much and they were taken away from you in a horrible plane crash into the Ocean, one of them dying in the initial crash and the other surviving only to be killed by sharks, well, I didn’t imagine talking about them to be much fun.

I continued running my fingers through his soft hair and he closed his eyes. He didn’t answer my question, Addison did. I didn’t take my eyes off of Abel.

“Our parents believed in love and they wanted that for us. They never liked anything the Council said or did and they were very vocal about it, never hiding how they felt. Our mother didn’t have magic, not like Julian’s mother did. But our father loved her and wouldn’t have traded her or the love they shared for anything. It’s a rare thing. Usually, the men hide it from their significant others and the children they create together. It’s frowned on to share our secrets with anyone who isn’t born into our world. Our father hid nothing from our mother and she embraced our world and what he was with open arms. But he would leave her home with us when he had to attend to the Council or anything their coven did that involved the Council. People said nasty things to her when he wasn’t around to hear it. But he found out about it anyway, not that she’d ever told him. They tried to keep us away from the Council as much as possible and they tried to keep us in the dark on the ways of the Council. But my twin and I are sneaky and didn’t like being left in the dark. We snuck around and spied on our parents when other coven members showed up as much as we could get away with. We also spied on our parents as often as we could get away with, which was a lot. We heard the horrible things they’d said about our mother and our father for being with her. They thought he should have knocked her up, stuck around long enough to see if his children had magic. Then, if we did, the Council thought he should have taken them away from her and never had anything to do with her again. They see anyone without magic as weak. And they didn’t think children with magic should be raised with anyone but a coven of witches who had magical abilities.”

“We grew up not wanting one damn thing to do with those people,” Abel picked up when Addison stopped speaking. “Any answer you get from us about the Council will be colored by our feelings towards them. And our feelings towards them aren’t exactly pretty.”

There was a lot of information there to digest but I thought it best to go through it when I was by myself. That way my facial expressions wouldn’t give away my feelings. I liked to be alone when I digested things for the first time, especially when they were important things.

“Huh,” I said stupidly in an attempt to take away from the heavy mood that had descended upon our cozy little bubble in the living room.

Abel’s eyes shot open and he grinned at me happily.

“Huh, indeed,” Addison said in a teasing voice.

He was making fun of me, but I didn’t care. His voice had changed. The gravel had smoothed out a bit when it took on the teasing tone and it made me happy to hear it. We needed more happy, and less heavy. If that meant they were happy at my expense, then I could deal with it. Just this once, though.

“You’re a little nutty, pretty girl,” Abel told me in serious voice.

I nodded in agreement.

“You are not wrong,” I said.

Addison barked out a laugh. I winced at how loud it sounded in the quiet house. I knew Dash had said not to worry about how loud we were, but I couldn’t help it. He hadn’t been gone for very long and I worried about that if we were loud he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep.

Neither twin noticed my wince.

“Do you want to sleep down here or up in your room?” Abel asked me.

Sleep down here without my dreamcatcher? Only for the twins would I be willing to do this. Which was a lie because I would have done it for Julian also. I was feeling out of control with these boys.

But we couldn’t sleep in my room.

There was no light in my room once I turned out the ceiling light. If I left the door open and kept the bathroom door open with the light on, then it would light up the hallway but not any part of my bedroom. Abel didn’t like sleeping in the dark. They had glow in the dark stars covering their entire bedroom at the Alexander house that made their entire ceiling glow a neon green color.

If we slept down here in the living room then the tv would make it so we weren’t submerged in darkness and Abel wouldn’t have to wake up in a dark room sometime during the night and panic.

“We could sleep down here, if you want to?” I asked tentatively. “I’m not ready to sleep yet and I could watch another movie. I might fall asleep half way through it, but I could go for that.”

“See,” Abel said, “you really do need a television in your room.”

I shook my head, silently disagreeing with him.

“If it were just me, I’d watch something on my laptop,” I told him. “But with the three of us, the screen would be too small.”

No way was I telling them the real reason behind not wanting to sleep up there with them tonight. I would need to get some kind of nightlight before they stayed over again.

They got down to the business of gathering sleeping bags, blankets and pillows. A lot of sleeping bags, blankets and pillows. I expected them to each sleep in their own individual sleeping bags. I should have known better. The bags were unzipped, spread out and laid one on top of the other in front of the couch. Two, thick comforters were laid on top of the three sleeping bags they’d laid down. A black sheet was spread out on top of it all. And, last, the comforter from my bed had been dragged down the stairs and put on top of the pile.

Guess that meant we were all sleeping together on our mountain of blankets. I was fine with this. I had slept in-between them before. As weird as it sounded, I sometimes wondered if they slept in the same bed when they were alone together. Not in a weird way, just a side by side so there was someone always there, kind of way.

I ran upstairs quietly and changed into a pair of jammies while they got ready for bed. My pajama pants were soft and a solid black. My tank top, the same. No cute picture this time and no amusing saying. I was too tired to go digging for something cute to wear. And, who cared? We were going to sleep, not a pajama party and I wasn’t getting graded on my outfit. You could never go wrong with black.

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