Natural Selection (6 page)

“
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.

I DIDN’T WANT to be alone in a car
with either of my siblings the next morning, so I decided to take
the bus. By the time I got to school, Evelyn was waiting for me at
my locker. Since today’s theme was Hawaii, I wore a horrible
Hawaiian shirt, a lei, and a hibiscus flower in my hair. Erica wore
a swimsuit-like tank top and oversized lei with a matching flower
in her hair.

“
So what the hell happened
yesterday?” she asked, stepping aside so I could get into my
locker.

I didn’t even know where to begin. My
talk with my parents left me with more questions than answers, and
I had no idea what was safe to share and what wasn’t. Evelyn was my
best friend, and I felt guilty keeping secrets from her, but I
wasn’t ready to share anything until I got a handle on it. Instead,
I told her about Mariah—not all of it, but enough that her brown
eyes grew wide.

We walked to English together. I
couldn’t tell you what we talked about, just the kind of stuff we
always did: school gossip, television shows, teen fashion, whatever
happened to wander through our brains. But for this one brief
moment it was nice to be reminded that normal was still possible. I
mindlessly listened to Evelyn chatter about some singer’s dress at
some award show I could care less about, and I thanked my lucky
stars to have her. It was the most surreal day of my life—boring,
mundane, and absolutely wonderful. It was a blissfully normal
day.

Nathanial ignored me, except when he
flashed me one of his million-watt smiles at a witty comment I
made. Immediately forgot what was happening around me as I
struggled to hold back an embarrassingly girly giggle. Xander
showed up in a coconut bra and grass skirt. I told Evelyn he had to
have been adopted because I couldn’t be related to that. It wasn’t
until the words were out of my mouth that I realized it was the
truth and I hoped she didn't catch my reaction. Sariah broke up
with her current meal ticket on the quad, smacking him in the back
of the head with a book when she caught him with his hand on
Chelsea Drake’s thigh. Right on, Sariah!

After school, I rode home with Xander
and the normal stopped. I hadn’t been alone with him since my talk
with Mom and Dad. I barely left my room all night, so I had no idea
what Mom told him. He didn’t say anything. After a couple of blocks
of awkward silence while I chomped on one of my nails, I couldn’t
take it anymore. “Ok, it’s killing me. What did Mom tell you guys
about me last night?”

He gave me a funny look, swerving into
the other lane briefly before pulling it back over the line.
Fortunately, the road was empty, but I grabbed onto the "Oh shit"
handle just in case. I’ve always wondered how holding onto that
handle was supposed to save me in a car accident, but still I
reached for it during a close call.

“
Sorry about that,” he
muttered, looking a little chagrinned. “Mom didn’t say
anything—just you were in your room. Why?”

“
A friend of mine was
murdered.” I was shocked with how deadpan my voice was. I went for
a walk. I weeded the garden. My friend was killed.

“
Who?”

“
Mariah Carter. A police
detective came to school, and I was in the office. They showed me a
picture of her room—it was awful, Xander. It was some sort of
creepy witchcraft ritual.”

Xander was silent as we drove down
Kickapoo, past the town square and the courthouse with its familiar
dome. “I’m sorry, Lia. Were you two close?”

“
No. Yes. I don’t
know…That’s not why it upset me so much. The symbol they found
painted in her room—I can’t breathe just thinking about it. It was
powerful, Xander.”

“
Did you and Mom talk about
that?”

“
No. Actually, we got
sidetracked. We spent most of our time talking about gaia, djinn,
and succubuses… succubi… whatever!” What was the proper plural of
succubus, really?

Xander didn’t say another word. He
pulled into to driveway and climbed out of the car. Without looking
back, he grabbed his bag out of the backseat and went into the
house. I followed, my feet dragging. Sariah wasn’t home, but I knew
she had detention for her incident on the quad. I tossed my bag on
the steps as usual and followed Xander into the kitchen.

“
Are you mad at
me?”

“
What?” he gasped, looking
shocked “No! Why would I be mad at you?”

“
Then why aren’t you
talking to me?”

“
What do you say when
someone announces ‘Oh, by the way, I know the secret you’ve been
hiding all these years’ as calm as can be?”

“
I didn’t mean it that way,
but is there really a good way to broach the subject? For goodness
sake, I feel like I’m on the receiving end of the Holy Hand Grenade
of Antioch, and you’re the one getting huffy?”

Xander snickered and shook his head.
“Monty Python couldn’t have said it better. Do you have any
questions for me?” he asked, his too-bright-blue eyes studying
me.

“
Do you remember anything
before coming to live with us?”

He nodded. “I was only two, but djinn
and succubi mature fast. A full-blooded djinn matures by the time
he’s three. Since I’m more human it was slower, but I have memories
as early as six months.”

“
What was it like knowing
what you could do? Did you know it wasn’t normal?”

I knew that was the wrong question as
I watched my brother’s face shut down. He was silent, and I could
see an internal struggle in his eyes. Just when I thought he wasn’t
going to talk to me anymore, he looked down at his hands resting on
the counter top. “I knew it scared the hell out of people, but I
didn’t understand why. Mom taught me about it later, but at the
time, I was so hurt and confused.”

I opened my mouth to ask a question
but stopped. I tried again and the words stuck in my throat, too
heavy with insecurity to make it out of my mouth. “Do you remember
your birth mother?” I asked tentatively.

“
You’re really going for
the tough ones, Lia.” His voice was little more than a whisper.
“Yes, I remember her a little, but not much. Mostly, I remember how
scared of me she was.”

I felt so sad for him. Xander had
always been the greatest brother growing up, and I couldn’t imagine
somebody being afraid of him. Even knowing about his mysterious
powers, I wasn’t scared of him. He was my brother—that hadn’t
changed. “I’m sorry, Xander, but her loss is our gain. I know, I
know, no mushy chick flicks, but just for a sec, I promise.” And
with that I walked around the counter and threw my arms around my
brother. What shocked me the most was how hard he hugged back, like
he'd been waiting for me to reject him. “Xander, you do know this
doesn’t change anything, right? I’m not going to run away. You’re
stuck with me, so deal with it.”

His entire attitude changed. It simply
hadn’t occurred to me he was gearing himself up for rejection, and
that realization made me sad. How could he have expected me to
reject him for not being normal when none of us were? For the first
time in my life, I really looked at my brother. Xander had never
been good at making friends. In fact, I can’t say I’d ever seen him
with any—other than Nathanial. I felt guilty for making things so
awkward for him over the years. It occurred to me though my parents
had explained about my brother and sister, I still knew very little
about myself. I was so frustrated and confused. I wanted someone to
tell me something—anything! I opened my mouth to ask Xander, but
he’d always read me like a book. I could tell by the stony
expression on his face what the answer would be without saying a
word, so I remained silent.