Off The Grid (Kindred Series-3)

Off The Grid - 8

            Lena made no secret of her love for Remy, not as a sister but as more.  But she was going to be promised, arraigned marriages still happened in the gypsy world.  Lena said she didn’t care, she’d never marry, she is Remy’s and Remy is hers.

            That isn’t how Remy sees it.  She loves Lena.  But Lena can never be with her.  That can never happen.  She’s never spoken to any in the family about it.  She still brings random suitors to her bed on occasion, or ventures out of town for her fun and games, but she thinks they all assume that she too wants some lasting relationship with Lena.  Her carnal urges would make being in a relationship with Lena too difficult, but Lena doesn’t see it that way.

            “You should get up,” says Dax at the door, smiling at his sisters.  “You should go to school, Lena.  Day is half over but you can still learn something.”

            “Shut up, what do I need school for?  I can kill you twelve different ways with one hand tied behind my back.”

            “Ah but can you tell me how much the human head weighs?  Or can you explain to me how the heart works?” asks Dax.  His ebony eyes filled with teasing delight.

            “Shut up,” says Lena.  She stomps away into her room, presumably to get dressed and head to school, albeit late.

            Dax grins.  “Papa has a meeting with C later, he wants you to go with him, see if you can tell if he’s trying to pull a con on us.  Word is we are supposed to move, I don’t think Papa wants to.”

            Remy nods and gets out of bed, not bothering to cover herself.  She knows Dax has seen her naked hundreds of times and today is no different than any other day.  She dresses in jeans, a tight tee shirt that accentuates her breast nicely, and her boots.  All the while Dax stands there, watching her.  “What are you looking at, brother?”

            “My sister,” says Dax.  “When you come back can we talk?  Something has been on my mind since, well, for a while.”

            “Sure,” says Remy.  She digs under a pile of stray comic books and finds her knife.  She steps past him, letting her fingers drift down his face, shaven and smooth.  He never lets it grow more than a day, preferring the clean shaven look, the doctorly look.  “Go study, brother.”

            “Come find me in the attic later.”

            The attic is Dax’s lair.  Where he keeps his books and studies, where he sleeps and breathes and sometimes even takes his meals.  It’s his life. 

“Sure,” says Remy.  He moves to the attic stairs while she heads down the stairs into the kitchen.  “Lena gone?”

“Yes,” says Victor with a snort.  “It’s getting harder to get her to go to school every day.”

“Where are we meeting C?” asks Remy, putting on her worn leather jacket. 

“Diner out on the water front.”

“What’s he want?” asks Remy.  Her eyes meet Victor’s dark ones.  He doesn’t seem happy at all and that worries Remy.  He picks up his cup of coffee and shrugs.  “You have no clue?”

“Remy, you well know that C is the head of the family, while I run this little clan of bandits,” he waves to the room with his deformed hand, “I still follow his directives.”

“Do you think he’s clued in about the money?” asks Remy, stealing a slice of bacon from Victor’s plate. 

When Remy had joined their family, she’d also begun helping them financially.  Over the years she’d acquired a rather lucrative amount of wealth.  The demons she killed were usually wealthy and before she killed, many times she pillaged.  While she had been born twenty some odd years ago, she could sometimes simply tell what would be a good investment and what would not.  So, she invested and shifted the monies from place to place, as well as her shifting identities.  When she’d been adopted, so to speak, C had asked what she brought to the family and she’d told him: her kick ass ways and her Roma blood.  Another lie, Remy was no more Roma than a random stranger on the street, but birth certificates proved otherwise.  The money was a secret.