A/N: Where are you reading from?
I groaned, half wishing a hole would open up and suck me into it.
"No wonder you're cranky," my mother continued. "You know it's important to have a balanced diet." She eyed my aura again. "I can see you rather like this boy. Why didn't you ever mention him to me?"
"Because you'd ask me about relinks, like a weirdo.... People don't talk that way in the human world, ma. They don't even know what that stuff is, so no, I didn't ask my very mortal boyfriend to wear some weird sacred ring around his cock."
"Boyfriend?" She had a tone.
Never mind that 'situationship' was likely more accurate a term. I exhaled and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Yes, boyfriend. You know, those things you have several of."
She laughed like I was making a joke. I wasn't.
"Well, what's his name?"
"Camden."
Her nose scrunched. "Oh."
"What?"
"Nothing, nothing."
"No." I glared. "What is it? You made a face."
She pursed her lips and shook her head.
I continued to stare at her. Annoying as she was, she had this way of getting underneath my skin. "Spill," I demanded.
"It's nothing," she said, with a flowing hand gesture. "I don't want to make commentary—you're so reserved, nothing like your brother or sister at all. I know everything about them, right down to when Malaise is ovulating and Maisen—"
"Basically never cut the cord," I smiled tightly.
My mother scowled. "Be nice to your brother."
"Or what, he'll choke me with your placenta?"
Maisen—or Sen as I called him—was five years older than me, making him the ripe age of thirty-two. And my mother's favourite. She wasn't even kind enough to be subtle about it. She'd actively and openly tell people that he was her favourite child, then Malaise was the baby—four years younger than I was, so that gave her some kind of foothold, and then there was me. The middle one.
The forgotten child.
Not that I minded it, really.
I preferred it that way.
It meant I could fuck off to France, away from this supernatural bullshit, and barely anyone noticed. Well, until now, apparently.
"I don't know why you get so weirded out about talking about sex with your mother," she continued. I stared at her like that sentence alone wasn't explanatory enough. "I mean you came from my uterus," she said.
"Euck."
"I'm just saying, you grew inside of me, Marissa, yet speaking about feeding is strange? Your brother literally sent me pictures of his mate's vagina during childbirth."
I blinked slowly. "See, that's not normal," I told her.
"Why are you insulted by vagina, Marissa?"
I squinted. "Mum, I'm not insulted by vagina. I don't care about vaginas—it's weird to be that close with your parents. It's weird to share that kind of private stuff."
"Did you tell Pietro?"
"About Camden's dick? No."
"About Camden." She leered and when I didn't answer, she eyed the space around me—her blue eyes focused on my aura, which was exactly why I hated talking about this shit with her. "Hm. Of course. So 'that kind of private stuff' only applies to one parent."
Guilt seized me, but the fact that she could see that only made me madder. "Pi—Dad doesn't—he's human, he responds like a normal person! He says, 'that's great baby.' He doesn't dissect my connection and aura and make weird faces!" Never mind that I had the same power to see auras too. I rarely focused on it. It was invasive. And I made an active effort to respect people's privacy and boundaries, unlike her.
"You've never accepted yourself, Marissa," my mother retorted. "You can't run from your roots forever—especially not now. Not with everything going on in the supernatural world. And I only asked because I noticed you look...frumpy."
I stared at her from behind my brows. Of course, I looked frumpy—everyone looked frumpy compared to her. She was beautiful. Naturally so. Even without her succubus charms, my mother had a Stacy's Mom look going on, and she knew it. I, much unlike my little sister, and more like my brother, took on my dad's looks. It made sense given we shared a parent, but it worked for him, and didn't work so much for me. I mean, I wasn't ugly or anything with my auburn hair, light freckles and thick lips, I just.... I mean, I had nice features, but somehow, on my face, they just didn't come together well. Or they did, until I moved a fraction, then it was like I was something that crawled from a swamp. The one feature I did get from my mother was my blue eyes—unlike Maison who inherited dad's brown orbs, and right now those eyes that mirrored hers were glaring in her direction.
She only returned that hard look. "A mother has every right to be concerned that their child isn't eating properly," she told me.
"I'm eating fine."
"You'd be stronger and less moody if you ate proper meals, Mariss."
"Yeah, well, I'd be more mentally stable and need less therapy if my mother didn't speak about sex," I retorted. She said I was 'dramatic' and then I turned toward the window, showing that I had no interest in engaging with her in conversation for the rest of the ride.
She could get all the answers she wanted from my aura anyway.
A/N: if you had the power to see auras, would you spy like Penelope, or choose not to like Marissa?